Curb child abuse

Curb child abuse

Deoria, Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse cases highlight governance deficit.

Coming on the heels of the Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse case – which has elicited sharp comment from the Supreme Court on the culpability of the Bihar government – a women’s shelter home in Deoria, UP, has proved to be another house of horror after a 12-year-old inmate escaped and reached the police. The child indicated that girls at the shelter were being physically and sexually abused with the complicity of the manager. Further, the home was running illegally as the state’s women and child welfare department had suspended its licence in July last year after a CBI report found financial irregularities.

Many of these homes are run by NGOs with political connections. As exemplified by the Muzaffarpur case, the home was run by someone who also owned a few local newspapers and used his contacts to get grants for his NGO. In Deoria it’s extraordinary that the home was allowed to function, and local police continued to send girls to it, despite its licence being suspended. All of this points to a nexus between those running such homes, police and government officials. It also exposes a glaring lack of administrative oversight that homes have become tools to obtain government grants while inmates are abused and exploited.

This calls for a thorough review of the shelter home system in the country. Homes should be places where destitute children find succour in a protective environment. They ought to be linked to schools, run by trained staff and have access to qualified counsellors, doctors and educators. The unfortunate part is that provisions exist, but due to lack of proper supervision most homes have become places of despair. Hence the problem can’t be solved through enacting new laws. Implementation, administrative action and proper oversight by concerned ministries are the need of the hour. The Centre has done well by calling for a social audit of all 9,000 child shelters in the country.

What we are witnessing with shelter homes is symptomatic of India’s poor governance in general. It’s not a coincidence that both Bihar and UP where the horror homes were unearthed score poorly on the administrative index. It’s time authorities did the heavy lifting, reformed internal processes and established a clear chain of administrative accountability. Otherwise, horror homes will continue to mushroom and unscrupulous elements continue to exploit children.