Sure Start Child Care

The government of UK has finally realized that its children were not being look after properly, and were growing up into ruffians and hooligans! Sure Start is a chain of child care centers being set up all across the country to serve as day care and educational units for young children. It's still to be seen how successful and useful this can be, but it's a start. Phulki started in Bangladesh also has similar goals.

All of these are positive efforts for sure, but anybody I talk to in the context of India, gets to the bottomline that so many people below the poverty line would rather have their kids work with them in the fields or factories, than send the kids to schools and day care centers. It's an old problem, and even Albert Camus talks about it in detail in The First Man. My answer is two fold:

1. Society strata are always a spectrum, ranging from the very poor to the very rich. Such day care centers are definitely relevant to people not at the bottom strata of society, but slightly higher up where they can afford to send their kids to school.

2. Talking about the bottom strata, what if the kids were taught some crafts like stitching or pottery or claywork or painting or paper-mache or toy building or just about any small scale industry support activities, so that they could earn and study at the same time. What is needed is to couple vocational training with day care centers and schools.