5.7 Million Indian Children Earn Their Bread, A Fifth Of Them In Mines
When Chandrasekhar
Reddy travelled to the northeast in 2011, the director was looking for material
for a film on forests in the region famed for its misty hills and waterfalls.
Instead, he found children as young as 5 years old working in coal mines. Horrified yet
fascinated, Reddy stayed in Meghalaya for several months, befriending the
children and their families, and slowly gaining access to the mines, many of
which are illegal.
Reddy eventually gathered
enough material for his first feature-length documentary, “Fireflies in the
Abyss”, which was released last week after it won the award for Best Film in
the Mumbai International Film Festival in February. Set in the Jaintia
Hills, the documentary shows young boys descending steep chutes — little more
than “rat holes” — with makeshift ladders to dig coal from hard rock with just
a pickaxe and a flashlight.
“The fact that
children were working in the mines came as a complete shock to me,” Reddy told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation. “So many of my
preconceived notions of what is right and wrong, the state, the law, the
police, families and relationships — they were all turned on their head, as it
is a very different world there,” he said.
The film tells the
story of Suraj, an 11-year-old boy, who was born in India of Nepali parents. He
lives with his sister and father, a miner who is drunk most of the time. His
mother is dead. Suraj desperately
wants to go to school, but is expected to work to help feed the family.
Despite a law that
bans child labour, there are 5.7 million child workers in the country aged
between five and 17, according to the International Labour Organization. The
organization estimates there are 168 million child workers globally. Activists say around a
fifth of all mine workers are children. Many work for more than 10 hours a day
in filthy conditions, exposed to coal dust, silica dust, noxious fumes and the
risk of injury or death from collapsing mines.
“Fear won’t get any
work done; you need to give up worrying for your life… But if you die here,
it’s a dog’s death,” said one of the young boys with Suraj.
In Meghalaya, which
means “abode of clouds” in Sanskrit, many workers are from Nepal
and Bangladesh. They are often trafficked with the promise of good jobs, or are
in debt bondage to powerful mine owners. In a 2012 report, the
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, an umbrella group of
charities, said children working in the mines in Jaintia Hills faced “hazardous
conditions” with no safety or social welfare measures.
While state officials
have downplayed the prevalence of child labour, the report said the presence of
rat holes indicated child workers since it was “humanly not possible for an
adult to enter those holes to extract coal”. In the end, Suraj gets
his chance at receiving an education – with the help of some friends, who also
worked in the mines. “The mine workers live
in such uncertainty, such desperation, yet there is so much camaraderie and
solidarity,” said Reddy. “Perhaps that’s what
keeps them going, and gives some of them the hope that things can change.”
- Global number of children in child labour
has declined by one third since 2000, from 246 million to 168 million
children. More than half of them, 85 million, are in hazardous work (down
from 171 million in 2000).
- Asia and the Pacific still has the
largest numbers (almost 78 million or 9.3% of child
population), but Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region
with the highest incidence of child labour (59 million, over 21%).
- There are 13 million (8.8%) of
children in child labour in Latin America and the Caribbean and
in the Middle East and North Africa there are 9.2 million (8.4%).
- Agriculture remains by far the most
important sector where child labourers can be found (98 million,
or 59%), but the problems are not negligible in services (54
million)and industry (12 million) – mostly in the informal
economy.
- Child labour among girls fell by 40% since
2000, compared to 25% for boys.
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