Are children not our concern?

While India or Bharat prepares for the two day royal extravaganza meeting of 20 heads of state from
across the globe beginning tomorrow there are issues that are not on the agenda that should have been
first priority.
Known lawyer and activist Suranya Aiyar is on a hunger strike from today demanding a change in laws
regarding child custody in various countries that are our guests.
The recent case of Ariha Shah an infant of three held in a Forster home in Germany since three years has
not moved any of the women ministers of the Modi cabinet led by Smriti Irani.
Het mother Dhara Shah has been running from pillar to post shuffling between Delhi and Berlin where her husband Bhavesh works to get her child’s custody.
She had been pro actively supported by NGOs like Prayas and of course Suranya Aiyar who organised demos at Jantar Mantar, sent Rakhis to all the MPs of Bharat but they have not cared to move their little finger.
Worse was the fate of a 40 year old mother in UK who came to India to plead with the Indian authorities
to help get custody of her two teenage boys taken away by Child Care authorities in UK.
Frustrated and depressed she committed suicide by jumping in a river in India ten days back.
Incidentally a lot of Indian women are protesting outside the Indian High Commission today to demand
that the H20 leaders meeting in India take a stand on this.

Four days back Salman Khurshid brilliant lawyer a former Foreign Minister wrote an article demanding that the G20 countries must come up with an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) as to how to deal
with child custody cases.
Khurshid had played an active role as had Sushma Swaraj and the common thread Suranya Aiyar in
dealing with a similar case in Norway ten years ago.
In his article Khurshid points out that the India government is duty bound to help the Indian living
abroad because they are sending money back to India.
"Personal foreign remittances to India are the largest in the world at US$89 billion according to figures
of 2021. They are expected to rise to US$100 billion this year" he writes.
This is because the India has the largest diaspora at 32 million , with over a million going abroad for
work every year,he writes.

He points that the issue of cultural and ethnical differences has always been there and become critical in
case of toddlers and infants.
But as he writes he and his predecessor SM Krishna and his successor Sushma Swaraj had "put in our
energies to find an immediate solution."
That spark seems to have totally gone missing today as the whole country is engaged in frivolous
debates about the renaming of the country and now a fiery debate on Sanatan Dharm where Hindu
body seers are placing a bounty of 10 crores on their enemies in Tamil Nadu.
The ED must raid this seer to find out who is financing him.
But as Khurshid points out this issue of custody of children does not confront India alone.
"Expatriate families from other countries in South Asia, South America,Estern Europe and Africa are
similarly affected in the nations of Western Europe the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand&, he writes.
He writes that in the absence of a standard operating procedure (SOP) parents of children are put to a
lot of stress.
Amod K Kanth Founder General Secretary of Prayas Juvenile Aid Centre has written to the Australian
Ambassador in India to facilitate the repatriation of child Ariha Shah to India where she could be put in a
Child Care Centre in Ahmedabad so that her mother and other family members could meet her.
But we are surprised that the powerful Home Minister Amit Shah has not chosen to intervene in the
matter so far even though both Bhavesh and Dhara Shah are Indian voters even though Ariha cannot
vote.
Or is that why the Indian Government is not intervening in the matter?
Ariha will have to be 18 to be of any use to Bharat.

By Amitabh Srivastava