The two photographs attached to this diary show a very familiar and unremarkable scene of Delhi. As soon as the light turns red these kids run up, start cleaning your windshield and then start begging for a rupee or two in a piteous voice. But a static picture fails to convey the real story behind the picture. The story of the kid cleaning the windshield is a moving one.
The used-books seller sits near my office during the lunch hour and I regularly visit him to buy magazines and old comics. A month ago, as usual, I went up to him and started browsing through the stacks. There are sundry shops all around this place selling everything from Chinese goods to snacks/lunch for office goers. Suddenly there was uproar in the market. A van came to a screeching halt on the road and many boys & girls jumped out from it. Two cameramen with movie cameras were capturing the action. They were from an NGO fighting for the cause of eradication of child labour. They ran helter-skelter pulling out kids from various shops, shouting at the top of their voices. The tea stall had employed two kids and the biggest drama took place here. One kid was bodily lifted by a person and was being dragged to the van. The stall owner tackled him and pulled the kid down by his feet. Another person took out a huge stick and was threatening the NGO person – abuses flying from both sides. The bookseller’s son was with him, as usual, helping out his father. He attends the morning school and comes direct to his father’s wayside shop to help and then packs up to go home. Two persons started shouting and abusing the bookseller, trying to drag his son away – while filming the whole scene. The bookseller was defending himself by telling them about his son and showing them his school bag. I would have stayed to watch the drama unfold but by then it was way over the lunch hour and office was beckoning.
Yesterday, the kid I saw at the traffic light was the same kid who was at the tea-stall. Recognising him, I parked my scooter and called him over. The tea-stall owner had ‘rescued’ him from the NGO and then fearing reprisals, kicked out both kids from their ‘job’. His parents were somewhere in UP and he was with an uncle here. With no other option left, the kid had taken to begging at the traffic light. At the tea-stall, he used to get two square meals a day and some ‘salary’. Here, he was at the mercy of the elements, darting between traffic, running from the police and going perpetually hungry. He did not know what had happened to the other kid.
I wondered what the NGO had achieved by this ham-handed approach. They got the required publicity through their video films and may be the funds from their benefactors. But they did not seem to care for the welfare of the very children they were trying to rescue. I talked to my friends in the media and did some research to find out what the scenario was elsewhere.
Sankalp - an NGO of Shankargarh in UP - first tries to secure the income and employment of parents before trying to eliminate child labour. Because it believes that poverty is the root cause of children being forced into labour.
The MV Foundation – working in the villages of Andhra Pradesh – works to prove to the community, parents and the children that poverty is not the only cause for child labour and to disprove the myth that older children cannot study. Its approach is based on a firm conviction that no child works and that all children in the 5-14 years age group must be in school. It believes that all labour is hazardous and harms the overall growth and development of the child.
Concerned for Working Children (CWC) – working in Karnataka – has a totally different viewpoint on this subject. It believes that work is part of the reality of some children’s lives and many workplaces are not necessarily harmful for them. They believe that no decisions or actions which have an impact on working children should be taken without consulting them. Consequently, they aim to give a voice to working children and to organise them so that they can demand better working conditions for themselves.
