This story is from January 20, 2014

Sundance Film Fest to feature film on Indian girl

In 2009, Mylan shot the limelight when her documentary Smile Pinki, shot in Varanasi and rural area of Mirzapur district, won the 81st Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).
Sundance Film Fest to feature film on Indian girl
VARANASI: When the country will be celebrating National Girl Child Day on January 24, the Sundance Film Festival in the US will witness the premiere of a short documentary, telling the story of a teenage Indian girl growing food to feed her family in a tiny rooftop garden.
"At a time when we see daily reports of women's rights in India under attack, it is a privilege to be able to share this positive story about young women empowering themselves," said Academy Award winning filmmaker Megan Mylan from the US through e-mail.
The Sundance Festival, which is considered one of the most prestigious in the world, will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah from January 16 to 26.
In 2009, Mylan shot the limelight when her documentary Smile Pinki, shot in Varanasi and rural area of Mirzapur district, won the 81st Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). The film showed the story of a poor girl of Mirzapur district whose life is transformed when she receives free surgery to correct her cleft lip by Varanasi based plastic surgeon Dr Subodh Kumar Singh under Smile Train project. She is a New York-based filmmaker whose work has also been recognised with Emmy-nominations, Independent Spirit Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
This time, Mylan has come with another short documentary titled 'After My Garden Grows', showcasing a teenage girl from Cooch Behar (West Bengal). According to her, the film's central character is one of 40,000 girls participating in a programme to empower adolescent girls launched in 2011 by the government of West Bengal and the non-profit organization Landesa. The pilot programme teaches girls about their rights and how to utilize small plot of land to improve their family's nutrition, help them stay in school and reduce their vulnerability to child marriage. "The documentary will be released in India later this year through a series of film premier events in collaboration with a consortium of human rights NGOs focused on girls' empowerment," said Mylan.
The strategy is part of SABLA under Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG), a centrally sponsored programme of government initiated on April 1, 2011 under ministry of women and child development. The RGSEGA's objectives are to enable the adolescent girls for self-development and empowerment, improve their nutrition and health status, promote awareness about health, hygiene, nutrition, adolescent reproductive and sexual health (ARSH) and family and child care, upgrade home-based skills, life skills and integrate with the National Skill Development Program (NSDP) for vocational skills, mainstream out of school adolescent girls into formal/non-formal education and provide information/guidance about existing public services.

Mylan said that according to UNICEF, while the legal age of marriage in India is 18, the median age of marriage for rural girls is 16. Girls who marry early are more likely to drop out of school, suffer health problems, live in poverty and experience gender-based violence. These girls are more likely to either die in childbirth or lose their newborn infants.
According to the report of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on 'Status of Children in 14-18 Years: Review of policy, programme and legislative framework 2012-2013', India has one of the fastest growing youth population in the world. The vast majority of adolescents, (children in the 10-19 age group) account for 22.8% of the population of India and girls below 19 years of age constitute one-fourth of India's fast growing population. According to the 2001 census, there were 1.5 million girls in India under the age of 15 already married. Of these, 20% or approximately 300,000 were mothers to at least one child. At the national level, one in every five girls aged 15-17 years and slightly more than half of girls aged 15-24, were married. In all, 47% of India's girls aged 20-24 were married before the legal age of 18, with 56% from rural areas. While only 10% adolescents are in the age group of 15-19 years, mortality in this age group in Adolescent Girls (AGs) is greater than 10-14 years because 20% of the 1.5 million girls married under the age of 15 years are already mothers. To add to this, more than half (56%) of girls in the age group 15-19 were anemic and almost half (47%) of girls are underweight with Body Mass Index of 18.5 kg/m2.
Another report (2012) of the Social Statistics Division, Central Statistics Office, Union ministry of statistics and programme Implementation, a total of 113 cases under Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 were reported in the country out of which highest were reported in West Bengal (25), followed by Maharashtra (19), Andhra Pradesh (15), Gujarat (13) and Karnataka (12). The states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra together accounted for 44.5% of the child rape cases reported in the country in 2011. An increase of 27% was observed in the Crime of Procuration of Minor Girls, (862 cases) in 2011 compared to 679 cases in 2010. West Bengal has reported 298 such cases, indicating a share of 34.6% at national level, followed by Bihar (183), Assam (142) and Andhra Pradesh (106). Maharashtra accounted for 74% of the total 27 cases of 'buying of girls for prostitution' and West Bengal has accounted for 77% of the total 113 cases of 'selling of girls for prostitution'. An increase of 122.2% has been observed in cases of 'importation of girls' during 2010-11, and 56% of these cases reported in 2011 are from Madhya Pradesh. As per Census 2011, the State/UTs with alarmingly low (900) child sex ratio are, Haryana (830), Punjab (846), Jammu & Kashmir (859), Delhi (866), Chandigarh (867), Rajasthan (883), Maharashtra (883), Uttrakhand (886), Gujarat (886), Uttar Pradesh (899).
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