Issues
Professional hazards of being a child
SIDDHESH INAMDAR
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With the International Day against Child Labour (June 12) just behind us, a look at a recent retrograde resolution of the Maharashtra government that lowers the age limit for child labourers to 14 again…
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The ill effects of relaxing the law can already be seen. In March, seven children died in Maharashtra’s Beed district in a firecracker factory.
Photo: Siddhesh Inamdar
The smiles are back: Rahul (in pink) and Priyanka (white) with World Vision coordinator Chhaya Ghadge.
Employment of children in hazardous industries is once again on the rise in Maharashtra after seeing a decline for four years. In a pitch-dark room, 20 boys sit around a candle, their heads bent over unfinished matchboxes. The closed windows shut out any ventilation. Some boys walk on puddles of their sweat, leaving small footprints that the outside light reveals whenever the door opens. This is not a matchstick factory, even if the conditions perfectly simulate those in one. This is Ganesh Vidya Mandir, a school in Mumbai’s Dharavi area. The volunteers of World Vision, a Chennai-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), have gathered kids from Dharavi to create awareness among them about child labour on the occasion of the International Day against Child Labour (June 12).
The kids’ task for the afternoon is to make five matchboxes each from the cardboard provided. Ms. Chhaya Ghadge, child development coordinator for World Vision, says, “This is an exercise in creating empathy for those kids who work in places where the worst kind of child labour can be seen.”
Creating empathy
The exercise has the desired effect on some boys. “We started feeling uncomfortable in just 10 minutes!” says Anil (16). “Now I know how some children live — maybe because someone’s mother is ill or father is dead.” Ravi, studying in class 12, talks of Sivakasi and the vulnerability of the kids working in the firecracker factories there to asthma and cancer.
However, not all the boys are able to grapple with the seriousness of the situation. A young lad sarcastically quips, “Kitni thandi hai (How cold it is)!” even as he fans himself with the lower end of his shirt. Later, some boys speak of how they “enjoyed” the session.
These boys cannot be blamed for making light of the exercise. “None of them have ever worked in such extreme conditions,” says Ms. Ghadge, “even though some work as rag pickers or tea vendors in Dharavi.” If these kids have been spared the travails of the worst kind of child labour, it is thanks to the efforts made by the Maharashtra government since 2005.
On April 18, 2005, 12-year-old Afzal Ansari died of injuries and weakness after being rescued from a zari workshop in Mumbai’s Govandi area. For a year and a half, he had worked there for 20 hours a day. The government then formed an inter-departmental working group along with the support of NGOs.
In the following weeks, the police raided sweatshops across the city and rescued more than 7,000 children. They were sent back to their homes in Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. The Railways even ran a special bogie every alternate day on its trains from Mumbai to Patna for the rescued children.
“Then on April 25, 2006,” says Mr. Santosh Shinde of Balprafulta, a child rights organisation, “the government passed a GR (government resolution) raising the age-limit from 14 to 18 to identify child labourers, in keeping with the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) of 2000. In October 2006, the ban on child labour was extended to cover even those employed at homes and restaurants.” The stated aim was to send the children to school.
Setback
“However, these measures have been reversed in the last few months after the then Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil left office,” says Mr. Shinde. “On March 2 this year, the government passed a GR that reduced the age-limit back to 14, citing the Child Labour Act of 1986. In doing so, it bypassed the JJA that was more current. They have done this to appease the employers before the elections.”
The ill effects of relaxing the law can already be seen. In March, seven children died in Maharashtra’s Beed district in a firecracker factory. On May 20, an explosion in a perfume-making unit in Dharavi killed three children. The other three injured are still at the Sion General Hospital, having suffered 80 per cent burns.
Street children Priyanka (5) and Rahul (7), who often spend their afternoons at World Vision’s daycare centre in Sion, are not aware of the fate of their counterparts. They have been tutored not even to admit that they work for a living. Hiding behind Ghadge, they confess that they collect pieces of leather from the leather market on Dharavi’s 90-feet Road.
On selling these, their fathers make Rs. 100 a day. The amount astounds Ghadge, and she jokes that she would join the two at work. In their turn, when the kids are asked what they would prefer doing, their answer is direct and clear. “Go to school,” says Priyanka as Rahul seconds her with a shy smile.
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