Welfare
- Out of every Rs 100 spent by the Centre in the '90s, only 60 paise has gone to children's education, 40 on their development and 20 on their health.
- The 2002-03 Budget is much kinder. It hopes to spend about Re 1 on education, 34 paise on health and 45 paise on child development.
- Every sixth girl child dies due to gender bias. Yet, Balika Samriddhi Yojana, the first scheme to incentivise her birth, died after three years.
Health
- About 75 million children are undernourished. India's biggest aided childcare plan, ICDS, reaches only 20 million, at a mere 19 paise per child per day.
- The actual cost of reasonable childcare is a minimum of Rs 15 per day per child or Rs 200 crore a year.
- Over half of child health budget comes from foreign loans, which the government often fails to spend. Yet it still asks for more money.
Education
- We spend 1.5 per cent of GDP on elementary education. Still, about half of the children are out of school. They are all potential child labour.
- The latest budget has 18 elementary education schemes, with outlays varying from Rs 1.8 crore to Rs 1,330 crore.
- Three successive budgets allotted Rs 420 crore to the 1998-vintage Free Education for Girls scheme. There's no actual spending yet.
