“There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they can grow up in peace.”  — Kofi Annan

Nagpur, May 1990- Someone knocked on the gate asking to enter. From the cool comfort of my study, I could see that it was a child. I called him in, but he refused, saying he had a lot of work to finish. Slight in stature, with an earnest look in his eyes, he asked me to try his savouries. I bought two packets. He asked for a glass of water, and also ate the biscuits I offered him. I noticed his bare feet. Summer heat in Nagpur is close to unbearable. How could a child walk around this way? I offered him a pair of slippers, which he took after some hesitation. He told me he was helping his mother make both ends meet by going door to door selling the savouries she made. He went to school at noon, so he tried to make the most of the mornings, he said. His father had passed away three years ago and it had been a struggle to keep body and soul together with the meagre amount that such a home based business offered in return to the tedious nature of the work involved.

Later that year, when I went to study in TISS, I learnt more about the status of children in our country. Little ones begging at the door were sometimes seen in my hometown, but nothing could prepare me for the numerous little boys and girls, making their way through the already crowded ladies compartments, at places of tourist interest or weaving in and out of traffic in Mumbai, trying to sell flowers or other trinkets, or sometimes, just begging. The sheer numbers made them stand out in the landscape.

A few years on, when work took me to places in the interiors of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, I could not but help notice the rising presence of children on the streets of urban and semi-urban places, selling things, begging, or just wandering around.

A training manual that I assisted with in compiling and editing, in the year 2008-09, gave me some idea about the magnitude of the issue, and the subsequent trainings that we conducted all over the country for those who train frontline workers was nothing short of an eye-opener. Child rights as a concept was not familiar to many among the general public, and because of this very ignorance, even the most basic among the rights of children were being blatantly violated.

Speaking to heads of organizations that work for children, and coordinators of Childline, which works across the country for the rescue and rehabilitation of the children, brought out stories upon stories, of helpless children being trapped in situations where they were neglected by their caretakers and shunned by the authorities who are supposed to uphold the rights of the citizens. For the children, it was like being thrown back and forth from the metaphorical frying pan and the fire.

In the endeavour of training the trainers, we as facilitators learnt valuable but chilling lessons about the ground reality in each state and region of India.

Rural unemployment, migration, internal security related issues, trafficking, natural disasters and preventable tragedies like maternal deaths, were the complex variables underlying the overt symptoms that presented as homeless and working children.

What are the events that make people homeless? What happens to the inherent dignity of a person, adult or child, when they are stripped of the basics like shelter, food and clothing? What might be the depth of the humiliation of being harassed by someone in authority when one is at one’s most helpless? What are we, as a society responsible for, when it comes to ensuring the wellbeing of the most vulnerable among us? What, if any is an individual’s responsibility in the scheme of things?

We have sophisticated systems in our hyper- connected world for everything. Can we use the knowledge we have gained in the process of simplifying communication and other lifestyle-related issues, adapt it and apply it to reach out to the most vulnerable among us? Can we maximise the potential of every tool within our reach to address the cause of our children who need our intervention now?

Can we look back, learn from the past and make a roadmap for change, beginning with speaking about it, and spreading the word, through channels of communication easily available to us so that more of us become aware and thus, empowered to become catalysts?