India, July 19 -- In 1993, when I took charge as inspector general of prisons at Tihar, Delhi, one of my first and most heartfelt reforms was to establish a playway school within the women's prison. The reason was simple yet urgent- children who came into the prison with their mothers-allowed by Indian law until the age of six-had been all but forgotten.

I was appalled to find over 30 children of various ages living in confinement without a single dedicated space for learning or play. They were growing up within prison walls, learning to parrot legal terms as they accompanied their mothers to court. Their playmates were cats and ants. They had no toys, no books, no structured learning-and shockingly, not even a medical card.

This realit...