This article is not meant to entertain. It is about those children who live on the streets. Those children who give up their innocence for a scrap of bread. Street children are ignored because we pass them by and forget we ever saw their plight. A fleeting moment of plight and then it's all over. Do you know the name of the child picking garbage and loitering around Sher Sha Suri fort (sasaram)? When the traffic pauses as the light switched to red they ran towards cars and try to sell their ware, newspaper, magazines, small towels, US visa lottery forms and flowers. Our callous minds don't pause to think why these children are not in school.
The international labour organization claims the urban informal sector is the largest employer of child labour. Working children contribute Rs.1500 per month as average income to their families.
Reasons include poverty and lack of education. Both these factors depend directly on myopic government policies and demand management techniques. In a report by Dr.Mehboob-ul-Haq entitled Human Development in South Asia 1997, he writes: Far more crippling than income poverty is the poverty of basic human capabilities, which prevents people from taking advantage of market opportunities. Compared to the capability poverty, there are only 34 million income poor people in India.The Employment of Children Act prohibits the employment of children in certain occupations and regulates the condition of work for children. Although the Act protects against economic exploitation of children it does not clearly whether this includes children who works on the streets. It also lacks a proper definition as to who is a child: Is a child supposedly below 14 years of age, or above 15 or 18? India signed the UN Convention for the rights of the child in which says that "No child must be arrested for a crime", but in India this is never implemented.
Children as young as four, toil on streets because their parents do not have well-paying jobs and their income must be supplemented. Many are unemployed or addicted to drugs making them incapable of any work. India has tried to take the rapid GDP growth development approach, not realizing that social development must move in tandem with GDP growth.
The 12 million children in the labour force will grow up to be physically, socially, morally and intellectually under developed and remain deprived individuals.
It was viewed with a mixture of indifference, apathy and even cynicism this was in part due to ignorance; and that child labour was accepted as a natural phenomenon. Parents believe that the only option left for them to combat poverty is to permit their children to assume the role of the Bread-winner. Their hair is a nameless gray brown, eyes pale and empty nails black with grime, dirty bare feet, tended faces for skinny bodies. They barter their carefree days to buy food for the family. Many of these street children have large families, ranging from 4 to 8 siblings. They have a feeling of being unwanted. The only way for them to survive is to accept what comes their way including the injustice and rejection. Many children on the streets dislike beggary. Although their brazen selling some times borders on shoving thing down one's throat. Almost all have a sense of responsibility and a strong desire to share the financial burden.
There are full of stories which related to child lobour (as I interviewed):-
A five year old child sells plastics combs near the traffic signal. Weary as he is, one wonders how this tiny child even crosses the road he has a widowed mother and a younger sister to support. He has to come out on to the streets to earn a living for the family although he has an elder sister.
An 18 year old says he has being selling flowers for the past five years but is now tired of working on the street "the people I try to sell flowers say 'excuse me' as if I am begging for alms. I don't beg. I have despised begging all my life but this with remark; I am reduced to that despicable status. When I was a kid it didn't hurt that much but now it does. I am so fed up with this humiliation that I am willing to kill someone but not sell flowers."
In a certain colony of sasaram, a door of a house opened, a shadow came outside, and a little boy aged twelve years, with tears in his eyes saw his house for the last time and came out of the lane. Sometime before his stepfather has slapped him and he tried to forget he pain and humiliation of that slap. At the end of the dirt lane he sat on a donkey cart and requested the owner of the cart towards the railway station. Before leaving the house he had stolen some money from his mother's purse. He is now on his own does not know where he is going!!14 years old Shoib, comes from a big city his family is very poor and there were many mouths to feed. He is always being pushed by his mother to go find out work and bring some money home. One day in an angry and frustrated mood he is turned out from his own house by the third wife of his father ……….
One…. Two…..three the number of these street children never ends with sad stories behind each one. This continues all the time in this country. On every railway station one can see a handful of children who are forced to run from their houses. Their scared faces tell the story.
Children are the gifts from God. Just think what we are doing to them. Have anyone ever though what may happen to them. Some heartless people smuggle them to other countries and cut them down for their body part to earn money…….!!!!
When I asked about their feeling, most of them said that "when we see students going to school then we think if we also able to go to school and be a good person in the society, we also have our dreams. You know we are not able to even go to government school, we collect garbage, sell ware etc. whole day then our stove burn"
There is no happily after to this story because it was not a fairy tale to begin With. These children are not living but just surviving. Their nameless and faceless existence will always surround us. It is about these children that the Nobel laureate poet from Chile, Gabriel Mistral has said:-
We are guilty of many errors and many faults,
But our worst crime is abandoning the children,
Neglecting the fountain of life.
But our worst crime is abandoning the children,
Neglecting the fountain of life.
Many of things we need can wait,
The child cannot wait.
Right now is the time his bones are being formed,
His blood is being made,
And his senses are being developed.
To him we cannot answer "Tomorrow",
His name is "Today"
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| Narayan patel(author) |
posted by:-
Narayan Patel;
student of:-ST Paul's school sasaram;
contact author:-
narayanpatel.904911@gmail.com;
narayanrajpatel@outlook.com;
mobile:- (+91)7322932296.
