Children from poorer states are lured to the capital and put to work in sweatshops. In a long straight row, the boys walked slowly down a narrow lane in Seelampur market, in east Delhi's maze of congested neighbourhoods. There were some 21 of them between 10 and 14 years old. Passersby stopped and stared. The boys could have been schoolchildren following their teacher's instructions. Instead, they were victims of child labour just freed through a rescue operation.
“My brother brought me to Seelampur from Nepal,” says a scared Tojib, only 10 years old. “He went back to our village. I have been working here since five or six months. I get Rs. 2,500 a month. I work from 9 am to 5 pm.” Three rescued children nod in unison.
Seelampur market is dotted with small manufacturing units churning out toys, shoes and garments. The Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), an NGO working since 1996 on child rights, led the rescue mission. Its activists had cautiously scanned the area, spotted the child workers and then informed the Delhi police and the labour department. Operations like these are always dicey. There is the risk of getting beaten up, the children running away, news of the raid being leaked by officials, or the factory owner not turning up.
A worker of the BBA puts the children at ease, assuring them about their safety and promising they would be sent home very soon. Comforted by his words, the frightened children open up. The truth tumbles out. They were promised Rs. 2,500 a month but they hadn't got anything except Rs. 100 per week as pocket money.
“But we will get our promised money soon. I need that money. My family desperately wants money. If they send me back to my village, I will come back. I need money,” says Alam, another one of the very small boys.
Tausif, 12, is from Barielly in Uttar Pradesh. He looks deeply troubled. “I thought they were here to take us to jail. None of us understood what was happening. When the officials asked me to pack my bags and began questioning me I did not know if telling the truth would save me or put me into more trouble.” Most of the children employed in Seelampur are from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and the border villages of Nepal.
But Seelampur is just the tip of the iceberg. A shameful reality thrives in Delhi's underbelly. Fuelled by economic growth, the Indian capital has become a hub for cheap child labour. It is the prosperous middle-class which is driving this demand. Around half a million children are employed either in homes or in small factories that supply Delhi's markets with a variety of products.
Underfed and overworked the children slave in dingy factories crafting intricate zari saris, fancy slippers, shiny jewellery, plastic bags, leather purses and other such products. But perhaps the fastest growing demand is for cheap domestic workers, for young docile girls who can look after children while their upwardly mobile parents go to work, or to take care of the city's lonely, abandoned elderly. According to a study by Save the Children, there are an estimated 100,000 children working as domestic labour in Delhi, which is twice the number in other cities like Hyderabad and Kolkata.
Delhi's per capita income is three times the national average. But child labour is paid a pittance and the condition of the children is pitiable. Hiring an adult means paying around Rs. 200 a day, but a child comes for just Rs. 80 a day. Sometimes it is a one-off payment to the child's family in a distant village.
Junaid, 13, one of the children rescued from Seelampur has been working in a slipper factory since the past three months. He says he has been paid only Rs100 per week and has saved no money. He has seen only the area around his factory and doesn't know Delhi.
“I don't like it here. I even told my mother over the phone. She was quiet. When the rescuers said that I will be sent back to my village I was very happy. My only concern is that since they will ask my parents to come and get me, I don't know if they will be able to. My father has never been to Delhi. I also want to see the whole of Delhi before I go back,” he says.
Life has been full of uncertainties for Junaid. “But I buy ice cream sometimes,” he adds with a smile.
Seventeen children rescued from a slipper factory have much the same story. They worked from 11am to 11 pm which was stretched for a few more hours on most days. On Sundays they were let off at 4 pm only to resume work at 9 pm. Food was cooked by them with the help of the older boys employed in these factories. They slept on the factory floor itself.
While the children stand in one corner, scared and lost, their owner claims to be ignorant about child labour laws. “If I knew I would not have kept underage boys here,” he says, rather embarrassed. But his son intervenes aggressively. “Why don't you first go and see the conditions they live in back home,” he tells a labour department official. “At least here they don't sleep hungry. The government is doing nothing for them.”
A raid in this area is not new, say members of BBA. The NGO workers have been attacked by locals in a rescue operation earlier. “They tried to topple our car in which we had all the rescued children. They don't like such raids because the whole market is full of small manufacturing units and little children throng these factories. So they don't want us to come here,” says Archana, a BBA activist.
A rescue operation takes four to five hours. The children are taken for a medical check-up and a meeting with the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) follows. If the child is under 14, the Child Labour Act is enforced. For children below 18, the Bonded Labour Act is applicable.
The rescued children are then sent to Mukti Ashram, BBA's welfare centre in Burari, in north Delhi. The parents of these children are informed and asked to take them back. Once the parents come they are handed Rs. 20,000 – the fine paid by the owner. The whole process takes around 15 days.
“We can keep the child in the welfare home (ashram) if the parent agrees,” says Rakesh Sengar, Country Head of Rescue and Raid Operations, BBA.
Out of the 21 children rescued only one or two wanted to stay back in Delhi.
“The problem is we don't know how many rescued children are again pushed back into the city to work under the same horrific conditions. We have our local activists who try to keep a check on the children who return to their villages. But activists alone cannot do anything. Unless we take strict measures, the flooding of child labour into the city will never see an end,” says an NGO worker.
The labour market: Battling threats and physical violence is routine for workers of the BBA. Kailash Satyarthi, who heads this NGO, has been injured many times while trying to rescue children from the clutches of their employers. An armed guard sits outside his small office in south Delhi's Kalkaji colony.
It isn't only factories and households which employ children, he says. You can see children working in restaurants, dhabas, as rag-pickers, street vendors and beggars. “Of the 500,000 working children in Delhi, we estimate that 50,000 are street children. They are not regular child labourers as many of them don't have employers but they work as street vendors selling small items which don't belong to them. They work for someone else irregularly. These children have to feed themselves,” says Satyarthi.
Young girls between 14 to 16 years of age are thrown into the flesh trade or to work in massage parlours and beauty parlours.
“If you go to the outskirts of the city you will find children working in hazardous industries. They are handling old, used batteries, computer parts, toxic chemicals, dyes, chemicals and so on,” says Satyarthi. “The most disgraceful thing is that these children are being trafficked in a planned way from certain poorer parts of India. Most of them are lured from Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.”
All child labour is trafficked, he says. The decision to send a child to work is always taken by the parents. Vulnerable children have no choice but to obey.
Jharkhand is the main source of domestic child labour. Girls are trafficked for prostitution from Midnapore and the 24-Parganas in West Bengal and from parts of Nepal. Children who you see begging in Delhi are mainly brought from the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer belt in Rajasthan. The zari industry employs over 100,000 children from Bihar – from Madhupura, Samastipur, Darbhanga and Madhubani and some from West Bengal. Jewellers get children from West Bengal and leatherware units from UP, Bihar and Nepal. Children in the leather units are mostly from Dalit families.
“It's a very organized nexus,” says Satyarthi, “there is the middleman, the contractor, the supplier. They have their own channels through which children can be easily brought in.”
Gold-diggers: Another rescue mission is about to begin in Karol Bagh. “Making jewellery, polishing it and inserting stones are skills found among people in West Bengal,” says Rakesh Sengar. “The jewellery industry is dominated by migrants from there. The poverty in the state works as an excuse to bring little boys here and make them work since they are the cheapest option. We have found children as young as six and seven working in this industry.”
The building in Karol Bagh looks abandoned. But climb up a dark, crumbling stairway and suddenly you walk into a room packed with boys and men making artificial jewellery and polishing gold and silver ornaments.
Sitting quietly in cramped rooms, teenage boys and children keep working rigorously. They have no mothers to listen to their complaints, no fathers to protect them and no money to go back home.
“I came here three months ago. I work round the clock. Right now I don't get any money since I am still learning the work. I haven't gone home in these three months. Back in my village I used to go to school. Since the work timings are very long I don't get any time to do anything else,” says 10-year-old Koken Mondal from a village in Hooghly in West Bengal. He looks lost. Unable to understand or speak much Hindi makes him stick to his ‘own people'. There are many like him. Some of them have been brought here by their relatives or friends of relatives.
These children are supposed to be “learning” and so they are not paid. “We provide them three meals a day, clothes and some pocket money. People back in their villages are starving to death. Once they learn the work we will start paying them money to send home or they can start their own work and earn enough money,” says one of the owners of a jewellery unit.
“You have not seen the kind of deplorable state they live in back home. The father is a farmer with a big family to feed. There is hardly enough to eat. And I at least give the boys Rs. 100 a week as pocket money. They don't need more money since they are living here with me, eating free meals. I provide them with anything else they want. We should not be the ones to get arrested,” says another angry owner.
But BBA workers have a different story to tell. The children are sent from these villages under false promises of earning money and saving the family from acute poverty. But once the child comes here he is made to work for long hours and no wages.
Most of the rooms they work in have no ventilation. Their work spaces are congested, damp and unhygienic. “You just need to raise your hand to touch the ceiling. It is that low,” says Rizwan Ali, a worker with BBA. The factory floor is converted into a dormitory at night. Four to five people sleep here after a day of hard work.
“I don't know if working in the city is good or bad. I want to earn money so that my parents have enough to eat. I used to go to school and I miss it sometimes. But I have come here to work. My mother told me that what I am doing is right, it will help the family,” says Sonu, fidgeting with the edge of his shirt. He claims to be 10 years old, but he looks frail and no more than eight.
According to Sengar, all the owners employing little children ask them to hide their age and the reason they have come to the city. They are taught to say they have just come for a vacation. This is drilled into them every day so that they don't make a mistake when the authorities arrive for a raid.
“I don't think it is right to hold us responsible. They are learning something new here. Back in their villages they would have become thieves and smugglers,” says the owner of the unit in which Sonu works.
Fact and fiction: But the excuses of the owners mask a bitter reality. Children are employed because they are much cheaper than hiring adults, more docile and easy to control. Keeping an adult means paying better salaries, giving a weekly holiday, arranging for food and so on. Little boys are the best bet.
Kailash Satyarthi works out the math. “It is estimated that Delhi's 500,000 child workers collectively earn Rs. 1 crore a day or Rs. 20 per child per day. The most a child gets paid in a day is Rs. 20. You could say this is the upper limit. Some money is spent on clothes and food by the employers. But all in all, the cost of hiring 500,000 children is not more than Rs. 1 crore a day across different units.”
If adults had been hired in place of the children they would have had to be paid at least Rs. 120 a day, which is six times more. At Rs. 6 crore a day, hiring adults would mean a monthly expenditure of Rs. 180 crore or around Rs. 2,000 crore in a year.
That is still a conservative estimate of what the child labour market in Delhi is worth. Adults would also have bargained for better wages and working conditions, a weekly holiday and other benefits.
Satyarthi says hiring adults would increase the incomes of families. “We have been arguing that if you stop these children from working they will not become street children. Instead, their employers will have to hire their parents. Instead of Rs 1 crore, they will earn Rs 6 crores. This money will be a direct cash transfer to the poor. It will enhance their economic power and their purchasing power. They will send their children to school. It will change the entire job scenario for adults,” says Satyarthi.
Children who are employed at this tender age don't remain an asset to their employers for very long. Their health breaks down. They develop TB and kidney problems. They have poor eyesight. Malnutrition is common. The children don't grow into healthy citizens. Money has to be spent on their health.
Placement agencies: Adults, for instance, could be easily employed in domestic work. Delhi has more than 2,400 illegally run placement agencies and the rise of nuclear families is fuelling demand for domestic servants. Yet it is children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Orissa, whom placement agencies are luring to fill these vacancies.
We visited placement agencies saying we were potential customers. Laxmi Domestic Maid Placement Agency in the Sakoorpur Industrial Area caters to the rich residents of Punjabi Bagh. It gets girls from Jharkhand. In its earlier avatar the agency was called Bensa Manda Tribal Welfare Society. Inside, the two-storey house is silent, dark even during the day. The address and the name of the placement agency is frequently changed. Sunita, who runs the agency, is ready with a scripted dialogue if anybody asks for an under-age girl.
“We don't keep any minor girls. The police have become very strict about child labour issues so we only keep girls above the age of 18 years,” says Sunita. Her boys, standing near her house, keep a check on every move of any visitor. Most placement agencies tend to change their address every three to four months.
Amit Domestic Servant Services is located in the bylanes of Chirag Delhi. The girls are brought from Orissa. The building looks like it would crumble. The board can be missed amidst many other boards. The agency is on the first floor but Amit, the owner, does not want to take any chances and quickly comes down to gauge his new clients.
“We used to keep under-age girls two months ago. But the police has increased its raids on placement agencies so we don't keep them anymore,” says Amit.
After a few meetings, however, he begins to sing a different tune.
“Call me tomorrow. I will try to get the girl. We don't keep them here. I will ask the broker who gets them from villages for a minor girl. Don't worry, your deal may take time but it will be done,” says Amit confidently on the phone.
Sunita, on the other hand, say she is ready to show the girls in a span of four days. The girls are not minors, she claims. “They look very young, but they are over 18. You can come and see them,” she says on the phone.
You have to pay anything between Rs. 14,000 to Rs. 19,000 for registration first. The monthly salary for a single domestic worker starts from Rs. 1,000 and goes up to Rs. 8,000 a month.
“The ones who charge a high rate know all the work. The ones who charge less are newcomers. You have to teach them,” says Sunita.
But the girl, away from her family, in the hope of earning money, does not get to see any of it. Her monthly wages have to be given to the agency.
“Both these placement agencies are notorious for selling young girls into sex slavery or for domestic work. These placement agencies have code words. The minute you use them in a conversation, they will open up immediately,” says Rizwan of BBA. The Sakoorpur area itself boasts of over 200 placement agencies. Most of them cater to the affluent areas of West Delhi. There are many such agencies spread across the city, registered under the Society Registration Act, which makes them NGOs.
“Most of these girls are overworked and abused, physically and sexually. We have seen cases where the agency owner has been raping the girl and making her pregnant thrice. There have been instances of the girls being beaten up over minor issues. Sometimes parents don't even know the whereabouts of their daughter,” says Rakesh Sengar. On paper, the placement agencies show that they are helping these tribal girls, but the reality is very different.
Banning child labour: People who hire children are violating the Child Labour Act, the Bonded Labour Act and the Right to Education Act, 2009. For children below 18, the Bonded Labour Act is applicable. For those under 14, the Child Labour Act applies. Child rights activists say there should be one law for children below 18 since the process of implementation of both laws is different.
In 2006, a campaign against child domestic labour undertaken by BBA resulted in the Delhi government declaring child domestic labour as a hazardous occupation under the Child Labour Act. There are Child Welfare Committees at state and district levels to lay down the law. There are even ‘joint task forces' in Delhi set up under the orders of the Delhi High Court following a case filed by BBA.
But nobody implements the law and there is no accountability. If agencies responsible for implementation don't do their work, they are not taken to task. After a rescue mission, it is the owner of the factory who is booked as the culprit. But the police are well aware that the factory in their midst is hiring children. They turn a blind eye. The labour department doesn't scout the city to dig out child labour. It sits pretty.
And most NGOs do not get into the messy business of rescuing children and rehabilitating them. The political will too doesn't exist, says Satyarthi – after all children below 18 don't vote. It has been left to BBA to reach out to the middle-class. In 2006, the NGO did a campaign with Delhi's numerous Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) – ‘My home is child labour free'- and it has launched one more campaign this year.
Attitudes are changing at snail's pace. Satyarthi says 10 years ago, keeping a young girl to take care of a smaller child was a status symbol. Middle-class families would take along the young domestic worker wherever they went. But now they know this is illegal. There is embarrassment at being discovered with a child domestic worker.
“The situation is worse because it has become hidden slavery,” says Satyarthi. “But at least there is embarrassment.”
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