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STREET
CHILDREN

HIS NAME BS TODAY
“We are guilty of many errors and many faults,
but our worst crime is abandoning the children,
neglecting the fountain of life.
Many of the things we need can wait.
The child cannot wait.

Right now is the time his bones are being formed,
his blood is being made and his senses are
being developed.

To him we cannot answer “Tomorrow”.
His name is “Today”.”
GABRIELA MISTRAL
Noble Prize Winning Poet from Chile

1 i

REFUGEES FROM BROKEN
HOMES

Salim, Vijay and Maya represent the
hundreds of street children in India and of
the millions in the world. There are no
accurate estimates of the number of
street children in India. According to
UNICEF there are 31 million street
children in the world.

n-iA ••

WHO ARE THESE

Salim cannot remember a happy home
where there was laughter and happiness.
He can recall times of hunger, beatings
and forced work. Ten year old Salim is a
new entrant to Delhi. It is little over a year
since he ran off from home. If you ask him
about home and why he ran away, he becomes pensive, his eyes become
troubled and you feel you should not have
asked. Salim revealed that when he was
around five his father went away and
never returned. His mother married
again, he has a younger brother, one step
brother and sister. Salim never went to
school he was forced to work at a cycle
repair shop. He does not know how much
he earned, his step-father collected the
wages. Salim said "there was never
enough to eat; I was always hungry. My
step father drinks and he then starts beat­
ing me and my mother. One day he hit me
so much that I fainted. My mother kept
crying and saying why don’t you go away.
A week later I boarded a train and I did not
know where it was going. My only thought
was of getting away from home. It brought
me to Delhi".

STREET CHILDREN?

Vijay is thirteen years old and he has
been hanging around Victoria station at
Bombay for four years.

S3

He ran off from home because of con­
stant beatings for not earning enough. He
says "all of us at home used to work, my
mother, father, brothers, myself and my
sisters. Yet, there was not enough to eat,
or buy new clothes, or repair our hut. My
father and mother used to constantly
quarrel and we children used to get
beaten up". One day Vijay bought a toy to
play with. When his father saw that he had
spent money on a toy instead of giving
him all the earnings, he thrashed him. For
Vijay that was the last straw, he left home
never to return.

Maya’s mother was forced to leave her
home when her husband married for the
second time. She was told in no uncertain
terms that she must leave the place. The
mother and her five year old daughter
took a train to Bhubaneshwar with no
plans as to what they would do at
Bhubaneshwar. Their future was very
bleak. The mother being unskilled and il­
literate there wasn’t any choice. They
have been staying at the station for the
past three years.

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Rs. 10/- to 15/-. Salim and his friends go
on their rounds as early as 3 a.m. in the
morning and the day’s work is finished by
noon. Sometimes they start their work in
the evenings. It all depends on their
moods. Quite often Salim is caught by the
police and taken to the police station on
the assumption that he has stolen some­
thing. He is cross-examined, often beaten
and asked to empty his pockets. Twice he
was arrested and sent to the Children’s
Home, from where he ran off.

Salim sleeps at one of the busiest bus
stations in Delhi. He and his four com­
panions have been sleeping at this bus
station for the past one year. They collect
scrap, specially plastics and bottles. Their
only possession is a huge gunny bag and
the tatered clothes on their back. Salim
has an old canvas shoe on one foot and
a half torn leather shoe on the other.

They spend about eight hours every
day picking scrap and they earn about

I?

Vijay’s experience is similar. He sleeps
outside the station and works as an un­
licensed coolie. He too works for eight to
ten hours and earns about Rs. 25/- to 30/a day. It is easy to identify these coolie
boys as they have a piece of cloth/towel
slung over their shoulder which is used as
a protection for their head while they carry
luggage. The towel has multipurpose use
for the boy - it is used as a pillow, shawl,
wrap and as a towel. According to him he
must have all his senses round him to
sense when and where there is danger.
By now he knows when the police are on
their beat, during those hours he disap­
pears from the station or else he would be
caught by the police, taken to a police sta­
tion beaten up and finally land in a
Children’s Home. He too has run off from

a Children’s Home thrice before. He
keeps the railway police happy by giving
them their hafta (weekly bribe) and some­
times doing odd jobs such as washing
their clothes, doing errands etc. For Vijay,
life on the street is harsh, difficult and full
of danger. He says within a couple of
months, a child learns to cope up with life
on the street. The most vulnerable time
for a child is when he/she is sick and
during harsh weather conditions such as
winter and monsoons. It has been ob­
served that quite a few children in Delhi
go to Bombay during winter and children
from there come to Delhi during mon­
soons.

At times of sickness they usually go to
a chemist and buy medicines off the
counter on the advise of the chemist.
They very rarely go to a doctor or visit a
hospital. The street children feel they will
not be welcome and the doctors will not
attend to them as they are poor and dirty
looking.

U

I17m : S

The children spend all their money on
food, seeing movies, smoking and gam­
bling. The children are also enticed by
adults to spend money on drinks and
gambling, knowing very well that the child
will lose his money on cards and won’t be
able to drink much. Most of the children
do not have any money at the end of the
day, because it usually gets stolen or
older boys forcefully snatch it off. Drug
peddlers befriend vulnerable kids and en­
tice them into taking drugs which finally
results in them becoming drug addicts
and sometimes even forced to push
drugs. If a child is strong he/she is able to
withstand the pressure, or if he/she is
lucky to get help in time, they survive.
Otherwise the child dies a slow death un­
noticed, forgotten.
For Salim and Vijay, just as it is for most
of the street children life on the streets has
made them mature far beyond their
years, they are independent but vul­
nerable. Freedom is their greatest
treasure along with economic inde­
pendence. In their words - "I can eat what
I want and’ as much as I want, take rest
when I like it, work when I need to. Move
around, go places".

Imq

GIRLS
ON
TOE STREET
The life of a street girl is as difficult as of
a boy. But she is more vulnerable than a
boy because of her gender. Her life on the
street is twice more exploitative and op­
pressive than of a boy.

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When she is very small she tries to get
away from being singled out by dressing
as a boy. Street girl’s freedom comes to
an end by the time she is 10 years old. In­
dependence and freedom are the two
things treasured most by these children
but in the case of a girl it is snatched away
from her by child molesters and pimps.
She becomes a victim of prostitution. To
save themselves (as long as they can)
from this plight most often young girls at­
tach themselves to single women with
children.

■

E

Maya s mother found that begging was
the simplest occupation she could get
into. Maya too started io beg so that they
could earn enough to have two meals, but
it was not easy. Maya’s mother had final­
ly to sell her body so as to have a regular
income. Maya has friends at the station,
but her best friend Meena has gone away.
A man who works at the station told
Meena he would look after her and she
could stay at his place. No one has seen
Meena ever since. Maya has her mother
for protection but for how long?
While talking about her life at the station,
she said "whenever there is an inspection
we have to disappear for a day or two.
During those days we sleep out. At night
we sleep on platform one as it is safer than
platform five where strangers come at
night and disturb us. But during the day
we spend all our time on platform five".
When we asked Maya what she desired
most, she remarked, "red plastic slip­
pers".

ft

STREET CHILDREN - THERE
ARE DIFFERENT KINDS.

‘Children op the street’ are by far the
largest of the categories and consists
primarily of children engaged in a street
trade like shoe blacks, ragpickers, ven­
dors and coolies. These children still have
a home and most return to their families
at the end of each day.
‘Children of the street’ are a group that
have chosen the street as their home and
it is there that they seek a shelter,
livelihood and companionship. They
have occassional contacts with their
families.

The most vulnerable are the last
category - the abondoned children.
These children have severed all ties with
their families. They are entirely on their
own not only for material survival but also
psychological.

ALL THESE CHILDREN
HAVE SPECIAL NEEDS.

E

in/i: is

WHAT CAM WE DO FOR
THEM?

Before we even attempt to "do some­
thing" for them, we need to change our
perception of street children. We are guil­
ty of perceiving them as pests, rogues,
thieves, delinquents and parasites of our
society. We fail to recognise them as
children who have forfeited their
childhood and through their cheap labour
are subsidizing city dweller’s life. Each
one of us have a role to play to translate
our concerns into concrete actions.

E

GOVERNMENT - should first take stock
of the situation of street children, whether
they are faced with the problem or not.
They should define their polices in the
light of lessons learnt from existing ex­
perience. The emphasis should be on a
non-institutional approach, based on
street children’s life style, their needs and
aspirations. Child labour laws should ex­
tend to the informal sector in which many
street children work.
Greater attention should be given to
making existing educational program­
mes attractive and flexible enough for
street children to benefit from them.
Community Development Programmes
must be strengthened to help alleviate
poverty.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION : Existing so­
cial welfare programmes such as health,
non formal education, vocational training,
night shelters etc., should be extended to
cover this most vulnerable target group
and perhaps new ones formulated to
reach out to them.
Efforts should be made to facilitate and
promote co-operation and co-ordination
between local administration and NGOs
in programme planning.

NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISA­
TION : should share their knowledge and
experience with the government so that
successful models could be replicated at
a macro level. NGOs could collaborate
with local administration in planning, im­
plementing and evaluating programmes
for street children. Awareness creation
and advocacy on behalf of street children
is an equally important task of NGOs.
PUBLIC : Media should help to sensitise
the public on issues related to street
children, so as to bring about concerted
positive action towards their develop­
ment.

E

For further information Contact :

Written and Produced by :
RITA PANICKER for
INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SERVICES
"Prabhatara”

&

“BUTTERFLIES”

“BUTTERFLIES”
c/o Institute of Social Services
Muhammed Pur, R. K. Puram,
New Delhi - 110 066.
Telephone : 670680

1174
CM’S'

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PARVEEN NANGIA
MEDIA AID
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