A Kid goes missing here every thirty second. Where do they go??

How does a parent feel when the kid goes missing? And how does the kid himself/herself feel? According to one calculation every thirty second one child goes missing in India. Where do they go? Where do they end up? Roadside beggars? tender meat in international flesh trade? source of live organs ? unwanted dependents in some shabby government orphanage?

How many of them are returned back to their own homes by the established mechanism of our society?

Interestingly, a thorough websearch could not yield any such reliable statistics. Nobody knows. Not many cares.

Most of the missing children come from the poorer section of the society. They donot have enough lobbying power. So our socio political institutions donot feel the compelling urge to prioritise the issue. After all who cares for a few faceless kids? We already have enough of that livestock available .

Luckily, some Indians are thinking otherwise also. Even more fortunately, they are not just thinkers. Some of them have actually started the mission in the right spirit

One such organisation is the National Centre for Missing Children.

They run a website named

http://www.missingindiankids.com

The organisation has started the work in a proactive manner. They presently have more than 2 Lakh subscribers all over the country and are in active liaison with hundreds of legal, social and voluntary organisations .

As soon as a missing child report reaches them, they post the news on the website with posters of the kid. An alert immediately reaches more than two lakh subscribers all over the country.

Its institutional subscribers (for example various orphanages and homes all over the country) , as soon as the get the alerts they print it out as per plan and display this. Some leading womens' magaziones have also started giving free space to this centre for publication of their alerts.

With adoption of this technique the search for a missing child is breaking the shackles of a traditionally disinterested and inefficient police investigation and is taking a proper shape.

Of late they have started achieving a fairly appreciable success rate too.

Another link below provides an article containing many other links to reliable organisations who help in locating missing children:

http://www.childlineindia.org.in/cr-missing-children.htm

(This site is run by another organisation called Childline India Fountdation which acts as a NODAL AGENCY that links children in distress to organisations who can rehabilitate them. In essence CIF sets up a single window framework through a tele-helpline service - CHILDLINE 1098 - which can be accessed easily by any child.)

CAN WE DO SOMETHING AND CONTRIBUTE TO THESE EFFORTS?

WELL, IF NOT ANYTHING ELSE, AT LEAST WE CAN START BY SPENDING SOME OF OUR PRECIOUS TIME GLANCING THRU THESE SITES AND THEN SPREADING THE NEWS TO OTHERS.

OR IS THAT A TALL ORDER?