No Child Beyond Reform – in conversation with Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman – Law School Policy Review

Ayishath   0:06
Hello everyone.
Welcome to our podcast.
On behalf of law school policy review, it is our immense pleasure to have with us today Doctor Kalpana Purushothaman, Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman is a counseling psychologist with a specialization in child and adolescent psychology.
She is an adjunct professor at the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research, Bangalore, where she teaches social and community psychology.
She worked as a member of the Juvenile Justice Board, Bangalore Urban for seven years and has been working with children in conflict with the law for the last 15 years. A child rights activist who has been relentlessly working on the right to health and specifically, the mental health of children in conflict with the law, Doctor Kalpana Purushottaman is a much loved and respected professional amongst all the stakeholders in the child protection community, whether it is a judiciary, the Department of Women and children, the NGOs working in child protection, student volunteers and, above all, the children in conflict with the law themselves.
Her vast knowledge, easy approachability and ability to connect authentically with anyone of any age and cheerful optimism help her to work effectively with diverse stakeholders. We are very honored to have you in our podcast, Doctor Kalpana.

So you have a diverse educational background. You have a degree in rehabilitation science, a postgraduate degree in public administration, a masters and a PhD in psychology, a postgraduate Diploma in counseling and in child rights law, and another in queer affirmative counseling practices.
So how come with all these different educational degrees, you chose to work in the area of child rights and juvenile justice?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   2:10
OK.
Hello Zainaba, Mrigank and Bhavya.
Thank you for inviting me to your podcast.
It’s always a pleasure to talk to anyone wanting to have a conversation about children, juvenile justice, mental health and child rights. So I’m really happy to have this conversation with you this evening.
To answer your question about my diverse educational background, I think many of my unconventional career choices are a result of a combination of certain lived experiences. Some adverse childhood experiences and to a large extent, the influence of my family and my teachers.

I’m the daughter of an army officer, which meant that my family lived and travelled all over India, which exposed me to people from different castes, religion, languages, culture, all of which taught me, you know, the richness of diversity that we have in our country, and at the same time also showed me the ugly realities of poverty, casteism, misogyny and patriarchy that also exist side by side in our society.
I would say one of the strongest influences in my life were some amazing teachers that I was blessed with, especially during my graduation days.

I studied in a small college called Holy Cross College in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu.
I took up the study of psychology because of my dent psychology teacher by the  name of Sheila Christopher. She was a fabulous teacher. And the way she taught psychology made me want to study it more.
I got interested in children because of my then teacher, Doctor Uma Khanagla, who was passionate about developmental psychology.
Not just subjects, but I was fortunate that I had teachers who taught us that to find our place in the world, we must attempt to do something that is of worth and value for other human beings. And that we had the responsibility, the power and the means to do it because we had been given the privilege of education, which millions of women in our country did not have access to. So I was made acutely aware of my privilege very early on in life.
And then of course, I had my own share of life experiences, good, bad and ugly, which pushed me in the direction of certain personal and professional choices.
For example, I worked for almost 10 to 12 years in Bangalore’s IT sector, at a time when I had to take care of my family’s financial responsibilities. Then marriage and motherhood followed, and I started working with the social sector. And it was while working in the slums of Bangalore that I once again encountered the stark realities of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, exploitation, violence, substance abuse, child sexual abuse. And it was here that I met the most important and I would say, impactful teachers in my life – of my career, I would say, which is children. And specifically, children from disadvantaged communities. Children from these communities who taught me the real meaning of life, psychology and child rights. I learnt it from them. It was during this phase in my life that I came across horrific instances of death, disease, abuse of children and institutional care, violence by the police.
I felt I could not remain a mute spectator and I felt compelled to do something.
Which is when I got involved in working formally with the justice system and child rights. And I think it was also that time in my personal life, when I became a mother.
And I think motherhood shifts one’s perspective on life in certain ways, and it certainly made me very aware of my responsibility in creating a world that would be safe for my child as well as for all the other children of the world.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t planned as life happened. I think I just went ahead and studied or qualified myself in the things that I was interested in, in the areas that I was interested in, and all of these qualifications that you read out, they haven’t happened at once. They’ve happened over decades. You know, I think every decade of my life, I went on to study something new and learn something new. I equipped myself with skills that I needed to work at that point in time.
I don’t know if that answers your question.

Ayishath   8:15
I think that’s wonderful.
Anyone who is even mildly interested in child rights and the law, I think they would find you to be a massive inspiration.
So you have worked in different capacities at the government observation home for boys at madiwala for around 16 years now and as part of the Center for Child and the law, NLSIU’s juvenile justice program, you worked as a senior counselor and a researcher. In addition to advocacy capacity, building of stakeholders, et cetera, and later, as part of the Juvenile Justice Board, what are your opinions on the system of observation homes in India?
Do you think they are adequate for the rehabilitation of children in conflict with law, and if not, what changes do you think would be pertinent?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   9:15
OK.
I think I will need to write another book for that, but yes, the government observation home for boys at Madiwala has been my workplace, my second home for the last 14 – 15 years.
In fact, most of the children in that area, they know me as Madiwala aunty because that is where I have practically lived for the last, you know, 14 – 15 years.
And for those of you who’ve not seen Madiwala or that observation home, let me take a minute to describe how that place is.
So the observation home at Bangalore for boys is situated in this huge vegetable market. It’s a Mandi. It’s a vegetable, you know, tarakari market as we call it in Kannada. It’s this huge sabzi mandi and crowded, bustling with life and smells and colors. And, you know, and of course, with poverty.
And that has really been my corner office, so to speak, for the last 10-15 years.
And you know, as you ask this question, I’m visualizing my workplace and not just Bangalore, but I’ve also had the opportunity of visiting several other observation homes, special homes in several other states of India as well, where children in conflict with the law are housed. And I’m very sad to say that, you know, there is a certain sameness to all of these homes. And what is common to all of these institutions is that they’re generally haloes. You know, if I can describe them like that.
For those of our listeners and viewers who might be listening to this in some time.
I want to tell them that, you know, often when we think about children in conflict with or, there is this general perception is that, “Oh, they have it easy.” And that these observation homes are places of reform and rehabilitation with all kinds of facilities where, children just sit back and watch television and enjoy themselves.
This is totally false. Simply not true. The reality that I have seen of observation homes across India is that they are dark, dirty, crowded, scary, abusive, violent spaces.
Spaces where no child should ever have to go or be. There is a lack of even basic facility, drinking water or clean toilets.
I say this without exception. All our observation homes in India are custodial in nature. They are built and designed like prisons, with bars and locks and grills.
On top of it, there is a lack of qualified, trained, skilled staff or caregivers.
There are no educational rehabilitative or psychosocial services in any of these observation homes. How can we ever hope that that a child will ever heal or reform or recover or be rehabilitated in such a setting? The very premise is absurd.
‘Cause it’s simply not possible in these kind of settings that we send our children in conflict with the law
To answer your question, for any meaningful rehabilitation or reform to actually take place at any observation home, I would say first do away with all these studio setups and set up more classrooms, more playgrounds, open school like structures, nutritious food, more light, more spaces, you know, spacious, more gardens and plants. More sunlight, more music, more dance, more art, more play, more interaction with positive adults in the community from every walk of life.
Trained, qualified professionals who are passionate about working with children should be appointed in such spaces. Only then can we hope for some rehabilitation.
And all these are doable. I’m not talking of, of course, even as I say it, I can imagine that someone might think that this is so utopian, but it’s not. All these are very doable.
But the question is, are we, as a society willing to do it? Are we, as a state ready to fund it? Do we, as citizens, think that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed? Because every time, everyone starts talking about children committing crimes only when there is some sensational murder or rape or car crash, in which a teenager is involved. Then everyone wants the adolescent to be punished, jailed, hanged, castrated, sent to the gallows, et cetera, et cetera. So why do we have to wait for a problem to become a crisis before we think of solving it?
So certainly to my mind, none of these observation homes that we’re talking about are special homes that we’re talking about. These are basically these detention centers and jails in disguise. They do nothing for our children. And so that is my very, I would say, brutally honest opinion about observation, homes. They, at least in the form and way in which they exist at the moment, do nothing for reform or rehabilitation of integration of children in conflict with the law.

Bhavya   15:57
Thank you so much ma’am for answering that.
I think based on that perspective, I think another perspective we really have to consider now is your role as a psychologist here and how your background as a psychologist helped you or how it changde your perspective.
So I want to ask you – For the last seven years you’ve worked as a member of the Juvenile Justice Board for Bangalore Urban. So how exactly do you think this background of being a psychologist has put you in a different position in the way you view the same situation?
And if these boards were actually child friendly, like you were talking about the state of the observation homes, but now, as a different perspective as being as part of the board, what is the exact reality that you experienced? I also want to ask you about the way these were even functioning, the juvenile justice boards, like the way the decisions were made, and if there were any biases that guided the way it was functioning.

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   16:49
I would like to think that my background as a child psychologist as well as the fact that I had already been working for several years with children in conflict with the law, even before I became a member of the Juvenile Justice Board. I would like to think that that gave me a certain perspective that I brought to my role in the Juvenile Justice Board.
Since I’d already worked as a counselor for these very children, I was familiar with the kind of psychosocial backgrounds they came from. Also, I think the child rights perspective, that every child is entitled to legal aid to health, to contact with the family, to be informed about the allegations against him, participation in his own inquiry and proceedings, etcetera: these were aspects that I was familiar with due to my earlier work with children in difficult circumstances.
I think this made me approach my role in the board from a rights based perspective.
And I focused more on rehabilitation, treatment, counselling, education, readiness for employment and social integration than just mere adjudication of the case and trying to find out if the person was guilty or not.
Yes, this approach often got me into trouble with some of my colleagues who looked at their role as that of merely legal adjudication and that the only outcomes that we should be concerned about should be case closure or pendency reduction or punishment penalty, et cetera.
And this, I think, chiefly along with the fact that I personally and professionally, strongly objected to the transfer of children to adult courts, citing psychosocial reasons, I think was often the reason for heated debates, discussions and dissent in our JJB.
Oh, see, when you understand that when more than 95% of the children in our juvenile justice system in India come from family backgrounds of poverty, violence, dysfunctional families, and serious mental health conditions that cannot be overlooked, you cannot simply agree to send them to adult jails to face more abuse, more exploitation and to be groomed into career criminals by these problematic adults that they come in contact with in these jails. Instead, my belief is that we have to work with children in conflict with law, and help them to take accountability for the mistakes that they have made, make amends to the victims, learn to be responsible adults, help them in repairing some of the harm that they’ve caused, and I would think most importantly, learn the life skills that they are that are needed to live and contribute meaningfully to the society.
So that really is my outlook on how to approach these children who are coming before the Juvenile Justice boards and I would believe that a lot of that did come from both my educational background as well as the work experiences I’ve had working with children in distress and children from difficult circumstances.
And yes, definitely a lot of conflicts, a lot of dissents, a lot of disagreements with professionals who, and I think that’s natural and that’s healthy from professionals who come from different backgrounds.
So yeah.

Ayishath   21:29
That was very insightful and so as a person who has worked so closely with child rights and juvenile justice, I really wanted your opinion on this question. So there was an amendment in the Juvenile Justice Act in 2015 which allows children between the age of 16 to 18 years of age to be tried and sentenced as adults in case they commit an as crimes. So what do you think drove this amendment to take place, and what are the implications of this?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   22:10
I was wondering when you would ask me this question because I think no interview or conversation about children in conflict with the law with me is ever complete until we discuss this Nirbhaya case or the 2015 amendment.
So yes, this amendment that you refer to, to the juvenile justice act in 2015, it happened in the aftermath of the Delhi gang rape case, which popularly was described by the media as the Nirbhaya case and it’s been over 10 years now.
So this was a horrific case where a young 23 year old girl was brutally raped in a moving bus in Delhi by a group of five men and a 17 year old adolescent.
The victim later succumbed to her injuries in hospital I think a week later. The five adult accused in the case were sentenced to death while the 17 year old adolescent was given a three-year term punishment which was the maximum punishment under the law prevailing at that time.
So now this set off a huge uproar across the country. They were candlelight marches, protests and demands that the law needs to be changed because it was felt that the punishment of three years for this 17 year old was disproportionate to the enormity and brutality of the crime.
So following this, the Juvenile Justice Act was amended and a section was introduced which stated that in cases of heinous offenses like murder, rape, gang rape, etcetera., and if the adolescent alleged to be involved in the offense was 16 years and above, then the JJB needed to conduct an assessment as to whether this child should be tried, should be tried as a child before the Juvenile Justice Board, or should he be transferred and sentenced as an adult before the adult court?
So this really was the backdrop – the context to your question.
And well, here is where it gets interesting. Because this new section that was introduced stated that for the juvenile justice boards to be able to make this assessment of whether the adolescent, you know, the 16 years and above adolescent who’s been charged with a heinous crime should be tried as a child before the JJB or as an adult before an adult court, the JJB needed to make this assessment by taking the assistance of mental health professionals like a psychologist or a psychiatrist, et cetera.
And this is where it got more complicated. Because you see in India, finding trained, experienced, qualified mental health professionals who can do this very nuanced kind of an assessment is very limited. Of course, those of us in Bangalore, we are fortunate. We have the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences.
NIMHANS is practically in our backyard, so we are fortunate, but this is not true of other places in India, especially smaller districts and smaller places.
And what was also further nuanced here, the ask of the law was that the mental health professional was supposed to also do three things.
One was that the mental health professional had to find out whether the adolescent had the mental maturity or capacity to carry out the crime that he’s being accused of.
Two, whether he had knowledge of, or was aware of the consequences of his actions.  And thirdly, what were the circumstances in which he came into conflict with the law, right.
Now this is a question, not a question, but multiple questions that are fairly complex.
And require actually a team, ideally a multi-disciplinary team to examine these questions and to go into the depth of this and understand what really was happening.
So for example, on the question of whether this adolescent had the capacity to commit that offense. Now, how do you really find that out?
Now, as a psychologist, if the adolescent is before me, I can assess and tell you what is his mental health status, I can tell you if he has any kind of disability or a disorder or mental illness of some kind or any other mental health condition, I can give you his mental health history again, for which I have to, you know, spend time with the child, the child’s family, et cetera.
But to this question of capacity, right? What really are we trying to prove here?
Are we trying to say that anyone who had the capacity could have committed this crime? Because to that question, we all have the potential. We all have the capacity.
So the mere presence or absence of capacity to commit crime does not necessarily mean that it is this particular adolescent who actually committed it, right?
So questions like that, which are not very –  they’re not these Yes or No kind of questions and require far more application of mind and deliberation and discussion and examination of the facts at hand.
Also, we need to understand that almost all of the children coming into the juvenile justice system in India are children who do have a history of severe adverse childhood experiences. They come from very vulnerable backgrounds. The rich kids with the flashy cars and powerful, well networked parents are the exception, not the norm.
Most of the children in the Indian juvenile justice system are children who are struggling with multiple problems with the family in a psychological, social and financial level. This is not to say that children do not commit serious crimes. That’s not true. Yes, there are some very gruesome crimes that adolescents in which adolescence are also involved in.
But the majority of the crimes by children where children are involved and not heinous. They’re usually offences relating to theft, running away from home, eloping with the partner. These are the kinds of offences that children usually tend to get involved in. And yes, there are crimes where, you know, children can get involved and more often than not, when we’re talking of serious crimes, grave or heinous crimes, it tends to be in the company of older adults and peer pressure. Just like in the, you know, Delhi gang rape that we were talking about, there were five adults and there was this, teenager who also went along.
So there is that vulnerability where adults can influence and lure adolescents into crime. So that is also a reality that we cannot get away from.
So your question relating to this section 15 that we’re talking about, this really was the context in which that amendment was introduced. That really was the mood of the nation at the time that this amendment was introduced and ten years down the line, many of us in the child rights community are trying to understand and review.
What really has been the impact of this amendment and right now to my mind, I would say that this is not this is not a section that has really helped vulnerable children to either you know, access or to get to do any of those goals that we talk about of the individual of the Juvenile Justice Act, which is reform, rehabilitation, social reintegration, I don’t think any of those goals have been met. Neither of the goals of justice for the victim or safety for women, which are the other ones that we must also be very mindful about – I don’t think either of these goals have been met.
That is my assessment of, you know, the impact that this section has or and this amendment has really made on the Juvenile Justice Act and children in conflict with the law in India.

Mrigank Jain   32:43
So, Professor, when you focus on the goals of the juvenile justice system specifically, that being of reform and as an advocate of the principle of no child beyond reform, what specific measures do you think are like are most easily implementable at this stage when it comes to using recidivism in youth in the formal rehabilitative process?
And if you had to make a policy suggestion or something that the government could do, how do you think we should reduce repeat offenders, especially children offenders.

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   33:15
Let me let me start by saying, Mrigank, I love that phrase that you used of no child beyond reform. Because I think it so beautifully captures exactly the philosophy that my entire life’s work is based on, which is that I don’t think there is any child that is really beyond reform unless we give up on that child.
And the fact that you said that what are some of those implementable doable things?
I think to start with, if you just look at the low hanging fruits, if I can call them, especially the social problems that currently many of the children in our country are facing, one of the huge problems that amongst children and adolescents that we face, is that of substance abuse.
So before we talk of recidivism, right, recidivism is how do I, how do we prevent reoffending? So I would say let’s look at preventing offending in the first place.
Let’s start from the basics. See, every child deserves and has the right to, you know, good food, nutrition, health, family, education – A safe and nurturing environment.
And we have to understand that it is when we fail to provide these basics to children that they become vulnerable to addictions, violence, abuse and other situations that then bring them into conflict with the law. So if I have to look at two or three, very doable, implementable things that we can do to prevent offending in the first place, and of course if we can prevent it in the first place, it will work for reoffending also.

The first I would say is a very strong substance abuse program. We have to address the issue of substance abuse amongst children – Especially youth.
See, we can’t only think of children after the crime has happened, we have to look at at-risk children and see what do their lives look like and what these risk factors are that are going to push them into crime.
And if I look at, if you look at the problem that way, then it becomes very clear that one of the big problems that we are sitting right now, which is a ticking bomb, is that of substance abuse.
And substance abuse is rampant amongst children and youth in our country today and we are not recognizing it. So I would look at a countrywide substance abuse program that specifically targets at risk children.
That is very important and that doesn’t require us to build jails and prisons and more observation homes. It just means we have to strengthen our healthcare systems. We have to strengthen our mental health systems.
So substance abuse program is something that I would very strongly advocate for.
Second, the other time bomb that our children are sitting on today is digital addiction. Almost every other child today, irrespective of socioeconomic class, has got access to a mobile phone or to a laptop – to some device of some kind and it’s scary, the kind of information and data that they’re getting access to.
And this is something that I particularly noticed post COVID.
The change in the texture, the nature of crime – it changed after COVID and that happened because that was the time when children got access to devices to digital devices. That was the time when they got access to social media. And that was also the time when we both in the Community as well as in the juvenile justice boards began to notice that there was an increase in the usage of digital devices and technology in crime – in offenses by children.
And what is particularly disturbing is the increase in the sexual offences by children using technology. So that is something which I would strongly advocate for, and I’m probably going to get a lot of flack for this, but I strongly believe that children must not have access to digital devices till they turn adult.
In fact, I’m told that there are countries where children are banned from having access to mobile phones and till they are 18 or even 21 and I truly believe that it is important that we protect our children, that we regulate. There has to be some regulation in terms of the kind of information that they’re getting access to, because in the absence of adult supervision, in the absence of an education system that is helping them regulate and teaching them what is right, what is wrong, life skills, value, education, sexuality, education. In the absence of these ecosystems that support that access and exposure to so much content that they are consuming on social media, I think our children are sitting on a on a ticking time bomb.
So the second area that I would really, really love to see a nationwide program implemented would be the area of digital addiction of children. If at all we have to bring any laws or laws have to change, I think that’s one law I would love to see where children have limited access to digital devices and social media.
Specifically, social media. That’s the second area.
And of course, like I said, I have a slightly different point of view in when we talk of recidivism, especially in the context of children. I believe that we have to invest in prevention. We have to invest in health, we have to invest in education, not in building more jails, pouring more concrete and infrastructure and building more and more jails for children.
Why wait for children to get into crime and then work on residence? Our real work has to be with at risk children, families, communities, programs that focus on anger management, violence prevention in the community so that children do not get involved in violent crimes. Programs on personal safety, sexuality education so that they don’t get involved in sexual crimes.
On life skills education so that they learn to pick friends wisely, not get carried away by their hormones. They learn to ask for help when they need it. Parenting programs -Why should children have to do all the hard work? What about the adults? So parenting programs for families on how to communicate with their growing children.
These, I feel are the real things that we need to work on.
Not just, you know, changing laws bringing an amendment here, just making laws harsher and harsher and more punitive.
You know those are not, to my mind, signs of a civilized, evolved society.
As a mental health professional, I would like to remind all our listeners also that see adolescence is a period of a lot of changes – Physiological and psychological.
So it’s also a great time to shape and mould teenagers into healthy and responsible adults, and I think in this the role of the family, teachers, community, all of that is crucial, not just the role of the law and of the legal system.
Did I answer your question Mrigank?

Mrigank Jain   42:34
Yes, ma’am. That was perfect.
Thank you so much.

Bhavya   42:38
Ma’am, this leads me back to the LSC talk that you held, where you also gave us an example of a case about online harassment. So that leads me to my next question about how the law of these social factors are explored. We talked about the pandemic as one example and another thing is a lot of these issues happen to these children at a way at the stage where the only access they have anywhere like you mentioned is the role of teachers and like these are the people, the key stakeholders who can help them out.
And currently the education system and everything is at the systemic level is not really helping these children. They also face lot of issues in terms of learning disabilities and a lack of a systemic and institutional model and set up.
So you talked about awareness and other things, they need to be taught about how to deal with things.
How do you think these measures can be incorporated within the education system and how the key stakeholders, like you mentioned – teachers, the government, what can they do at this bottom level to help these children like from Direct source in order to help them secure the form and lot of measures for the children themselves.

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   43:45
I mean, the most satisfying role for me, of course, is that of a teacher, but a very sad truth in India is also that not every teacher is there because they want to be. Yes, we have some very good teachers who are very passionate about teaching, who really love children, who love teaching, and they’re there because of the love for teaching, right?
And yet, teaching as a profession – While culturally, we claim to hold teachers in great esteem and we always evoke all the names – we will say, oh, drona, all the great teachers we talk about it with a lot of reverence.
But the real life teachers in our country, I’m sad to say, are not really treated with that respect or reverence in very tangible or practical ways. Teachers are amongst the lowest paid in our country and not every teacher’s really qualified to teach.
And yet, somehow, anyhow, with our education system, both children and teachers, bumble, fumble, stumble along. And try to make the most of the system.
With specific context, the specific reference to children in conflict with the law – What I have seen is that there seems to be a direct link between education and children coming into conflict with the law.
I remember I had done a study about 10 years ago on this very question and while trying to understand the educational profile of children who are actually coming into this coming into crime. This is validated by the NCRB data as well.
One of my findings was that most of the children who come into conflict with the law either have disruption in their education or they drop out altogether. Or they have very minimal education or primary school – Third standard, 4th standard, 5th standard. And the other very interesting fact, if you see is if you look at the NCRB data, it tells you that many of the crimes by children offences by children are by children in the age group of 16 to 18.
And if you think about it, that is precisely the age when the right to Education Act stops covering our children because the right to Education, we say, is only up to the age of 14. So at that very age and phase and stage in life, when our children should be getting education, you know that acts as a security blanket for them and make sure that these children stay back in school, they drop out of school.
They drop out of school and what happens to them when they drop out of school at age after age 14? There is compulsion from the family, especially if they are boys, to start working.
If they are girls, there is the pressure to get married or they stay back at home to look after their younger siblings and take on household domestic duties till such time that the family finds someone that the girl can get married to. The boys start going to work and now there is this very vulnerable fifteen or sixteen or seventeen year old who’s trying to be the man of the house and earn some money.
He is also going out of the house to work and is coming in contact with people who are older than him, typically adults. Of course, child labor is a reality in our country.
Now this vulnerable child is getting exposed to probably habits, practices that the older people at the workplace are getting used to – whether it is smoking, drinking, drugs, alcohol, what have you. And we all do know that adolescence is also a very vulnerable period, when there’s a lot of peer pressure. Especially for boys – they want to appear manly. They want to appear grown up.
So there is that added pressure of wanting to look grown up. And that also gets them into situations where they will come into conflict with the law.
There was another point that you made about children with disabilities. In India, screening of children as a practice, whether in primary schools, I think that should be a should be a given. We don’t have that. So what happens is, many children in India who might be struggling with learning disabilities or learning difficulties of some kind, they are unable to cope with formal education, so they also often drop out of school, and end up in the company of adults who may then involve them in illegal activities. Also, death of a parent, or illness of a parent. These are all situations that push children, young children, adolescents into the workforce at a very early point of time in their life and therefore it becomes even more important that schools then become a place that actually cares for, protects and nurtures all children.
And especially at-risk children for which it is our teachers who need to be trained –  they need to be capable of addressing the needs of children, especially those that are from vulnerable backgrounds. At the moment, this is an area that no one is even talking about, which is the capability, the competence, the capacity of teachers to actually provide quality education. Leave alone quality education, at least basic education. See, I would say here is where it’s very important that when we talk of education, I think at the beginning of our conversation, I was telling you the very reason I do what I do in my professional life is because of the example that my teachers set for me – because of the demands that they placed on me to be an ethical person, because of the numerous conversations that we had, because of the way they corrected me when I went wrong. They shaped me. They shaped my thinking. They took an interest in me above all. They cared about what became of me. How many such teachers can we really find for our children today?
That really is the difficult task – Of having human beings who actually care about what happens to vulnerable children who are placed in their care. Yes, some things we can train and do capacity building programs for teachers. But some things, I think it comes with passion. It comes when that person really wants to be there. If you really want to be a teacher, you love children then you’re automatically and naturally interested in that child’s life and what happens to that child.
And that can’t always be taught. I mean, it has to come from within. This is my very humble take on it.

Mrigank Jain   52:48
Yes, Professor, I think that’s really interesting.
So when, especially in your role as a teacher or as a senior professor at the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research, especially with that, as you mentioned, being one of the most fulfilling parts of your life, I had a question to ask you in relation to the role as a university student. So in our current program at NLS we have a mandatory internship for social work. So as a teacher, what do you think is the role of university students – people like us –  can do when it comes to social change.

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   53:22
See, personally, I believe you know it’s the youth who hold the power to actually change the world. It’s the youth who has the power to build revolutions, and that is what gives energy — that’s what gives life blood to a society, to any society.
I think I’m happiest when I’m a teacher. So like you said, for the last 10 years I’ve been teaching – I teach social and community psychology at the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research at Bangalore and I absolutely love the creative energy which students bring to the classroom. The discussions, the debates, the fights that we have really helps to shape our perspective and worldview on life.
We explore a lot of social experiments within the classroom as well as outside the classroom. We question, we reflect, we introspect on things that intrigue us, that bother us, that disturb us and we try to understand issues from multiple viewpoints.
See, I believe that my job as a teacher is not just about the syllabus. It is to teach my students how to think, not what to think. That is your job.
And even more importantly, I think it is to be a person that they can look up to – that they can seek out and they can reach. They can reach out to in times of distress, you know, thanks to social media.
I think the world has become a very busy and technologically connected place but, sadly and ironically, I think we’ve also become increasingly very emotionally disconnected. So I really enjoy my canteen conversations with my students way past college time in the campus and outside the campus. Many of my students are in touch with me even after they’ve completed their course.
And I’m a part of their love stories, their marriages, their breakups, their job hunt, childbirth, celebrations, losses, ups and downs in life. And I truly feel blessed to be able to be part of their lives.
And let me tell you this, I think it’s because my teachers took a personal interest in my life and my troubles when I was in college that I could navigate the challenges of my life at that point. So I’m only doing what my teachers did for me.

In fact, it was really my students who’ve supported me and helped me to run Project MAANASA. I did talk briefly about it in your class, which was a very unique psychosocial project that we did at the observation home at Madiwala, Bangalore for over six years. It is students like you who have really helped me and helped project MAANASA come to life and run it for the last so many years. I don’t think I could have done it alone.

Ayishath   57:09
That’s wonderful, professor.
I’m sure your students are very grateful to have had you as a teacher. And it’s really interesting how you combined child rights, mental health and community well-being along with student volunteering as well.
So could you tell us a bit more about the MAANASA awareness Center that you established at the observation home? What drove you to take the initiative, and how do you think your work there has made a difference?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   57:43
Project MAANASA essentially was envisaged as a solution to a problem that had been plaguing the government observation home at Madivala for many, many years and the problem was this. The problem was that every week we would have boys running away from the observation home. Jailbreak was really common along with of course violence and abuse and all of that. But you know, children were actually running away and that is when we sat down and asked certain questions of ourselves.
And by we I mean that the Juvenile Justice Board, Bangalore Urban – this was way back in 2017 when I had just joined and a new board was constituted. And we said, what can we do, right? And why really are these children running away? What are they running from and what are they running towards?
So some of the insights and discussions, very interesting discussions followed where we said either see there must be so much violence and abuse and terrible things going on inside the home, which is why children were trying to run away from it, to get away from it.
So what is it that we could do to actually make life a little easier and better for them within the observation home?
The second was what are they running towards? So typically the assumption was that they’re running towards something where they feel might be a better option than what they have inside. So we must also look at creating something for them in the Community, something that they can go towards with some hope.
So these were some very basic kind of assumptions that we started with and – your earlier question – Because you’re a psychologist – So I think because I was a psychologist, because I’m a mental health professional, I felt that we must not look at all problems only with the legal lens. Like maybe we needed to change that lens. Maybe we needed to shift our perspective and look at things differently. And so what we did was we set up this project, MAANASA, we first set up the infrastructure.

Whatever said and done. A jail is a jail is a jail. Whatever name you call it, you can call it observational home. You can call it special home. You can use whatever fancy name it is. Not home, right? So we said, what can we do to make this place bearable? Tolerable for children, at least for the time that they are here. So we started with bringing activities, exercises, bringing art, bringing music, bringing down some of the things that I spoke to you about bringing play, bringing recreation, bringing fun into that space.
And that we did begin with a lot of my students. I teach the MSc psychology as well as the MSc counselling classes at the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research.
So I had a fabulous bunch of students who would come in and help to run several of these programs. Then we had several NGOs with experienced professionals who would use the energy and enthusiasm of the students to run some of the programs that they were specifically designing for children in conflict with law.

So we had NGOs like Headstreams and I might be missing some of the names, but quite a few of them, like Makkala Jagriti and few of these NGOs who came in and they would run very interesting classes and programs for children within the observation home.
The other thing that we did was we did a whole lot of capacity building for the stakeholders, not just children, but the caregivers within the system. So it would be provisionally officers, it could be the guards, it could be the staff. It would be people who are actually entrusted with the job, looking after these children, the teachers.
So how do you build their capacity to actually look after these children?
Then the third thing we did was we also worked with the JJBs, the Juvenile justice boards, the lawyers, the judges. Very importantly, to try and help them see that for children, we had to look beyond adjudication. We had to think of education. We had to look at treatment. We had to look at counseling. So we see a whole range of services that need to be offered to these children while they were in.

We partnered with NIMHANS. So NIMHANS ran several programs for counselling for children as well as families from within the observation home. We partnered with, of course, the Centre for Child and the Law at NLS. They’ve been running a fabulous access to justice program for several years now, working very closely with the Juvenile Justice Board at Bangalore Urban. Not just giving legal aid or free legal aid or legal help, but working with the families of these children.
So project MAANASA was primarily about bringing all of these stakeholders under one umbrella. It was set up under the direction of the Hon’ble Juvenile Justice Committee of the High Court of Karnataka and in partnership and collaboration with the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority as well as the Department of Women and Child and the Juvenile Justice Board. We’re monitoring the progress of all of this and so this became a very holistic program that involved stakeholders from the state to the judiciary, government as well as non-government players, community, families, and children themselves – Mental health professionals, legal professionals, everybody. We kind of brought everybody under an umbrella with that one single goal of saying – how can we help this child who’s got into trouble with the law?
What do we do to help him to get out of this now? What can we do to make sure he doesn’t come back again? What is the harm that this child has caused? How can we repair that harm collectively as a society and as a bunch of professionals? And of course, your question of recidivism when we do this, hopefully we will not have other children also coming into this space which is the Observation Home again, not into the justice system at all.
So this is just to kind of give you a glimpse of what project management is all about. When you do it with the enthusiasm and that positive energy, which I think young people, especially university students bring, I think a great learning experience for the students as well.
In fact, MAANASA used to offer a whole lot of internships, not just for psychology students – For law students, for social work students, for mental health professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors. So literally, students and professionals from every field, from every walk of life, from different disciplines actually came together and made MAANASA work. In fact, I’m very happy to share with you that at present MAANASA is working in the community. About a year and a half back, we did a crime mapping study where we tried to find out what really are the crime hotspots in Bangalore. We identified one of the crime hotspots, and our project management is now working with a school that is presently in a place called Bismillah Nagar in Bangalore. And we’re working with the school that teaches about 1200 to 1300 children from underprivileged communities. There is a preventive health program that runs there. There’s a psychosocial program that runs there. There is a recidivism prevention program that runs there. There’s a life skills program that is going on there. This is the National Institute of Open Schooling. So we have children from the board who’ve been placed there and they are continuing their education.
So this is kind of a social experiment if you want to call it in trying to see how would it look if we actually reimagined our idea of juvenile justice? How would it look if we actually reimagined how we actually treat children in conflict with the law and provided them with opportunities to heal and to recover – to actually reintegrate into society.
How would that look like? The answer to that is that it would look like Project MAANASA. So yeah, that’s that’s what it is. And in fact, I would invite you all – any students who would love to volunteer or experience. Please come join.
See for yourself how these programs work in the community.

Mrigank Jain   1:08:07
Ma’am, I love how you brought together a lot of various stakeholders and worked with so many members of different sectors, especially as you mentioned, the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority and the Department for Child.
How has the work been for you with regards to the government and bureaucracy in relation to your work with children?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   1:08:30
You know, these are the questions that I wonder if I should give an honest answer to.
I think working in Child protection and Juvenile Justice in India requires the tact of a diplomat, the patience of a saint, and the persistence of a dog after a bone. Not easy at all. And what I found in my experience is that the very basic qualification that a professional needs to work with children in the justice system is exactly that.

Firstly, to start with his professional qualifications, what do I mean by that? A lot of people who work with children in the justice system are there because they will tell you they love to work with children, which is great, but it is not enough. You need the skills, the functional competence you need to work with children.
I’ll give you a simple example. Say your child falls sick and gets malaria. Would you go to a doctor or pediatrician, or would you go to some random person in the neighborhood and say please treat my child?

Here’s the problem. In India, anyone who says they love children and that they love working with children seems to start working in that space and I think the child protection space is filled with a lot of such people – some of them with good intentions, but zero skills.
And so my belief is that when it is a doctor or a lawyer or a psychiatrist, a psychologist, social worker, probationary officer, Superintendent, guard, it has to be a person who is qualified and trained to work with children and especially children from difficult circumstances. That is the the first prerequisite to what we should do.
Secondly, while being professionally qualified is of course the basic qualification, I think an equally important qualification is the attitude. Empathy and the skills of handling and interacting with children and adults. I’ve had very highly qualified lawyers, judges, doctors, even who may be very good at what they do. They’re technically competent, but they lack a very important quality and that is empathy and compassion – judges who never even smile at children, lawyers who aggressively question children as if they’re examining some dangerous criminal, police officers who use violence to get information out of the child, probationary officers and superintendents who strike terror in the hearts of children – these are all very common in our system.
At the same time, there are also exceptions. I remember I had a lady Superintendent at the observation home at Madivala called Doctor Kamala. She was exceptionally good. Not only did she have a PhD in Human Development, which meant she was professionally qualified, but she was also a very capable and empathic person who treated the children in her care with a lot of kindness and understanding. She actually spoke to the children regularly. She knew what their problems were. She would talk to the parents. She worked closely with me at the Juvenile Justice Board and we put together several very interesting and innovative programs at the OH. We had a journaling program for children at some time when I think beyond the basic medical help and counseling and family counseling and stuff.
We had such unique innovative programs. We had a journaling program. Every child had a diary we would help them to write into that diary. Children who couldn’t read and write, we had other children helping them to draw – it was fantastic.
We had a gardening program where each child would be given a little plant to take care of and take that plant with him when he went out on bail. The children somewhere learnt to care for another life, even if it was only a plant. And each plant had their name written on it.
There’s some very, very interesting programs like that. We had a teenager’s narcotics anonymous program running within the premises. We had a dance and movement workshop for the staff working at the observation, because they are also under tremendous pressure. So there are exceptions. There are fantastic humans who are also working the system.
I had the opportunity to work with 9 magistrates in my seven-year term and I had very interesting and diverse experiences with each of them. Some of them were fabulous and amazing to work with. Some of them were steeped in patriarchy and misogyny and Red Tapeism. They found it very difficult to even consider a psychosocial or rehabilitative approach to adjudication because they behaved in the same punitive manner with children in the way that they would behave in their adult courts. Of course, the most difficult to deal with all of this, during my tenure in the JJB is the bureaucratic delays and lack of decision making. Especially with the government stakeholders who were primarily responsible for, you know, making sure children in conflict with the law, get their, I mean, for ensuring their child rights. So it could get very frustrating. And the only reasom I could stay sane was because I was working through Project MAANASA, frankly. And I was surrounded by good people, I was surrounded by students with good positive energy, NGOs, and of course getting a lot of good work done through NGOs, community support, student volunteers, professionals who are, you know, doctors and psychiatrists who are supporting the work that I was doing.
In fact, even as I say this, I must mention two bodies of the state which I really enjoyed working with and had great support from. One was, of course, the KSLSA – Karnataka State Legal Services Authority. The kind of support that we got – that the JJ board got in being able to implement Project MAANASA, along with the, you know support that we got from the High Court Juvenile Justice Committee – I mean the kind of support, encouragement, freedom given to implement ideas, programs, especially under project MAANASA was phenomenal. And today your own institution, the Centre for Child and the Law in the National Law School, the kind of implementation support we got in almost every program of MAANASA that we conducted.
See, this is where I believe in the power of partnerships. The power of collaboration, it it’s very much – It’s possible. It’s doable. It’s just that I think it needs a lot of people to come together and make something happen. But yeah, it’s a certainly doable, very much doable.

Bhavya   1:17:29
Professor, thank you so much for that. That actually brings me to another thing that I was thinking about – these people that judges and lawyers who are in this field, in the system itself and they aren’t really working towards the, they’re not really allowing the psychosocial perspective to be entered the whole discussion in the debate and another thing that this another set of issues we probably have to deal with like you mentioned about the amendment to the JJ Act itself about criminalizing the 16 to 18 year olds against heinous offenses. And you talked about how bringing them on the law rather than actually thinking about their position and the things that actually led them to do such actions and things like that.
So, another thing I want to ask you about now is the thing about child sexual abuse itself. What is the nature of the work that you do with such victims and also survivors of child sexual abuse and also what are the challenges that you faced as a mental health professional? Because this is a very sensitive issue they face and also about the legislation itself, where there’s a mandatory reporting requirement.
So how do you how do you deal with these cases of sexual abuse?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   1:18:37
I suppose this is one of the best kept secrets about my professional life that while most people associate me with juvenile justice and children in conflict with the law, I have been working with child and adult survivors of child sexual abuse for over 3 decades now. In fact, my work with children conflict with the law is only for about 15 years while I have worked with survivors of sexual abuse for almost 30 years.
I actually started by volunteering and offering counselling services for survivors through several NGOs, way back in the late 90s, and in fact it was through my work with victims and survivors that I came to understand the dynamics of child sexual abuse and domestic violence very closely.
I would listen to the stories of as a therapist, I would listen to the stories of young children, girls, boys, women talk about their experiences of sexual abuse and it would really make me very angry and sad at the same time, and I would keep thinking that I must do something to stop the abuse.
And I think it was a result of these experiences that I decided to work with adolescent boys. In fact, my earliest work with children in conflict with the law was to work with adolescent boys who were involved in sexual crimes. And that is how I actually entered the juvenile justice system those years ago and then, of course, I started working with all children over the years. I have worked with victims, witnesses, survivors in different capacities.
I offer personal individual counselling and family counselling because sometimes the families of the victims are more devastated and guilt ridden than the victim herself.
I also do awareness workshops, personal safety, sexuality workshops, gender sensitization programs in schools, colleges with the police, local communities.
I also volunteer as a support person for victims before the box supports as well as capacity building of professionals who work with child victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.
I think along with teaching, this is something that gives me great personal satisfaction and I believe that every child healed is one more child saved from getting into crime and prevented from mental illness. That’s how I approach this whole thing.

Bhavya   1:21:39
Yes, doctor, that’s really good to know. I’m really glad that that your field your work started with this and now you’re more passionate about this as well. And this is exactly what I also want to do in my future as well.
So this is why I’m asking you with the last question about what advice you would give to law students who are interested in working with children in the future in similar fields like you and with all the various experiences you’ve had working with various organizations, various institutions, etc. How would you suggest we approach this? How would you suggest our future look like?

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   1:22:11
The first thing we’re trained to do as counselors is to never give advice, you know?
So I won’t give you any advice, but yes, I can offer you some options, suggestions and invite you to consider them. I think law students or any students interested in working with children should first, I think, start by reading all the legislations relating to children. The law is a very powerful instrument, so all the laws relating to children, the JJ Act, the POCSO Act, Child Labor, Child Marriage, etc. First and foremost, build your functional competence, you know, become really good, competent, capable lawyers first. So that would be my first suggestion.
Second, I would say learn about human rights, child rights, women’s rights, social movements, caste, religion, patriarchy, gender, poverty, sexuality. See how all of these things affect the lives of children. Because unless you understand this, just knowing the laws is of no use.
You need to understand how this is relevant to the practice of the law.
Third, if you’re interested working with children, learn about children. Learn about child psychology child development. Read books, take some courses, check out online resources, come to my workshops, sit in my classes. I’d be happy to share.
Fourth very important talk and interact with children of different age groups and observe how you feel when you do so. Do you enjoy it or do you get irritated? If you don’t enjoy being with children and interacting with them or understanding them,  it’ll be really hard for you to actually pick up a role that involves children.
Fifth and lastly, I think I would say, question everything. Challenge your thinking. Examine your ideologies. Be open to changing your mind. Have the courage to dissent and express your dissenting opinion. Have the courage to face the consequences of that dissent, and most importantly, have the courage to be compassionate, because that is not a very popular thing in today’s world of social media, reels and fame. But to me, if you don’t have compassion, if you don’t know to be kind to a child or any other human being, all your other qualifications are a waste on this planet.
So above all, be kind.
I think that that would be my only small suggestion.

Ayishath   1:25:05
Thank you, professor.
That was a wonderful conversation that we had with you.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sure my peers did as well.
Will be concluding this episode of our podcast, “No child Beyond Reform”
A conversation with Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman.
Thank you very much.

Dr. Kalpana Purushothaman   1:25:27
Thank you so much.