Building the case for a #FairChance

Rajeshwari Chandrasekar

Chief Field Office , UNICEF

Good morning! Hon.Governor of Maharashtra Shri Vidyasagar Rao- I thank you for agreeing to release the State of the World’s Children Report today.

I thank you Mr Kshatriya Chief Secretary to address the audience. I also acknowledge the presence of heads of Department of the State Govt , the media heads and most importantly the children who have travelled from far.

The trajectory of physical growth and brain development is not similar. At birth the child grows to 5 % of its potential while the brain grows to 50%. By the age 2, the brain has already reached 75% of its potential but the physical growth is only 15%.Hence the need to start early childhood development interventions in the first 1000 days.

It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men. This is biologically true and makes economic sense as well. Not investing in early childhood results in risks both during and after pregnancy. During pregnancy, the mother from poorer households face inadequate access to health care, hygiene and above all lack knowledge of good parenting. This results in low birth weight babies, malnutrition in early years, lack of adequate stimulation at home and in centres resulting in impaired cognitive and emotional development. That is why it is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.

The risks can be addressed and the gap between the optimal and impaired development be reduced with an ECD package that starts early and is effective.

The ECD package consists of interventions that cut across several sectors/departments. It is important to concurrently address the health, nutrition, development, education, and protection needs of children, beginning prenatally. Co-locating and integrating services where possible is the need. Thus while births of children needs to be registered, an atmosphere free from violence needs to be maintained, promoting exclusive breastfeeding and complementary feeding and provision of schooling that is age appropriate is possible, there are a set of interventions that need coordination between and among sectors- this relates to early stimulation.

The early stimulation is also borne out by economic literature that shows that investments in prenatal and pre-school years give a rate of return 7-10% more than when investment happens in later years. Hence the window of opportunity is in the earlier years.

To summarise therefore the State needs to recognise the importance of ECD, recognise the investment imperative and recognise the coordination efforts to implement ECD successfully.

Thus 3 Is- Importance, investment and implementation –this will lead to a healthy child and nation state.