Losing their childhood in Gujarat's cotton fields By Kapil Dave.
Like most teenage girls, Ramila would love nothing more than to fret over school examinations, pine for Bollywood hunks, hang out with her friends and frolic with her eight siblings. But for this shy 14-year-old from Barna village in the Kherwara block of Rajasthan's Udaipur district, the joys of childhood are fleeting dreams.
Ramila and 10 other children from her village had left the security and comfort of their homes to work in the fields for their families' sake.
Despite her father's reservations, Ramila's mother had allowed the Met (a labour agent from her community) to take her to plant Bt cotton seeds at a plantation in Gujarat.
And if the backbreaking work wasn't hard enough, Ramila had to endure her employers' verbal abuses, vulgar gestures and unwanted sexual advances.
Ramila recounts a terrifying episode when the Met had gone back to the village for Rakshabandhan.
Her supervisor and employer had come to the sheds, where the girls slept, at midnight and asked two of the girls to step out with them.
When the girls refused to go, they entered the room hurling abuses, pulled a girl out of bed and told her to sleep on another cot. When she refused, the frustrated pair beat the young children for the next three days.
The ordeal ended only when the Met returned and was told of the beatings. Consequently, the children had to leave the farm without even receiving their wages.
Ramila is one of the lucky ones in that she managed to escape. Most children working in the fields can't. Like Bhairav, an 8-year-old boy from Rajasthan's Baswara district, who works in a farm plot near the Nokha village in Gujarat's Banaskatha district.
Due to the pesticides he handles, Bhairav has an assortment of skin and respiratory ailments. Yet, he keeps coming back. His family needs the money.
Ramila and Bhairav are two names among the thousands of migrant child-labourers, aged between six and 15 years, who are siphoned every year to the cotton plantations of north Gujarat from south Rajasthan's tribal districts through a human trafficking network.
This correspondent visited the fields in Gujarat's Banaskatha district near the Rajasthan border to observe this problem firsthand and found that despite the claims of both the Gujarat and Rajasthan governments, innocent children risk their lives in these farms every day.
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi may project his state as a peaceful one with few labour conflicts, but there are little chances of conflicts arising when a large number of labourers are children trafficked from Rajasthan.
Two prominent Rajasthan and Gujarat-based labour rights NGOs, Dakshini Rajasthan Mazdoor Union (DRMU) and Prayas Centre for Labor Research and Action (PCLRA), have claimed that Bt cottonseed production in Gujarat is now almost totally based on child labour.
DRMU project officer Sudhir Katiyar says: " According to the latest study report, 216,600 children under 18 years were employed in Gujarat's cotton farms in 2009, including 91,200 children below 14 years and 125,400 children in the 15- 18 age group." " This season of cotton farming has just started and it's ( the number of child labourers) likely to cross three lakh this year," Katiyar warns.
Priti Oza of PCLRA says: " After the issue of child labour in cottonseed farms acquired prominence in 2006- 07 because of the efforts of unions and the National Commission of Protection of Child Rights ( NCPCR), Gujarat's labour department instituted an extensive inspection regime." " However, the inspections have proved ineffective as they inform the community before raids, so nobody gets caught. Now, the farmers have barred civil society personnel from farms." " As soon as an outsider goes to farming villages, he is immediately surrounded and asked the reason behind his visit. This happened to a DMRU team in 2008," Katiyar says and adds: " The farms are owned by economically and politically powerful communities, so the government also remains silent." The activists allege that major seed companies such as Monsanto, Nuziveedu, Mahyco, Vikram, Ajit are indirectly promoting the child labour by providing low returns to cotton seed farmers.
The licence for Bt is held by Monsanto, an MNC. While MNCs have responded to child labour by initiating programmes, the Indian companies have not partnered with civil society efforts to curb child labour.
"This year, DMRU teams intercepted a number of vehicles full of children at the Gujarat- Rajasthan border and got the children released. FIRs were also filed in Rajasthan police stations. In addition, a number of surveys carried out by activists have shown a large number of children away from their homes and working in cottonseed plots," Katiyar says.
When asked about probable solutions to this problem, the activist says: " The major cause is the cheap child labour. If the government enforces the minimum wage Act and the juvenile justice Act, the situation can be improved.
"The seed companies that are sponsoring production should be held responsible for child labour and have their licences cancelled.
"We demand that the Gujarat government organises massive surprise raids to rescue children working in cotton fields without announcing the raids in advance.
"Increasing the benefits of NREGA schemes for 200 days instead of a 100 can also help control the child trafficking." The measures may help alleviate the problem but for thousands like Ramila and Bhairav, they are too little, too late.
The scars of their lost childhood run too deep.
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