India has the world’s largest child population, with about 440 million children below the age of 18. These children represent not the demographic majority but are among the world’s most vulnerable group. While India has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and has enacted various comprehensive legislations concerning the protection of children, which have been discussed in this paper such as, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, the real implementation of these frameworks present alarming gaps. Child labour, institutional neglect, sexual abuse, abandonment, and child marriage persist, often masked by underreporting and inadequate data. This paper engages in a critical examination of India’s child protection framework, evaluating both the achievements of its legal and policy framework, along with its structural failures. This paper draws from diverse secondary sources including legal statutes, reports, and academic literature. It uses qualitative research methodology based on doctrinal and empirical secondary data analysis to analyse India’s child welfare mechanisms. The findings show persistent shortcomings such as declining budgetary allocations, a severe lack of institutional capacity, poor oversight, and a reactive rather than preventive approach to child protection. While programmes such as Mission Vatsalya have resulted in notable progress, including a fourfold rise in non-institutional care placements between 2021 and 2024, these gains, although appreciated, are insufficient to address the scale of the crisis. Less than 1% of orphaned or abandoned children are placed in formal care, and India has just over 9,500 Child Care Institutions (CCIs) to serve this vast population. Adoption in India remains contentious due to legal complexities, corruption and a disturbing gender paradox: while more girls are adopted, this reflects a higher abandonment rate rather than societal progress.
Similarly, child marriage remains an issue, more so in some places than in others. While the national rate of child marriages in India has dropped from 47% to 23% over the past two decades, states like Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand continue to report figures above 40%. Which is surprising since West Bengal is a state that has a relatively high literacy rate and has one of the highest child marriage rates in the country, revealing that structural gender inequality cannot be resolved by education alone. Further, the national study on child abuse conducted in 2007 found that over 53% of Indian children had faced some form of sexual abuse, affecting boys and girls almost equally. However, no comprehensive national data collection has happened ever since, leaving policymakers without a contemporary understanding of the crisis. In metropolitan cities like Mumbai, data shows a rise in reported cases of sexual harassment and POCSO-related offences, indicating awareness but not necessarily improved protection. To address these systemic problems, this paper proposes a comprehensive reform agenda. First, it calls for increased ringfenced child welfare budgets, with mandatory, standardised Child Budget Statements across all states. Second, it advocates for a shift from reactive to preventive care, emphasising family counselling, schoolbased support, and community outreach. Third, it recommends further development of non-institutional and community-based care models such as the kinship and sponsorship initiatives seen in Jalna, Maharashtra. Fourth, it stresses the urgent need for periodic, gender-inclusive national surveys on child abuse. Fifth, it argues for the simplification of adoption procedures. Lastly, it urges harmonisation across legislative and policy frameworks to ensure that laws like the JJ Act and POCSO, and policies like Mission Vatsalya, operate in coordination rather than isolation. India’s legal and policy framework for child protection is conceptually sound on paper, but deeply fragmented in practice. While it has made notable progress in recognising child rights, the implementation remains uneven, underfunded and reactive. For India to truly protect its children, the system must move from symbolic legislation to enforceable accountability. Towards a child-centric and preventive framework that is supported by adequate funding and institutional commitment, which can transform child protection from a promise to a reality
