Towards Conceptualizing Child Wellbeing in India: The Need for a Paradigm Shift

Abstract

Globally, there is a vast array of social indicators, many of these specifically oriented to the lives, experience and needs of children. This approach is much more advanced in developed economies and rich countries, where the focus has widened and shifted progressively towards a full recognition of the non-monetary dimensions of child wellbeing. At present, there would appear to be a propitious academic, activist and policy conjuncture for the widening of the discourse on child deprivation in India. This environment is created partly by the emerging reporting requirements and exhortations of the international development regime. But it is also fuelled by dissatisfaction over the inability of the existing methodologies, dominated by the reductionist monetary poverty line approach, to provide a meaningful intellectual or operational frame for contending with issues of child wellbeing in a holistic manner. The basic argument of this paper is that a double paradigm shift is urgently necessary: from mainstream approaches which tend to focus overwhelmingly on the material poverty and deprivation experienced by some children, deemed by definition to be those in households-in-poverty, to one that widens the field of vision to include both material and non-material dimensions of wellbeing of all children. Clearly, fresh epistemological and methodological challenges will have to be met with innovative and creative responses. It is time for India to catch up with best practices in rich countries, and given the impressive dimensions of India’s academic and professional infrastructure, this should not be an unrealistic goal.

Impact of physical, psychological, and sexual violence on social adjustment of school children in India

“…More work is needed in this area to fully comprehend the ways in which culture affects violence towards children. Although we are cognizant of new perspectives urging for a paradigm shift in understanding child wellbeing with a focus on positive rather than negative indicators for children, activity rather than passivity, and survival rather than victimization (see for example Saith & Wazir, 2010;Theron & Donald, 2012), we also argue that illuminating the scope of the problem in previously unstudied areas is an important first step towards addressing the issue.…”

Monetary and Multidimensional Child Poverty: A Contradiction in Terms?

“…Inspired by Sen's seminal work on the capability approach in the 1970s (Sen, , ), a wide range of multidimensional poverty approaches has been developed to offer an alternative to monetary poverty measures, including basic needs approaches (Streeten, , ), social exclusion methods (Marlier et al., ) and, most recently, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (Alkire et al., ). Given the drawbacks of monetary approaches in capturing the situation of children, it is not surprising to find that some have argued for more holistic understandings of child well‐being (Saith and Wazir, ) and that recent child poverty studies have focused on more multidimensional aspects of poverty (Boyden and Bourdillon, ; Minujin and Nandy, ).…”

Child Well‐Being: What Does It Mean?

“…As an example, they underline, in the context of developing countries, how individual well‐being cannot be departed from the relation to others. This is also underscored by Saith and Wazir (). Given that most international research applies to developed countries, they discuss its relevancy in the context of developing countries, specifically India, and argue against a universalising approach towards child well‐being and an over‐intense focus on its material dimensions.…”

“…Thus, ‘Well‐being is now a highly valuable and valued commodity in Western consumer culture and is heavily and cleverly marketed…’ (Carlisle and Hanlon, ). In a discussion based on appropriate indicators in the context of India, the predominance of the ‘developed countries’ model has been highlighted and the need for a new model adapted to the developing countries argued for (Saith and Wazir, ): the call for a rethink of the content of the notion of well‐being is based on macroeconomic factors. Nevertheless, in a context of high migration flows and growing socioeconomic inequality, people's perspectives on this matter may differ more than are presumed.…”