Sunday 12 June 2011

The work hurdle between street and classroom

Asfar Hussain is eager to recite a nursery rhyme but the words slip out from his toothless little mouth. Ask him about his missing teeth and he breaks into peals of laughter as only a five-year-old can. He studies in Upper Nursery at Haji Mohammad Mohsin School and lives in a tenement in Mehendi Bagan with his parents and two brothers. His father does “fappal (chappal) ka kaam”, says the little boy.
Sitting next to him is Ruksar Khatun, a 12-year-old with a shy smile. She does not go to school, nor do her four siblings. Ruksar had attended school for two or three years earlier but then her grandfather passed away and she and her family were forced to migrate to their mulk — a place she calls Lakhisarai.
The two were among a dozen kids present at a learning centre run by CINI Asha on Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road last week as part of a project to get street children into schools. And to keep them there. The aim of the project is the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, which came into force on April 1, 2010.
At the learning centre, while some children get help with their homework, others attend “bridge courses” to get them ready for school. Then they draw, play or run around the colourfully decorated courtyard.
Gyanashruti Mukherjee of CINI Asha explained the street-to-classroom process. “Street children and school dropouts are identified through ward-wise surveys. They mostly belong to families living on the pavement and in slums. We speak to the parents about the benefits of sending children to school.”
According to her, many parents are, in fact, keen on their children getting an education. “They just need a little push. When they see that we will take the trouble of putting their kids in school and also share the initial cost of education, they usually agree,” Gyanashruti added. One of the arguments that helps convince reluctant parents is that if the child is educated, no one will be able to defraud the family.
But what about children who are working? With 1.2 crore children between 5 and 11 years economically active in India (2001 data), child labour is the biggest challenge to universal education, say NGOs. According to data given out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), this figure touched 2.6 crore in 2007. India is said to have the largest number of child labourers in the world today.
Members of NGO Save The Children say that while trying to convince parents of working children, they stress the fact that a child on an average earns Rs 20 a day or less, which does not significantly increase the family income.
Researchers are also of the opinion that remuneration for adult labour is diluted by the presence of a large child workforce, which is paid a fraction of adult wages but does almost the same work. So if all the kids go to school, their parents’ income will eventually go up. But that’s the long haul. Agencies currently working on child welfare are hamstrung by ambiguity in the very definition of “child” and “child labour”.
Sample this: While the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, defines a child as a person who has not completed 14 years of age, the Factories Act, 1948, states that a child is one who has not completed 15 years. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, described a child as any person who has not completed 18 years of age. Then there’s the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, which says a male does not reach “majority” until he is 21 and a female till she is 18.
“The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act prevents the employment of children below 14 in ‘hazardous’ occupations, which means a child can be legally employed in jobs designated non-hazardous. Then the promise of ‘free and compulsory education’ as a fundamental right to children aged between six and 14 runs hollow,” said Chittopriyo Sadhu of Save The Children at a discussion organised on Saturday, the eve of the World Day Against Child Labour, June 12.
“Whatever the various laws say, our motto is every person below 18 should be in school, which is also what the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says. And India is a signatory to that convention,” Sadhu added.
While putting street children in school is the NGO’s aim, its project officers are also working on the complete implementation of the RTE Act. One of the provisions of the act is that private and minority schools will have to admit up to a fourth of their students free of cost if they come from needy families in the neighbourhood.
But before that, each state needs to formulate the rules of implementation of the RTE Act. Eleven states have already drawn up the rules, including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. But not West Bengal. When contacted, the director of school education, Dibyen Mukherjee, told Metro: “The draft rules are being vetted by the legal department now. They should be ready in a couple of months.”
Social workers also point out that while other states included the civil society in the process of drafting the RTE rules, and even put up the draft rules on their websites for comments, there is no such transparency in the process in Bengal.
Also, while social workers are looking forward to the RTE rules, they say they didn’t find the manifestos of the parties in the just-concluded Bengal Assembly polls all that encouraging.
The 61-page manifesto of the Trinamul Congress has nearly 7,700 words, but the world “children” comes up just once, while the 2,400-odd-word manifesto of the Congress mentions “children” twice.
On the upside, Trinamul has pledged to target to reduce the dropout rate between classes I and X by 73 per cent. But the rate of school dropout is directly related to the incidence of child labour.
So, while young Ruksar is getting another shot at education and dreams of becoming a teacher, her 14-year-old brother is selling garments on a New Market pavement. He has no time for school. Or play.

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