According to an analysis of political manifestos done by Karnataka Child Rights Observatory (KCRO), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is the most child-friendly party. The analysis was released here on Friday.
According to KCRO state coordinator Vasudeva Sharma, most of the major political parties have high assurances on education and health of children without any mention of budgetary allocation.
“While we want to welcome the interest taken by parties towards childcare, only CPM has indicated allocations to the tune of six per cent and five per cent for education and health respectively,” Sharma said.
The major parties contesting this year’s elections have repeated their promises made to children in the last two elections (2004 and 2009), such as improving quality in primary education, ending malnutrition, building toilets, preventing female foeticide, preventing child abuse and labour among others.
“Congress, which passed a few child-centric legislation in the last ten years, has accepted in its current manifesto that the country is yet to solve problems of malnutrition and lack of toilets. BJP has assured to bring down child and maternal mortality rate. It has also promised to establish a national health assurance mission to lessen the burden of healthcare on the common man,” said I S Patil, a KCRO representative.
KCRO has analysed the manifestos of Congress, BJP, CPM and Aam Aadmi Party. “The CPM manifesto is interesting as it talks of stringent action against private schools that do not implement the Right to Education Act. On the other hand, AAP also has a good manifesto for children as they talk about involvement of local communities in solving children’s problems,” Sharma said.
The activists regretted that no party promises redressal of contradictions in the age definition of a child under various laws. “Malnutrition is the biggest challenge facing our children today, who constitute 40 per cent of the population,” Sharma said.