It is like an illegality repeated hundreds of thousands of times. Jammu and Kashmir has 2.5 lakh children working to earn a living. Syed Asma reports about the unethical and illegal practice of child labour.
Bisma, a 10 year-old-girl from Budgam, is living with a strange family far from her home. She works as a babysitter for a one-year-old child in Srinagar.
Bisma is one among the thousands of children in Kashmir whose childhood is lost to earning a livelihood. Poverty or absence of any of the parents (or both) leaves these children with no option but to start earning for themselves at a very tender age.
A recently released book by Dr Fayaz Ahmed, Child Labor in Jammu and Kashmir, claims that almost “a quarter of a million children” are working to survive in Jammu and Kashmir.
Sociologists say that different children have different reasons to work for a livelihood. One of them is the behavior of their stepparents or their families, they said, adding, some of the children are even disowned by their families.
Bisma’s parents parted ways some years back. After divorce both of them remarried and are presently taking care of their new families. However, none of them took care of their daughter. Seeing Bisma’s helplessness her aunt (mother’s sister) took Bisma in her home. The aunt’s two-member family consisted of herself and her daughter.
Bisma lived happily with them,but after few months her aunt died. Her cousin (aunt’s daughter) looked after her until her marriage. Bisma was left alone as her cousin had to move into her husband’s home. Suddenly, Bisma had nowhere to go to.
Her cousin, to avoid complications in her marital life,sent her to work as a maid in a family in Srinagar. Bisma in her innocence is happy at the new place now and feels pleasure in playing with the baby she sits for.
“I have a new family now. I will not have to go to any other place. Didi (the mother of the one year-old-girl) told me if I work properly, she will keep me all my life,” says Bisma.
Manzoor, like Bisma, is a child laborer in Kashmir. He works at a dhaba (roadside restaurant) where his day starts at 5 amand ends late in the evening when the last diners in the dhaba leave. Manzoor is 16 and has been working for the past eight years.
He started to work after his father died of a prolonged illness. His mother remarried. Seeing the behavior of his stepfather, Manzoor decided to work for making his siblings’ life better. He has a brother and sister, both younger to him.
Manzoor is from Kokernag . He has never been to a school. He has been working in the dhaba for the last eight months. Earlier he was working as a domestic help. “Manzoor is a sharp learner and desperate to earn for making his siblings life better,” says Ghulam Nabi, with whose family Manzoor was working as a helper.
Manzoor earns a “suitable amount” which helps his siblings to go to school. “They should never need to ask for anything from anybody,” he says.
Fayaz’s is a similar story. His mother,who had lost her husband, remarried and shifted to her in-laws home to live with her husband and his children. She took along her lone son – Fayaz. But the behavior of her new family was not good towards her child.
“I many times skipped the meals to avoid contact with my step-father. He unnecessarily used to beat me and abuse my mother for my presence in the home,” says Fayaz, “My mother could not tolerate that and she sent me here”.
Fayaz is presently working as a domestic help with a family in Srinagar.
The two kids, both few years elder to Fayaz do not like him, he says. “The elder one at times beats me up on pretext of small mistakes which I have not committed,” says Fayaz. But he has no place to go to. Fayaz has been away from his mother for five years.
Social worker Jaleel Ahmed says that the children who work as domestic helps usually come from very poor families and most of the times there is nobody to look after them.
“The child labourers are cornered into a web of poverty and helplessness where they can’t find any exit. The government policies and laws like right to education and a ban on child labour are rendered meaningless in the absence of orphanages or support systems which could have given such underprivileged children a chance to live a dignified life,” says Ahmed.
Mohammed Sharief’s stepmother forced him to run from his home. He could not tolerate her cruel behavior. Sharief is a 15-year-old from Wangat, Kangan. He has been working since five years. He is now working as a salesman in a showroom at Goa, owned by a Kashmiri. Earlier he worked as a domestic help in a family which included an old couple.
“My stepmother once did not give me any food for many days. She told me to first earn and then ask for food,” says Sharief. For many days he unsuccessfully looked for work in his own village, he says. He moved to the city and planned to beg on the streets. Then an old couple in need of a domestic help found him. Sharief lived with them for four years.
He still pays visits to them. But none of his own family cares to visit Sharief.
Employing Children as domestic help or in any other work is strictly forbidden by law and can invite a jail term for the person employing a child below 14 years of age.
