When the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), for the first time in its history, published the data on missing and traced persons and children in 2016, a total of 1,11,569 children were reported missing, out of which the maximum were reported from West Bengal (16,881 children). Only 55,944 children out of the missing lot could be traced.
The 2017 NCRB report, published late 2019, states that 63,349 children were reported missing in 2017. By the end of the year, 59.2 percent of them had been traced.
But where had they disappeared? There is a certain ambiguity to it that needs more clarity, and must be investigated. Many of them are in state-run or private shelter homes across the country. The prevalent tracing mechanisms are poor, and the initiative weak. Mumbai, the ‘city of dreams’, is also home to many of the ‘missing’ children living in shelter homes, in and around the city.
Missing Children: Tracing Mechanisms Are Inadequate
The mechanism to trace and locate the children is inadequate and inefficient. Tracing back the family is not seen as a primary function of any of the stakeholders who work with these children. This issue struck me during my fieldwork in a state-run children’s home in Mumbai. There, I got a chance to interact with children and understand the working of childcare institutions. There was no process in place that would help them return to their families. The shelter was an institution where the children were guaranteed food, clothing and a roof over their heads. Anything beyond the bare minimum was neither provided nor sought.
Jithin and his brother Sooraj were brought before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) by one of their neighbours five years ago. Their sister, who was also taken to the CWC and was sent to a different shelter, couldn’t meet her brothers for 5 years as the siblings did not know about each other’s whereabouts. Nor did the agency take the initiative to reunite the siblings, even though the shelters were close to each other. If it took five years for Sooraj and Jithin to be reunited with their sister, for many others in shelter homes, there is lesser hope.
These children will continue to languish in the shelter homes, with memories of their homes fading away each day, making it difficult to trace their families.
What Happens to Lost Children?
When a child is stranded or lost, it is usually the police who picks them up. The Juvenile Justice Act of 2015 mandates that the child should be produced before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) within 24 hours after being found. Though this happens most of the time, proper inquiries are not made before the children are presented before the CWC. The CWC is a mandatory body to be constituted for every district across the country. They then decide where the child should live. The committee then selects a suitable home for the child depending on the vacancies available. The probation officer from the children's home, who oversees the child, is responsible for submitting regular reports on the child to the CWC.
Many of the children I spoke to were asked their addresses when the police picked them up, but being too young, they could not recall the name of their street, or the town where they were from.
They were also from different parts of the country, spoke different languages, yet no effort was made to pay heed to their mother tongue and send them back to their state. By the time I was in touch with them, some had already forgotten where they were originally from. Whoever finds these children, the child, along with his/her report with the incomplete address or no address, reaches the Child Welfare Committee from where they are sent to different childcare institutions.
No Direction Home
The children are interviewed by probation officers just for the sake of formality, and the new entries are a mere copy of the police/CWC reports. The social worker-child ration is very disproportionate, which allows for scarce attention to the juvenile's individual needs, even though the Juvenile Justice Act specifies and makes it mandatory to have enough staff in the children's homes. The existing staff are underpaid and are forced to undertake double the work as there is a lack of human resources. When compromises are made in the well-being of the staff, inadvertently it is the child's needs that take a hit. In the struggle to provide basic amenities, growth and development are put on the back-burner.
When interacting with the children, most of them expressed their desire to go back home but did not remember where they were from.
They had recollections of a playground but did not remember much about their school. They could accurately recall a bakery on the sidewalk but did not remember their neighbour’s name.
How Lost Children Can Be Rehabilitated Better
It is about time we start seeing technology itself as an enabler, rather than as a medium. An efficient platform to track and update the children’s details can fill in the gaps created by inadequate and inefficient staffing to a certain extent. Currently, there are multiple platforms, but none are efficient. For a system like this to be effective, it is also important that the data that goes into it is correct and relevant, but the task becomes mechanical allowing errors to creep into the data. Our existing platforms are fed with the details of missing children across the country, but for it to be fully efficient, the details of parents’ complaints / notices searching for their children should be added.
Even maps can play a significant role in tracing localities. With minimal data in hand, the online maps offer great scope to explore further.
It helps us connect the child’s different distinct memories on a single screen. The voters’ register of an area is of great use if the child remembers his parents’ names. Other databases like Aadhaar and other identity proofs can also be used. Data is available to us in plenty, but it is important that the policies be made strong so that the tracing process is taken seriously. The stakeholders should be responsible for undertaking this process and it should be documented and reported properly. Counselling and individual interactions by experts should be promoted in the childcare institutions so that the children open up and speak their mind.
(Nabeel Thalakkatt is a master's student in Social Work at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. This is a an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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