Child’s safety is no child’s play

All the daily newspapers covered the death of a child at an apartment on Bannerghata Road yesterday.  

The mother was feeding the restless child near the open passage window. With the child cranky and kicking, she tries to hold on to the plate and the kid. In the melee, the child slips and falls down 9 floors.  Many highrises these days do not have grills installed by the builder.

The first reaction of many readers may have been, how can the mother be so careless? It is easy to tut tut while reading the report. But how many of us are mindful of the dangers of daily life that we put the children through?  

We often see children playing on the terrace near low parapets. On the roads, adults do not always hold on to the child’s hand. Often the child is on the traffic side instead of the kerb-side.  

Bike riders place small children who can barely hold on to the handle bars, on the fuel tank. They often are drowsy or fall asleep. Sometimes the pillion riding kids sit in the reverse, facing the traffic at the back. Of course no kid is made to wear a helmet.

Even in cars, we let small children sit in the front seat or even in the driver’s lap. Youngsters underage are allowed to drive bikes on the streets.  School students are stuffed like sardines into autos and school vans without safety concerns.

We let the kids to browse the internet without installing parental control security software.  

We mollycoddle children at home, but are so careless about their safety in the world.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Similar Story

The Why of Citizen Activism

In an earlier post, I wrote about the rise of the citizen entrepreneurs. Thought I’ll share why these active citizens do what they do. I am including myself in this club because I still volunteer occasionally. Many of our team members are engaged in their own local issues (but we ensure that is independent of our work at Citizen Matters!).  Satisfaction First of course, is the immediate sense of empowerment — that we get when we start doing something. Whether or not there are results to show. Sometimes there is a feeling of being better than the rest, because hey,…

Similar Story

Partnering with Canadian varsity to report on urban resilience

It's yet another milestone in the journey of Oorvani Foundation. You may have read about our joint initiative with Radio Active Community Radio 90.8 MHz - Co Media Lab. The community media lab serves as a resource centre, newsroom and a space for dialogues and discussions for community collaborations. The past few months now, Co Media Lab has been organising workshops for public and for students. Co Media Lab is hosted at Jain University, and supported by the University. (More details here.) We are happy to share news of an exciting new project of the lab - a partnership with…