XUNICEF News and Views

Touching base to share with you links of two recent publications on Education, one of which I have co-edited along with 2 former colleagues from the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi and the other edited independently by me, under the aegis of the Institute of Social Sciences where I have been located post-retirement. The first one is entitled Quality and Inclusion in Education: The Persisting Challenges published by Routledge (London). Currently only an e-version of the book is available. Click here for full description by the publisher.   Note please that the announcement of the book that is published on Routledge's website is directed mainly towards institutions in Europe and USA at this juncture. The Asian version, with a revised pricing, will apparently be announced later in the year. The second one, which refers more directly to SDG4 is entitled - Driving the Change: Towards the Sustainable Development Goal of Education, ...

In continuation of my earlier communication on the rapid decline in budgetary allocations for young children in India, the HAQ Centre's analysis shows that between 2012-13 and 2022-23, the size of allocation for children's welfare as a portion of the entire Budget declined from 4.76% to 2.35% - i.e.  shrank by 50%!! (see copy of report below).

Sharing this very inspirational collection of quick stories told by girls in remote areas of India who are leading change within their own microcosms but definitely having ripple effects one story at a time! It has been published by the HAQ Centre for Child Rights, based in Delhi. The Centre has an excellent collection of reports on very topical issues on child rights that can be found here - https://www.haqcrc.org/our-work/publications/

  I would like to share two very disturbing developments in recent times in India that have been published in the media. Hope you can consider or if possible, reproducing these in the next issue of the XUNICEF newsletter, to bring to attention the status of children's rights in India today. The first article reports that the largest govt run ECD programme in the world, is now being squeezed. In each annual budget over the last 5 years, the Anganwadi programme of nutrition and growth monitoring for children below 6 and for pregnant mothers is seeing a steady decline in budgetary allocation as the intention of the govt is to eventually privatize all social sector services. Even the budget for social security meant for populations below poverty line, has been consistently shrinking.    The second is an article published on an independent online media website - Scroll.in (see link) - a tragic commentary on all the years of work and effort put in by UNICEF and other organizati...