The Hindu : Frail bodies forced to do hard labour for little pay

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 26, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Frail bodies forced to do hard labour for little pay

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE Feb. 25. When dreams die young, courage soldiers on. It doesn't matter if the bodies are frail and the voices squeaky.

On Tuesday, these little `soldiers' proved just how much of a spark to learn burned inside each of them. Two hundred girls from all the districts in the State, some as young as seven or eight, recounted how they worked up to 14-hour days in horrific conditions, with no food or rest and little pay.

Sickly-thin Prema said she had studied till the third standard. She wanted to study, but her mother made her work in a silk-weaving factory. A fatherless child, she got no pay as "I was only learning the skill (to draw out cocoons)".

There were other similar tales. Rangamma and Savithri from Raichur used to clean cotton. According to the Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL), an umbrella of NGOs working against child labour, in Raichur, cotton farms employ 50 to 60 children for an acre. "Little girls are in demand because of their small and smooth hands," Girish, CACL member, explained.

The girls touched the pods sprayed with pesticides. Naturally, some of the poison was ingested, the CACL members pointed out.

Ratna, a teenager from Gubbi village near Tumkur, said she used to work in an iron ore mine. Younger, smaller children dug out the rock. "They spend hours inside and fall ill often," she said. Another child said she used to work at a famous chilly market in Byadagi in Haveri District.

Each child was matter-of-fact about her history, but painfully shy. The CACL members had to prod them into revealing more so that the Health and Family Welfare Department officials in the audience could hear.

Most of the girls at the child labour meet had been rehabilitated by NGOs at one time or the other. In fact, some stories, like Bindu's, shone with hope. Two years ago, the child was a servant in the house of a Kannada film star here. She was beaten often. But Makkala Sahayavani went to her rescue. Now Bindu is with an NGO and will write her seventh standard exams this year.

With a little luck, Prema and the other children too will go back to school.

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