By Daud Arif,
“My day starts at 6 am, much earlier than other children whom I see getting ready with their uniforms and backpacks while I am cutting potatoes and onions for the Samosas that are to be prepared for the lunch break.
With varieties ready to serve, the noon hour strikes and they come in groups, my customers including children of my age, elder to me and much elder to me. I wonder the tall ones are still studying while my share of education was just limited to a period of two months. When my father passed away and I had to move to Delhi, the parting words of my mother were: now the responsibility of your three elder sisters rests on you.”
This is story of a child who works in the campus of a well-known central university in South Delhi.
Another child carries cement bags on his shoulder and is helping his parents with the construction work. He is assisting them in construction for a government school building, a place which for him is yet unknown. And he is 13.
Child labour, a grave problem, is not much talked about in various party manifestos even when they (party leaders) come out in public and speak for an inclusive development. Well, the word ‘inclusive’ seems to be misunderstood by me, since I referred the dictionary for this and not the political encyclopedia of our so called Leaders.
Why should one care to speak for them, these kids – who travel or perhaps are made to travel under situations which might bring tears to anyone’s eyes – are all aged between 6-16, and they fail to form a vote bank.
Later when these children, the future of our nation become eligible to vote at 18, they become a jingle for all the parties, since the child labour group by now is the lower income/informal sector, for which promises are made.
The Child Labour prohibition act exists, true, but ever since its implementation, no office has been set up to ensure proper registration of cases so as to even obtain statistical figure of what the situation on ground is.
What more proof do we need for the failure of this Act that at a central university in Delhi, the one who washes tea cups is a small poor child, for whom the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is just another dream!
My humble appeal is: let us ask ourselves, is it not a pity that we see these things happening right in front of us and yet we turn our faces away from it? It is not difficult, I am not asking you to join politics, nor am I asking you to go on demonstrations. All I am requesting you is to form individual groups and dedicate your time at least an hour a day to teach at least one such child, who for some reasons is not able to attend school.
After all, is that not our duty? Please do it as a responsibility and not as a favor on anyone.
And since the elections are to be announced in Delhi and I can hear woos for Wifi, development etc etc, I would want to know what our leaders have for these poor, little, innocent children, who seem to be missing in the list of their so-called inclusiveness.
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(Daud Arif is a student at the Jamia Milia Islamia and writes on social issues)