A new report on the State of Child Rights in India notes with concern that incidents of child abuse are on the rise. Quoting statistics, it says 59.5 per cent and 100 per cent variation in the incidence of child rape and abduction have come to the fore since the nineties.

The human rights condition of children in India is discussed in ``State of Human Rights in India 1998'', recently released by the Indian Social Institute. Though considerable awareness has occurred in society over the past decade against sexual exploitation of children and child labour in hazardous occupations, abuse ofchildren within the family still remains one of the tough areas.

Children are treated as their property by the parents while law-enforcing agencies have chosen to look the other way when such cases are brought to their notice, it says.

Another area of concern is the state of basic education which, as directed by Article 45 of the Constitution, is a right of the child and not a privilege. Though school enrollment has increased, drop-out rates continue to be high in the states of Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.