Sudhanshu Joshi

Bal Ashram or Children’s Rehabilitation Centre is located in Virat Nagar, Rajasthan, some 40 Kilometers outside Jaipur. This place was made legendary as the capital of Matsyadesh, the princely state surrounding the area of Jaipur, Alwar and Bharatpur, with frequent references in the Indian epic Mahabharat. Overlooking the Bal Ashram are several Mughal structures, including a Chhatri (cenotaph) with some of the earliest surviving murals in Rajasthan, and a lodge where the Mughal emperor Akbar hunted and stayed overnight on his yearly pilgrimage to Ajmer. Bal Ashram is today the home for about 90 boys who have dared to break the chains of slavery and forced work. Bal Ashram is part of the Save the Childhood Movement which is actively rescuing children from worst forms of child labor and forced labor for almost two decades and providing them rehabilitation and education through a network of partner organizations. Their activists are spread in around ten states of India where they help parents find their missing children based on preliminary information received or alternatively rescue children from particular work sites since being contacted by informants.

Muhammad Manan Ansari hails from Koderma in Jharkhand state of India. He was forced in to mica mining from his early childhood when he was only 8 or 9 years old. Today he estimates his age to be around 13-14 years. There is no proper recording of the births in India so it is difficult to know the correct age of children. Muhammad was amongst four brothers and three sisters in the family. They never went to school and were all involved in mining mica. No one in his community ever attended school as the primary school happened to be insurgency infested and was unsafe. The entire community was poor and had to struggle every day to earn some measure of food security picking mica. Mica is shiny material whose many uses includes putting the sparkle into make-up and exported worldwide to the global cosmetic industry. In addition it is used in cement, paint, plastics, well-drilling fluids, in electronics and electrical components. Children exposed to work in these conditions for long hours in pits of 4-8 feet deep suffer from predominantly Silicosis, Tuberculosis, Eosinophilia, cough, stomachaches and skin rashes. Working 8-12 hours the family made enough (Rs 30-40 or equivalent of US $ 1) to get food. For over two years Muhammad worked with his siblings. He was rescued by the activists of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA or Save the Childhood Foundation).

In his community children of the ‘bigger people’ or rich as he explained attended school and for the poor the vast open land was the place to toil - mining mica. They were excluded from the mainstream of society and did not even dream of ever stepping in to the schools. Schools were meant for the upper castes or the higher caste people. Poor people have no ‘entitlement’ to receive education. When this question is posed to the excluded groups in villages in the neighbourhood the answer is straight ‘we are too poor’ then their eyes appear to blank and look upwards to the vast sky, as if imploring their destiny. Some elders tell us in matter of fact tone ‘education is not for us, we do not want to dream about sending our children to schools’. The quality of education has remained a factor in lack of enthusiasm to sending children to schools. Not only the curriculum is seen as irrelevant but schools have become in many situation institutionalized instruments to perpetuate inequality.

As in the case of Muhammad, the days they could not mine there was nothing to eat. He explained that it took a lot of convincing by the activists of the organization with his parents to allow Muhammad to attend full time school. He felt somewhat strange sitting in the classroom with younger boys but he did over come that, ‘in the beginning I could not read, so I studied with some one in my village’. Here once admitted Muhammad received private help from the teacher in the village and also at his school to directly enter Grade 3. The preparatory studies facilitated for him by BBA enabled him navigate through the coursework for the loss of studies in previous grades. The school was about one and a half mile from his village. However the school in the village was not good enough and so the activists of the Rehabilitation Center brought him to Viratnagar, Rajasthan. In this centre he found friends who came from similar background. He has time to play and study, do community service and inspire other out of school children to attend full time schools. He is in Eight Grade now in the middle school at Viratnagar. He scored above 80% marks in Seventh Grade. Muhammad aims now to become a Doctor. He knows clearly that he has to do well in Math and Science subjects to realize his dreams. He explains now that all his brothers and sisters do attend school. His elder brother was able to go to Delhi to find work and is able to send money home. This compensates for the loss of income to meet the family needs.

In his village in the meanwhile his sisters are now studying in 8th and 9th grade, brothers are studying in 4th and 5th grade, the children in the community all go to school the situation in the villages has vastly improved and the children are not going to work in the mica mining. A lot of outsiders have come to the village to find out about the condition of the children. The organization ‘Save the Childhood Movement’ has undertaken intensive ‘Jan Samparc’ or power of persuasion at all levels of community, caste and faith leaders to motivate all children to attend full time schools. It launched a local group of children to interact with the elected village level leadership managing the affairs of the Village to ensure that every child of school going age is registered in the primary School, that there is no child working either at home, fields, or herding animals. This group is called the ‘Bal Panchayat’ or the Children’s Committee that interacts with the village elders to ensure that children receive priority and due attention in the agenda of the village level affairs. Every house in the village has to commit and ensure that children are in schools and then they get a sticker of ‘child labor free home’, slowly they have been able to declare the entire village of Muhammad as ‘Child Friendly Village’. The emphasis being how to ensure that the children are able to complete their primary school and go to the middle school, this has become the focus of the Village Elders Committee through its interaction with the Bal Panchayat or the Children's Committee.

Muhammad has traveled to Geneva, Switzerland as the representative of the millions of children who were working as child labourers. He travelled to speak at the 10th anniversary celebrations of the ILO Convention 182 which seeks to bring all children out of hazardous work. He knows well the power of education and looks back on the years that he lost toiling in the mica mining fields. All of this required the persuasion of the field activists of the Save the Childhood Movement and to give the opportunity to the poor to believe in themselves that being poor is no handicap to dream their children can attend schools. Muhammad’s message to the world leaders was simple ‘can we commit to create a ‘Child Friendly Village’ and a ‘Child Friendly global community’ that ensures every child receives free good quality compulsory education and the right to have a good quality trained teacher in every village. Muhammad is here with Arvind Kumar, age 11 years who has been at the rehabilitation center for three years now and was sold by his parents to a road side restaurant, worked for two years for no wages and was given little food, regular beatings. Now he is in this rehabilitation center attending full time school and aims to become a soldier. Shanker Kumar is a former rag-picker from untouchable caste. He or his other brothers and sisters never attended school as it was not even a considered option. He was earning money for bare survival in Jodhpur, Rajasthan in India rag picking for over three years, suffering bruises, cuts and injuries before being rescued. He now is in 6th standard. He has never been to his village since then and believes if some one will ever make his community believe that they can also go to school and make a good life for themselves. First time in school it was some what strange for him wearing new clothes and sitting with children older than him. He now wants to become a dancer. There is Pradeep Sen who now goes to Standard 9th. He was saved when he was kept on the altar for sacrifice to appease the gods at Ajmer, Rajasthan. Born to illiterate parents, victims of superstition they believed that Pradeep was the cause of all the evil in their lives and to the village. His head moved from its place and the sword fell on his skull instead of his neck. He lay bleeding profusely, left to die slowly as it is considered inauspicious to make second strike. He was rushed to the hospital by people who found him next morning still alive. He came to the rehabilitation center at the young age of six. There are 90 children in this rehabilitation center and each one of them an amazing story of survival. It awakens a thousand dreams of hope and indomitable spirit of human endeavour to come this far and succeed in life, where quality education is seen as liberation from structural poverty, exclusion and oppression.