Karnataka - Bangalore   

New life for rescued children

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

Happy and carefree: Children gathered in large numbers to observe World Day Against Child Labour at Bal Bhavan, Cubbon Park, in Bangalore on Thursday.

Bangalore: It was less than two years ago when Satish Kumar, now 15, wielded a gun and roamed the forests of Chhattisgarh. He was then recruited by the controversial Salwa Judum, the Government-sponsored counter-insurgency band of the State.

“We were trained to press the trigger, but did not know how to aim,” said the young boy who is now in Bangalore and studies in Born Free Art School. He was among the hundreds of children who were at the Bal Bhavan to participate in the World Day Against Child Labour on Thursday.

Satish was found by John Devaraj, the founder of Born Free School, who had then gone to conduct a UNICEF-sponsored workshop at Chhattisgarh. The boy now attends school, besides learning sculpture and dance. Satish hopes to hold an exhibition of his sculptures soon.

Gaja, another child who participated in the event at Bal Bhavan, is a seven-year-old from Bihar. He was brought by “the Seth”, as he calls his former employer, to stitch bags in a factory in Kalasipalyam. “We were about 20 of us. The Seth did not even feed us properly. The others ran away, but I was stranded on a railway platform,” recalled Gaja, who is now studying in school.

Hundreds of children who had come to attend the function seemed to be having a good time running around the sprawling Cubbon Park, despite an announcement from the dais asking them to keep silent. There was lunch followed by a free ride in a train.

The function was a brief affair, with the newly sworn-in Labour Minister Bacche Gowda in a hurry to attend a Cabinet meeting. The Minister restated that the Karnataka Government would make an all-out effort to keep the 2012 deadline for eradicating child labour, as promised in the Karnataka Action Plan on Elimination of Child Labour.

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