The amendment of Juvenile Justice Bill is not enough. Parents must stop sheltering young adults and make them more accountable if we are to curb juvenile delinquency in the true sense
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The Rajya Sabha passed an amendment to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill on December 22, 2015. One of the approved changes is that juveniles between 16 to 18 years can now be legally tried as adults for heinous crimes like rape or murder. This move came after a nationwide outcry against the light punishment for the juvenile convicted of raping Nirbhaya. On December 20, 2015, he walked free after spending three years in a reform home. He was just three months short of 18 years when he raped Nirbhaya. It is highly doubtful that three months would have made any life-changing progress in his mental and moral development.
The legal number game involving juveniles convicted of a variety of crimes had long been used as an escapist tool by youth and their parents. It sent an irresponsible message of non-culpability due to the fluke of age. Hopefully, the recent amendment will act as a grave warning bell for parents who refuse to stop sheltering, pampering and spoiling their kids much beyond the expiry date of cute childhood.
The recent amendment is indeed welcome and perhaps it came a little too late. But, it is equally true that we need to give our children more responsibility, we need to honour their intelligence and put in greater commitment to rehabilitate all juveniles with delinquent tendencies without a bias of social class and status.
Nirbhaya’s rapist became the poster boy for juvenile crime in India. Without extending an iota of sympathy to him, here are some facts: the “juvenile” convict worked as a bus cleaner, stayed in a shanty in Delhi slums and was a school dropout.
Now, here’s a hypothetical exercise: Imagine the same convict from a different background. Imagine that he was from a “decent, educated, well-placed family and enrolled in a reputed school.” And, assume for an instance that the victim was an uneducated minor maid from a shanty. Would the reactions of outrage be the same? It is likely that with such a change in circumstance, a throng of well-wishers, character-certificate givers, crusaders of propriety and social loyalty would have invoked benefit of doubt, championed the nobility of forgiveness and watered down the nation-wide cry for stricter laws.
Poverty, child labour and consequent discontinuation of education are recurrent themes in most cases of juvenile crimes. According to the 2011 census, India has 45.3 lakh child labourers. This figure has significantly dropped from the 2001 census, which recorded 12.5 crore working children. For Goa, however, there is an increase: 2011 census records 6920 working children compared to the 4138 figure recorded in census 2001.
Organizations like Child Line that rescue and rehabilitate street children report that a large number of child workers drift into petty crimes and graduate to full-blown criminal activities as adults in absence of timely intervention. The upbringing of Nirbhaya’s rapist - or the lack of it thereof - does say a lot about the monstrosity he demonstrated. But, at some level, we all are to blame for allowing the prevalence of widespread audacity, recklessness and complete disregard of law in today’s youth.
How old is still young anyway?
We, as a society, have a lot to answer on the myriad levels of hypocrisy with which we categorize our children. Do we treat working children with the same affection and respect that we treat boys and girls in our family? The former group of children is treated as adults, made accountable for tea served too cold and floors swabbed too wet. The other group is treated as a fragile, brittle bunch of nitwits who need to be smothered with instruction and attention all the time.
Does anyone else feel that modern parenting styles, the conflicting and fast-changing theories of child psychology, pedagogy and discipline seem far less effective than the solid, old-fashioned systems our grandparents adhered to? See old films, comes to mind - children were given much more responsibility to contribute to the house. It was not an easy childhood, it must have been out of need and it might not be legit now, but if old media and books are to be believed, children back then were much productive and their energies were better channelized.
The educated, affluent India lives in a cocooned parallel universe with a different set of precautions, norms and expectations for its own offspring. There is often a complete disregard or aloofness to the difficulties of children coming from a lesser economic or social strata. Take many recent hit-and-run cases; the accused are juvenile or college-going youth from very affluent backgrounds.
There has to be a time, before adulthood, when children are groomed for responsibilities that will soon show up in their adult life. Unless and until children are treated with respect and accountability much before they turn adults, we will produce a generation of on-paper adults with juvenile minds.
