Getting rough with your kid may mean jail

New legislation plans to read the riot act to parents

NEW DELHI: Parents who live by the maxim, spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child, had better watch out. The law may soon be after you.

A recent summons issued by a juvenile justice court to a Mumbai couple for alleged cruelty and physical abuse of their three-and-a-half-year-old child could be the beginning of a new system where rough-and-ready physical methods may invite court action and even jail sentences.

A law to make child abuse a punishable offence is already being drafted by the Union ministry of women and child development. The ministry has decided to call for a national debate before giving it a final form since similar bills abroad have run into rough weather.

Under the proposed law, called the Offences against Children Bill, penalties would include fines from Rs3,000 onwards.
For first offences, parents may be let off after furnishing surety, but if the abuse is severe and repeated, it could lead to imprisonment of up to seven years.

The government also plans to set up an appellate authority to see that only genuine complaints are entertained and that the law is not used by children to escape basic parental disciplining. _

While a similar law in New Zealand has been put on hold to avoid controversy, the draft bill in India defines abuses like kicking and slapping, hitting brutally, denying equal rights to girls, and subjecting children to humiliation and harsh treatment as acts of cruelty.

The debate is sure to polarise people since some parents believe they are well within their rights to hit children to discipline them. Child rights activists and psychologists, however, feel that there is need for a change in parental attitudes.

Child experts say that violence against children is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders and suicide, and has lifelong consequences for the abused child. Among other things, children who are victims of parental abuse could be prone to depression, anxiety, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, aggressive and violent behaviour towards others, risky sexual behaviour and post-traumatic stress disorder. “Witnessing violence on self or others in the family during childhood often leads a child to grow up to become a violent person,” says psychologist Aruna Broota

A government report on child abuse suggests that 69 per cent of children in India faced physical abuse — an overwhelming number of them by their own parents. About 36 per cent of Indian mothers said that they had hit their children with an object within the last six months. Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Delhi reported the highest number of child abuse cases. “Almost every child is hit or roughed up by guardians,” says RS Chaurasia of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), a non-government organisation. “However, while at home this is seen as an act of disciplining, at places of work such incidents are to be viewed more seriously,” adds Chaurasia.

“There is an active act of child abuse across the world. Usually, sexual abuses are hardly talked about, and physical abuses are taken as acts of disciplining. All these things are culturally accepted, too,” says Inakshi of Haq Centre for Child Rights.