|
By Rashme Arora Media attention worldwide has only forced the practice of child labour in the carpet weaving industry of UP, Jharkhand and Bihar underground. In several towns and villages that this reporter travelled to across three North Indian states, children continue to work the looms, but behind closed and guarded doors. Child labour is a fact of life say both factory-owners and parents of the children working here. If they do not work, how will they eat?
 Until a decade ago, the traditional carpet weaving industry in Mirzapur and Bhadoi in Uttar Pradesh was literally spilling out onto the streets, with weavers - many of them children -- cycling across dusty roads carrying large bundles of wool on their bikes.
The campaign against child labour has seen the entire industry go underground. Weavers now operate their looms behind huge enclosed walls covered with barbed wire and protected by security guards. No strangers are allowed entry into these zones, and when I insisted on forcing my way into one, three musclemen simply pushed me away insisting I needed permission from the bosses to go inside. Carpet weavers attribute this blanket of security to increasing Naxalite activity and overall lawlessness in eastern Uttar Pradesh. But the carpet weavers operating in villages scattered around the area offer other explanations. "The entire industry has been deliberately decentralised. Most of the work is now being done out of the neighbouring states of Jharkhand and Bihar and, as in the past, children continue to be at the forefront of this trade," says Sarju Ram, a weaver operating from a hamlet in Ramana in Jharkhand state. Sarju Ram is a fourth-generation weaver and he has no qualms about admitting that he wants his six-year-old son Laxman to enter the trade. "My entire family helps me in this trade and my son works alongside me. I am initiating him into the most intricate operations," he points out. Why has the industry moved out? Sarju gives a measured reply. "Mirzapur and Bhadoi have become the focus of media attention from around the globe. Both the state and central government also keep a strict check on the goings-on, so the seths (owners) found it simpler to give out work on a contract basis in areas where there are no checks in place." Driving through miles and miles of countryside reeling under the effects of drought is an eye-opener. In the village of Garuha in Palamu zilla, also in Jharkhand, 20 families and 50 children work at the looms. The minute they see a car entering the village, the kids scamper out of the mud huts and hide. "We are not from the government," I say reassuringly. Shamshed Khan, secretary general of the NGO CREDA is equally insistent that we have not come to take the kids away. But the villagers refuse to believe us. "There is no school in our village. If the kids do not work alongside their parents, who will feed them?" Premvati, mother of 10-year-old Hemu, demands angrily. Ram Kishan Paswan admits that until three years ago, he, his wife and four children lived in a shack outside Mirzapur. "We moved out because the industry was facing a depression. There was not enough work coming in. Many factories were forced to close down and the owners told us we would be better off working out of our village. We now work on a piece basis and are receiving Rs 800-1,500 per metre, depending on the kind of carpet we weave," says Paswan, who learnt weaving when he was brought to Bhadoi at the age of eight to learn the trade. "I worked at the loom along with 40 other kids. Since I learnt fast, I was able to do more work than the others. Happy at my progress, the malik log recently loaned me Rs 4,000 to set up my own loom," says Paswan who is presently the father of three children. Will he employ kids to work at the loom as he himself did all those years ago? He does not give a direct answer. Everyone here is suspicious. Paswan changes the subject. "The factory owners trust me and so give me work on credit. Most workers do not get work so easily," he says. Most parents believe that the government should devise a scheme where children can combine basic education with work. But wherever we go, it's the same story. The schools aren't functioning, teachers are seldom present and, in the few cases where some teaching does take place, the weavers' families are not in a position to invest in books and school uniforms. We drive across a long stretch of broken road and cross over to the village of Peepri in Jhangharpur district in Bihar. In Peepri, 35 children work at a carpet factory owned by Alamgir. We succeed in gaining entry to the shed because our escort, Romesh, who himself worked as a child weaver in the village of Handia in Allahabad district way back in 1993, belongs to this area. He was rescued by Kailash Satyarthi of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, a joint NGO initiative against bonded labour and child servitude in India. Romesh, who today devotes his life to rescuing bonded child labourers, says: "Every year, I succeed in freeing over 50-60 kids, but I do this with the consent of their guardians. After the kids are freed they receive Rs 1,400 from the Indira Awas Child Labour Fund. This money should be used to help educate them, but it seldom is. I recently did a survey in Garwha zilla in east Uttar Pradesh where we discovered that between 1999 and 2000, more than 1,500 kids disappeared from their homes. Obviously, these children are being taken to different parts of the country to work as child labourers." Raman, a boy of 13 working at a loom, admits he has been working the loom for the past two years. "I was brought here by Salim Dada who promised my father I would work for a big export house and be paid Rs 3,000 a month. I work from 5 am to 4 pm with a one-hour break for lunch, and am paid Rs 1,000 per month," he says. Raman was allowed to visit his parents for just one week last year. Before he left, the owners paid him 60% of his dues. Shamshad Khan has worked closely with Satyarthi and another activist Champa Srivastava in the past. But all three have now set up independent NGOs. Khan admits that the whole child labour issue has been pushed underground and hesitates to make any guesses about the number of kids involved in the trade. "There are 10 lakh weavers operating in this area both in the carpet and textile weaving industries. Almost half the number employed could well be young and teenaged kids," says Khan. We drive past the villages of Jamua, Jamoi, Koria, Paleha and Durban. Our next halt is a village in Bihar's Madhepur block. The children here are not only employed in the carpet weaving industry, but also in the Benarasi silk industry. They also roll dry tendu leaves into bidis. When questioned about the continued presence of child labour in the carpet trade, Edward Oakley, the elderly British chartered accountant turned director at one of Mirzapur's largest carpet export houses OBT-Ink says: "The reputation of our entire carpet industry has been clouded by the unwarranted exaggeration about child labour. This is especially true in the UK, the US and Germany. Our business has been greatly affected and many exporters have gone out of business." VP Sharma, vice-chairman of the All India Carpet Export Promotion Council, is equally critical about what he describes as the exaggerated claims of some NGOs regarding the number of kids employed in the carpet trade. The NGOs here claim there are 6 million children employed as child labour, of which nearly 1 million work in the carpet industry. Sharma dismisses these claims as patently false. When we describe our experiences of the past two days, Sharma says: "Child labour is a fact of life. But the majority of kids in Bihar and Jharkhand are working in looms which belong to their families." He quotes a survey done by the National Council for Applied Research, which confirms that the kids are not working in sweat shops but in factory conditions where they are paid by piece rates and not on a daily basis. The industries where kids are suffering are quarrying, brick kiln, stone crushing and fireworks. These are the industries that must be looked into, Sharma claims. Mirzapur's district commissioner Amrit Abhijit is equally loquacious about the kind of rehabilitation work that the government has set in motion for kids working in this trade. "We have started several district primary education centres under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme to try and get these kids into the mainstream," says Abhijit. He adds that there has been a rethink within the government about removing the label 'child labour'. "We have now started a programme titled National Child Labour Scheme where kids are trained under master craftsmen, thereby allowing them to acquire a variety of skills along with being provided an education," he says. Abhijit is speaking the same language as thousands of kids and their parents in the region. Parents point out that their kids receive no education, and that while they are learning the skills they are being forced to do so in conditions of poverty. (InfoChange News & Features, June 2003)
|
