Who are adolescents in India? Our draft youth policy defines adolescence as the age between 13 to 19 years, the reproductive and child health programme recognises 10- to 19-year-olds as adolescents, the Integrated Child Development Services say adolescent girls are 11 to 18 years old, and the Constitution and labour laws consider all below age 14 to be children.
No wonder, adolescents have long been ignored in India's plans for the future. But things are about to change. Adolescents will finally get a better deal in the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-07) to be released later this year. The Planning Commission, realising the need to focus on this young population segment, set up a working group on adolescents to provide inputs to the Tenth Five Year Plan.
The group's report is in. And India's 230 million adolescents, 23 per cent of our population, will now have a precise place in the blueprint for development. They will now be, in policyspeak, categorised as people between ages 10 and 19.
Also, the lack of concern for our young, discernible in our health and education policies, is being set right. The latest population policy stresses on addressing the "needs of under/unserved population groups like adolescents". Meanwhile, the ncert continues with its adolescence education project in about 20,000 schools.
Says Planning Commission deputy chairperson K.C. Pant: "But the Tenth Five Year Plan will ensure an integrated approach in handling adolescent welfare and development. The strategy is to harness the strengths of educators, NGOs, youth- and community-based organisations towards catering to all the unmet needs of this population segment." That the new focus will be on the "holistic development" of adolescence, says Firoza Mehrotra, advisor, plan coordination, Planning Commission, is indicated by the fact that unlike earlier, where age parameters for adolescents were fixed as per the needs and objectives of programmes and policies, "they've now been fixed according to the needs of adolescents".
Most important, perhaps, is the recognition that there are about 230 million adolescents in the country who, because of the rapid development of their minds and bodies, have unique problems and need special help. And though we in urban India might associate this age with psychological transition and precarious physical experimentation, there's more to adolescent problems—dropping out of schools, premature marriage and motherhood and illicit labour.
"Adolescents have very special and distinct needs, which can no longer be overlooked. It's essential to invest in adolescents." declares the preamble of the Planning Commission report. It proposes that the central government allocate Rs 112 crore towards adolescent welfare and development programmes and suggests that the states and union territories allocate Rs 5-10 crore (depending on their size) for the same. The report identifies the ministry of youth affairs and sports as the nodal ministry/department that should handle adolescent affairs. It also recommends a special approach for this population group in areas like education, health, employment, national integration, adventure and sport, drug abuse and juvenile delinquency.
"Our greatest concern while framing these recommendations was to ensure adolescents in the country didn't become waylaid and cynical," says former education secretary Anil Bordia, who led the working group. "While those in this age group are perhaps the most vulnerable segment of our population, they are also our most promising assets. We've to combatively work at making them healthy, educated, secular and unprejudiced." An unachievable objective if the present "sectoral approach" in tackling adolescent problems continues, argues working group member Vimla Ramachandran of Educational Resource Unit."You can't have ministries of health, education, youth affairs, women and child welfare working on uncoordinated programmes if you want to empower adolescents to make informed choices." The Tenth Five Year Plan promises to deliver a commonality of vision.
But without aggressive advocacy plans, policies are mere directives on paper. Reason why U.N.B. Rao, chairperson of the Urivi Vikram Charitable Trust and also a member of the working group on adolescents, organised a regional meet on 'A National Policy on Adolescents' in the capital. Says Rao: "Our single-minded aim is to create the right environment for experts, bureaucrats and ministries to be able to concretise schemes and projects for adolescents." Only then will adolescence finally come of age.