A Stronger Bill is the Need of the Hour!

When people from different walks of life and different perspectives but, with a similar goal meet and share their ideas and brainstorm,we end up getting great solutions even to the most difficult problems.And,this is what happened at the National Consultation organized by CRY(Child Rights and You) on the topic Way Forward-Child Labour(Prohibition and Regulation)Act(Amendment)Bill, 2012 on 10th June,2014. From passionate Cry volunteers, some another NGO executives to representatives from ILO and UNICEF,almost everybody were present there.

Do you know that every sixth child in the world lives in India(MoSPI,2012)? And,with the country's population in billions, you can't even imagine the number of child labourers here.The figures are pathetic.The consultation was focused around the updations required in the CLPRA Act and concentrated on how the word 'regulation' needs to be removed from the Act. The major topics of discussion were :

• Prohibition of children involved in labour should be extended upto 18 years
• Steps required to debar children from family-extended labour.
• Refining the definition of hazardous and non-hazardous activities in the context of Child Rights and Protection.
• Consistency among the CLPRA Act and other acts like RTE,Juvenile Justice Act ,UNCRC Act and others.
• Provisions required for rehabilitation and its implementation and many others.

The event began by a presentation on CLPRA Amendment Bill,2012 followed by presentations given by Ms. Shireen Khan,ILO and Ms. Vandana Khandari, UNICEF. It even included the experiences regarding field work shared by Ms.Mamta Borgoyary,CEO(FXB India Suraksha) and Vikas Sawant from CARE and some volunteers from CRY's branches at Mumbai and other locations.

One of the session was regarding Role of Youth in eliminating Child labour which was addressed by delhi volunteers Divyanshu,Latika and Nidhi.They talked  about the role that volunteers play in this initiative. Anshul Tiwari (Founder,Youth ki Awaaz) and Vicky Roy (RANG) were even there to share their opinions about the same.

The event ended on a high note.I got acquainted with a lot of people who are passionate volunteers and acquired a knowledge of various policies which seem to be more in favour than in against of child labour.With this, I would like to end this with a thought that i read somewhere that "Time is money in this world and it takes a lot to volunteer to do things.But, there is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer".

Is that is what Internet all for?

Well, I was just scrolling through my G+ feed the other day and I came across through this competition held by one of the most accessed MOOC website- Coursera regarding the maximum users from a country.

Where India stands in this?

To my surprise, this reminded me of one of the articles I have read about the number of internet users in our country. Considering the statistic by October 2013, India had crossed the 200 million mark, says a report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) and IMRB. The report estimates 243 million internet users in the country by June 2014, beating the US as the world's second largest internet base after China.

Keeping this in mind, we also can't deny the fact that internet penetration in the country is just merely around 13% in overall. Yet,the country managed to maintain a spot. Check that out,here!

While most Indians primarily use the internet for communication, largely in the form of email,but social media is also an important driver of internet use in India. This facet of the IMAI report can be corroborated with data from other sources such as Facebook, according to which India had 82 million monthly active users by June 30, 2013, the second largest geographical region for Facebook after the US and Canada.Well!,Facebook does not operate in China.


What intrigues me about the fact that though the number of Internet users is quite high,the larger section of this community spend time on social networking sites.While,I am completely in favour of online presence for networking with people around you but there has to be a limit to it. Wasting time by merely scrolling through one's facebook feed all day long is not the only thing left to do.

Moreover, there is so much out there on the web to browse for, which will help you to hone your skills,staying updated and some good social websites to spend time on like Quora and others.Well, being in India and having an access to internet connection, consider yourself lucky enough to have been exposed to this vast pool of knowledge and start planning out your schedule for more productive stuff.




Updated.P.s- I wrote this, with a naive reflection  and when puberty didn't hit me. Though it contains true stats but, it doesn't reflect the true picture. And, I realized this later. So instead of removing this, I decided to keep it as a souvenir, from my childish brain.