For these children, labour is survival  

Nagpur : an 18 year old class X passed youth, asks for a petty job. But the employer turns him down.  Later, two 12-year old boys ask for the same job and they get it – at Rs. 5 per day. “I would have had to pay Rs.50 to the first guy. It made much more sense to keep the younger boys,” the employer reasons aloud. Later, he instructs the child labourers to say they are 18 years old, if someone asks them.  The incident featured in the skit organized on Monday.  And the actors were non other than the children who have been through similar situations in their live: they are underage workers and street children.  The skit was a part of a programme organized on the occasion of Anti-Child Labour Day by the Church of North India Social Service Institute. Later, a candle march was taken out in which the 50-odd children, all in the age group of 8 to 16, took part.  The march was organized to raise awareness about this malaise that is so prevalent across the country, it seems normal to many of us. Ravi is a boy who played the employer’s role in the skit. He says he is sixteen but looks a couple of years younger than that.  Is it the deja vu from the skit? “No, I swear I am sixteen,” he says talking to this correspondent. Ravi sells bottled water at the railway station and makes about Rs. 200 a day. “But I have to give Rs.150 of to cops and other bullies. I get to keep the rest,” he says and adds there are younger boys who also work at the station. They do anything from selling gutkha and cigarettes surreptitiously to polishing shoes and scrubbing and sweeping the floor of the railway coaches. Ravi says most of them work voluntarily to support their families. Or themselves, if they are runaways. “There are many kids whose father blows away all the money on booze or drugs. What will they do to survive?” he asks. In some cases, they resort to drastic measures. Take the case of another boy called Baban(name changed). He fakes a limp or blindness and begs near bars. “We don’t have a lot of choice,” Ravi says, stating the obvious.  He says working at the railway station is not everyone’s cup of tea. “You got to be tough. You can’t be bullied. You have to survive the initial days when the bigger boys don’t let you work in their area. The cops too throw out any new face they see.  I had to survive all that because I didn’t  want to go back to my hometown. I earn much more here,” Ravi explains with clinical wisdom that bellies his age.  He also tells about the times he was in the remand home.  “I am not scared of going there anymore.  The cops bail us out themselves after some days,” he says.  Thanks to their hard life, many boys often seek comfort in the numbness of addictions. Ravi himself was addicted to whitener for two years. “I had saved up Rs. 10,000 over the past five years. I had to spend half of that in the last couple of months after I got really sick. But I have kicked the habit now. And I tell other boys to give it up too,” he tells earnestly.  Ravi , who dropped out after class V11, says he wants to study now and pass his class X. His father has promised him a job as gangman in the railways if he matriculates. “I’ll do it,” Ravi says.  He then bounds away and disappears into the candle march organized to protest child labour. Tomorrow, he will go back to work again.  

(Source: Times of India-1/4/2007)