By Azera Rahman, IANS
New Delhi : Street children, child labourers, human trafficking, women’s rights…the causes that Indian civil society groups espouse are many. And in the new year they are brimming with new ways to help this country’s billion plus people.
Some plan to dedicate a day to a particular cause, while others want to start new initiatives. The ultimate motive is betterment of society at large, a society where 28 percent are still below the poverty line and 30 percent are still illiterate.
Babu Mathew, country director of ActionAid India, an international development agency, said his organisation this year would like to bring to attention what he called the Indian state’s failure to distinguish between human rights activism and the Maoist movement.
“Besides a whole lot of activities in various fields such as education, poverty and environment, to name a few, in which we already work in, we would like to draw attention to what we learnt in the year 2007,” Mathew told IANS.
“There is an increasing trend of failure on the Indian state’s part to distinguish between the human rights activities that work within the constitutional framework and Naxalism (as the Maoist movement is known). Whoever champions the cause of people in places where natural resources are extracted is labelled as Naxalite. This is set to increase in 2008.”
Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research (CSR), said the focus of CSR in 2008 would be on the plight of women in India.
“Although we have not zeroed in on the date as yet, some time early this year we are planning to observe a National Shame Day throughout the country,” Kumari said.
“Whether it’s Nandigram, Godhra or Guwahati, we saw how women have always been the target of violence. And all the while bystanders simply laugh or look on, showing no sympathy whatsoever. This attitude has to change.”
Various NGOs working on the issues of children plan to continue fighting for their cause, advocating and sensitising both the government and the masses about their plight.
Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of the Bachpan Bachao Aandolan (BBA), an NGO which works for the uplift of street children and rescued child labourers in India and South Asia, said that an amendment or a new law on trafficking for forced labour would be his group’s demand and focus.
“In 2008, our focal demand to the government of India is to either amend the old law or implement a new one on trafficking for forced labour. Till now the trafficking law only has commercial sexual exploitation in its purview,” Satyarthi said.
“Also, we would like to make people aware of those areas where trafficking is very high. About 50 districts in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar are the most trafficking prone,” Satyarthi said.
Rajib K. Haldar, executive director of Prayas, another NGO that works for the benefit of street children, said encouraging the role of the voluntary sector for better governance was going to be the aim of his organisation in 2008.
“We will try to involve the voluntary sector more to work for the cause of children. Also, we will strive to get the views of children towards all the programmes and initiatives tailored for them,” Haldar said.
Redesigning its programmes, opening more centres and tying up with other organisations – Etasha, an NGO that trains school dropouts and helps them get jobs in the hospitality industry has a lot of plans too.
“Until now, we have been concentrating on the retail industry and all our students have been absorbed after completion of their course. But now we will redesign our other programmes for hospitality, domestic call centres and the data entry industry, so that more and more of our students get absorbed in these sectors as well,” Meenakshi Nayar, chairman of Etasha, said.
“We have also tied up with Butterflies, an NGO which works for street children, and will soon be starting basic employment programmes for those kids as well.”
Members of Goonj – an NGO that works for resource mobilisation turning one’s waste into another’s amenity – plan to involve more people in donating clothes, books, toys and other such material for the benefit of the needy.
Operating in 19 states across the country, Goonj has a number of collection centres where people can come and donate.
“The initiative that we started in 2007, the concept of Cloth Day Jan 1, has been a huge success. On this day, we urge people to donate at least one piece of cloth for the needy and start the New Year on a different note,” said Anshu Gupta, founder of Goonj.
“Throughout the new year, we will advocate our cause even more and try to involve children as well.”