Of late, issues concerning various aspects of the lives of children have come to grab the focus of attention. And rightly so given that more than a third of the population constitute children who, after all, are the future of the country. Doubtless there is no dearth of policies that have been formulated, seminars and discussions that have taken place, funds that have been made available and NGOs that are functioning actively in this sphere. But how much do we really know about the daily lives of children, particularly the poor who live in remote villages and in the slums of cities? Based on extensive surveys in the rural and urban areas of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi and Rajasthan and informed by a body of anthropological accounts relating to the life world of approximately 45 children, the book provides a background of and insights into their daily lives and presents their perceptions and interpretations regarding the same. At the very least, these children can be characterized as being active and applying agency in various modes. Childhood, to them, implies simultaneity: studying, participating in household chores, learning new skills, labouring hard, playing and chatting all in a day. The observations have sprung up unanticipated conclusions. These given rise to important implications for child-centric policies and for the adoption of a duties-based approach. The book would serve as useful literature for analysis, policy and action.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anoop K. Satpathy
Anoop K. Satpathy is an Associate Fellow at the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, India. An M.Phil in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, he also worked earlier at the Institute for Human Development. His research interests include issues relating to food and nutrition security, labour and employment. He has published several research papers and conducted training programmes on these issues. His most recent work is on size, composition and characteristics of informal sector labour in India.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anup K. Karan
Anup K. Karan is currently a Fellow at the Institute for Human Development. His areas of research interest include poverty, employment, human development and their interlinkages and he has contributed several research papers on these themes in various reputed journals and books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR G K Lieten
G.K. Lieten holds the Child Labour Chair at the University of Amsterdam and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He is the Director of the IREWOC Foundation, and in that capacity he has initiated several research projects on child labour and child agency in various countries across the globe. In addition to various books on development issues in South Asia, he has co-edited: Child Labour and Child Health (1998), Child Labour: Policy Perspectives (2001), and Small Hands in South Asia: Child Labour in Perspective (2004). Dr. Lieten is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi.
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