| FTC-India is carrying out its tireless crusade against child rights
violation across the country. But, for those of you who don't know enough
of it, India has one billion people, roughly one-third are below the
poverty line. Imagine, Uttar Pradesh one of the 26 states of India, could
be the 8th most populated country in the world!
There are 14 scheduled
languages, thousands of local languages and lakhs of dialects, each are as
different from the other as Chinese and English. The biggest democracy in
the world has enormous problems.
Here are snapshot views of the areas
of child rights violation, which came to our notice, but are yet to be
tackled. |
Serving from the
oven:
Glass bangles are a
favourite of the country women. Seven year old Renu (End right in
pix), gives them shape and glare, taking them in and out of the oven
for 11-12 hours everyday.
She is not alone. There are 60,000
more, mostly girls, working at hundreds of bangles
manufacturing
units at Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh, for just Rs.10 a day. Her
fingers are burnt.
Bangles sell like hotcakes. |
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The Spectacles of doom:
Munsirhat
in Howrah district of West Bengal is a large area where spectacles
are made. There are 50 such units, most of them unlicensed.
Ten
year old Hakim Sheikh has been working here (Left in pix) for the
last three years. For hours he handles varieties of acids and
chemicals and inhales poisonous gas, fumes and dust gushing out of
the glass grinding machines. He is one of those 6,000 children,
mostly from Muslim families, employed illegally. Muslim personal law
allows men to divorce their wives at the drop of a hat. Men remarry.
Hakims' support their single mothers. |
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Economics:
Sari is a piece of cloth beautifully
worn by Indian women. A nicely decorated Sari with jari (a plated
fibre) work is priced over Rs 12,000 and is a must as a bride's
costume.
Howrah district of West Bengal thrives on the handicraft
of jari work. Each piece takes at least six months to be
finished. Growing competition drives the owners of knitting centres
to keep margins as low as Rs.1,500 on each. Naturally, for them
children - working in thousands in this trade across the district -
are the best bait. The reason is simple. Only Rs.30 is paid to a
child per month! |
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Its Life:
Find them thronging on the streets
of bustling cities. Life lies in the dump of wastes for these
thousands of little rag-pickers across the country.
The bigger the city, more are they
in number. The hunting ground ranges from dustbins to hospital
dump-yards.Nothing is untouchable. From plastic to metals, old
batteries and used surgical gloves, whatever is recyclable has its
own value to them. The collection is paid for a few bucks and the
cruelest of the diseases. Common are tuberculosis and skin diseases. |
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A Battery of Child:
Children are never
unemployed! Once collected, there is a different set working for
segregation and assembling of different kinds of wastes, plastics,
paper, jute, rubber, metal, glass, cotton and so on. Separating
carbon-lead from used batteries is one of the commonest trades. |
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