The second day of the National Annual Stakeholders Consultation on Ten Years of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, concluded at the Supreme Court of India with Supreme Court Justice J.B. Pardiwala calling for greater institutional accountability, measurable outcomes and a stronger focus on preventing childhood vulnerability.
Delivering the valedictory address, Justice Pardiwala questioned why deficiencies in the juvenile justice system continued to persist despite decades of legislation, policy initiatives and consultations. He called for a shift from repeatedly identifying implementation gaps to ensuring that authorities demonstrate tangible improvements in the lives of children. He added:
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“The consultations preceding this conference have identified deficiencies in professional and institutional capacity, including shortages of trained personnel, gaps in mental health and de-addiction services, difficulties in obtaining specialised assistance, weaknesses in rehabilitation and aftercare, and significant variations in institutional capacity across districts. We frequently call these implementation gaps. But for how many years may a gap remain a gap before it becomes a failure?
India has had nearly eight decades of constitutional government. We know that children require education, counselling, protection, mental health support, family assistance, rehabilitation and aftercare. We know that institutions dealing with vulnerable children require trained and committed personnel. We are no longer searching for the basic components of an effective system. We know what many of them are.
The question therefore is whether we possess the institutional will to act upon what we already know. At some point, a persistent implementation gap must be recognised for what it has become: an institutional failure.”
Justice Pardiwala said the assessment of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, must not be restricted to the decade since its enactment. Instead, the country must examine the broader constitutional promise of justice, dignity, equality and social transformation, which predates successive juvenile justice legislations.
Acknowledging the work undertaken by institutions, governments, committees and civil society organisations, he cautioned that incremental improvements should not be mistaken for meaningful transformation.
Calls for annual accountability framework
Justice Pardiwala proposed developing a simple, transparent and measurable annual accountability framework for juvenile justice, based on a limited set of indicators against which States and institutions could assess their progress from year to year. He criticised the tendency of annual consultations to repeatedly identify problems without sufficiently examining whether earlier recommendations had been implemented.
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“If last year’s consultation identified 10 serious deficiencies, this year’s consultation should have begun by telling us what happened to those 10 deficiencies…Where did the system improve? Where did it fail and why? These are the questions that allow us to distinguish activity from progress. Otherwise, there is a danger that we become very good at discussing juvenile justice without becoming equally good at delivering it,” he said.
Emphasising the importance of early intervention, Justice Pardiwala said the child protection system must address the circumstances that expose children to vulnerability instead of intervening only after a crisis has emerged. He identified poverty, interrupted education, violence, neglect, exploitation, substance abuse, family vulnerability and inadequate access to mental healthcare as factors that could accumulate over the course of childhood.
Illustrating his point, he referred to children begging at traffic intersections that he encounters while travelling between his residence and the Supreme Court.
He observed that removing a child from a traffic junction might clear the street, but would not resolve the child’s underlying circumstances if the child returned to hunger, homelessness, abuse or exploitation.
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“We may remove a child from a traffic intersection. We may congratulate ourselves that the intersection is now clear. But where does the child go? If the child returns to hunger, homelessness, abuse or exploitation, we have solved the inconvenience presented to us at those junctions. We have not solved the problem confronting the child,” he said.
Justice Pardiwala said institutional success could not be measured merely by the number of children processed, institutions established, inspections conducted or schemes announced. Instead, authorities must assess what had actually changed in a child’s life.
Grassroots workers must have a meaningful voice
Justice Pardiwala also called for greater participation by those working directly with children in designing child protection systems. He said social workers, counsellors, teachers, probation officers, non-governmental organisations, community organisations and psychologists often encounter realities that may remain invisible in government files or courtrooms.
He also stressed that judicial directions, legislation and government schemes could not achieve their objectives without effective implementation and adequate infrastructure.
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“A judgment that is not implemented remains words on paper. A statutory right without infrastructure means an aspiration. A child care institution without trained and compassionate personnel is merely a building,” he said.
He added that the success of juvenile justice ultimately depended on whether the people entrusted with the system believed in its purpose, which must extend beyond the courtroom.
India must aspire to global standards in child protection