Children’s Day – do children really matter

Children’s Day is celebrated in India on the occasion of the birthday of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the country – he was fond of children, hence the tribute to him. It was celebrated for the first time in 1954 and has continued. On this occasion, children hog the limelight but, only those who matter – in fact, while schools join in the celebrations and cities take this opportunity to promote various events focused to better the lot of the children, no one bothers about the multitude of neglected children. At times, a handful of them are selected from slums to provide photo ops for people who matter.
Just imagine children who have never tasted the joys of childhood – they toil in menial jobs to earn morsels of food. They are there in hotels and restaurants as dish washers and waiters, they are there in firecracker factories, they beg on the streets, they turn rag pickers and drug peddlers. Many of the have been born on the streets, many have been driven to the streets due to poverty, many have been discarded at birth.
There is no dearth of Fagins in this world – they control the huge empire of beggars. They engage children and, do not hesitate to even maim them to earn the sympathy of passersby. Many of them can be seen in temples and religious places and they not just beg but also steal items like purses, handbags, and mobile phones.
During annual Haj, beggars go to Mecca – it seems they earn thousands by begging from pilgrims who go for the holy Haj. The situation in the firecrackers factories in Andhra Pradesh is pathetic – they employ child labor and children as young as five who are known to mix sodium and nitrate with their own hands. Accidents are quite common and the deaths have no effect on the practice of using child labor because it comes cheap. Moreover, full families work together so that they earn a decent sum for survival.
Another section of children go to work as domestic helps – while many of them remain in their own neighborhoods, others venture out to other distant cities. Many of them land in trouble either at their place of work or get hijacked into prostitution. An example is that of a 15-yeat-old girl of Jharkhand – she worked as a domestic help in a Vasant Kunj home and was very badly injured and rescued by a joint team of an NGO and police. The police have arrested a 50-year-old woman who works at a private company in Noida and who had inflicted the injuries. She has been charged with assault and illegal confinement.
And then, of course, there is the rampant sexual exploitation of children – they fall easy prey to the evil minded and are forced into such relationships because of the need to survive. Those who are born on the streets need to have a roof above their heads and what better option than to team up with another person. The relationships are fragile but, so are relationships in the civilized world! It’s all about existence.