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Not just tribal adults, even kids turn bonded labourers by Yogesh Pawar

Viju Diwa is barely 11. So it seems strange to see him carrying bricks on his head. “He is not a labourer here,” Kisan Mhatre, a brick kiln owner of Mharal village outside Mumbai’s far northern suburb of Kalyan protests and shouts at his father and worker Arjun, 30.

“They push their children into labour and then the government, the media and everyone comes to trouble us,” says Mhatre.

When this DNA correspondent asked Arjun why Viju isn’t going to school, Arjub said he’ll speak later when the maalak (owner) is away. Later that afternoon a relaxed Arjun laughs when we ask him question as Viju plays with a rusty cycle tyre rim near the Ulhas waters in the back ground.

“You think we don’t want to send him to school, but where do we send him?” he asks pointing out how the nearest ZP school is 10km away. “If we spend time dropping and picking him up, who will work?” asks his wife Jani, who is cooking on an open fire outside their hovel. “Maalak doesn’t like it when I even come to feed my little daughter and I have since begun putting her up in a jholi on the tree near by.”

DNA’s visits to the brick kilns following the killing of tribals who are forced to work as bonded labourers has also unearthed another horror.That of children of tribals becoming fodder for the bonded labour system. What is worse, in a cruel irony of sorts, this narrative seemingly enjoys the blessings of the Right to Education Act 2009!

From 1995, Vidhayak Sansad, an NGO, had tried to break this age-old vicious cycle by starting bhonga shaala to provide education to children from the mushrooming brick kilns in Thane district.In the local dialect ‘bhonga’ means temporary hut and ‘shaala’ is school.

What began with five bhonga shalas in 1995 in two blocks of the district eventually soon became a big demand from the tribals who saw this as a way out for their children. “With support from the state’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, we ran as many as 250 such centres in 7 blocks of Thane district. These catered to more than 5,000 children from the brick kilns. They ensured that education continued despite migration. For the entire brick kiln season (December to May) primary level (standard I-IV) education was provided at the kiln site through these centres,” explains activist Vivek Pandit of Vidhayak Sansad.

“The syllabus covered was the same as mainstream schools but recognizing their special needs and circumstances children were taught in a non-formal, open atmosphere, using songs, dance and play-activities. That is what made the other wise reticent adivasi children flock to these schools.”

But after the Right to Education Act 2009, the government felt centres like bhonga shaalas were duplicating government schemes. “We had heard about this from our Mantralaya sources. It was conveyed to us formally on October 15, 2010 by the state project director, Maharashtra Primary Education Council,” recounts Pandit.

The letter, a copy of which is with DNA, says the children will all be absorbed into regular ZP schools. “Despite our misgivings we felt the government must have thought of some strategy and in accordance shut all bhonga shaalas,” says Balu Valvi, one of the volunteer-teachers at such a school.

A year later, in November 2011, a survey by Vidhayak Sansadin the same blocks has revealed that little Viju is not alone in his plight. Out of the 339 children (in the age group 6-14) of tribals from 28 villages who had migrated, the survey showed that only 47 were going to school while the remainder had dropped out. “Over 80% of these children are from the age group 6-8, showing how the kids were dropping out at as young as Class I and II,” says Balaram Bhoir of the organization who worked on the survey and adds, “what is particularly worrying is that nearly 58% are girls among these drop-outs.”

The survey, in many ways, is a sad commentary on how serious the state is about investment in its future citizens. While access was the most common response for the reason to drop-out, the second most common was the non-availability of learning materials and teachers. “They said they just keep sitting in the class and become the butt of ridicule from the upper castes and non-tribal students with no one to even organise discipline the students or organise games or other activities,” says Bhoir.