While this is not a complete description of Bhavnagar, it is a description of certain poor sections of the city, that depend significantly on recycling and extracting components from the ‘trash’ that comes out of the ship building industry in Alang. A report from a visit to child rights work in Bhavnagar.

Along the coastline, in perhaps the most foul smelling places I have visited (and I have visited many chemical plants) where the air is acrid and makes ones eyes smart, a large settlement of mufatnagar largely earns its livelihood by reusing and extracting useful metals and materials from the debris of ship breaking.

The more ‘affluent’ warehouses – and there are many – are lined with engines, with flood lights, ceramic table ware, rubber mats, filling miles of shelf space. Smaller houses are often shacks among garbage heaps where women and children sit with hammers, beating metal parts and pulling out wires.

Others are melting random mixtures of plastics – and they are random mixtures. There is no sense of which chemistries mix, or which ones may degrade to give toxic chemicals – such discussions are luxuries these people seem not to have. They need to do this to earn a few Rupees. Hydrogen Sulfide (or the rotten egg smell) is least of ones worries. Other smells – more dangerous reminding me of carcinogenic aromatic ring structures that are a result of burning such random polymer mixtures are also present. These melts are then drawn, bleached and present in single filaments or yarns are made into ropes, woven into sacks or into ‘fabrics’.

There is certainly no starvation – but should one need to sacrifice ones lives and the health of ones children to survive? Is that not exploitation – that one creates conditions where people are willing to live in such conditions and work on such unhealthy processes to barely make a living?

Child labor is a part of life. In many cases, these contractors do not ask to employee children but provide rates and the family employees everyone it can, including children in such hazardous conditions. Many children are also directly employed by contractors in making ropes from the yarns.

Other, more ‘affluent’ venues for child labor exist in the diamond cutting industry where children are paid for every diamond they cut and make up to Rs 2500 per month (averaged over the year, though during the festive season the amount can go up to 5000).

Most of the communities working and living in these settlements are Dalits, Muslims or Tribal communities. Some are also migrant communities from MP, UP and Bihar. Given this background, exploitation has been easy and rights (in terms of minimum wages, child rights, etc) have often been neglected. Literacy rates have been very low among adults.

It is with some of these communities that Shaihav has done significant amount of work, getting children out of hazardous labour conditions, reducing their involvement in child labor and keeping them in schools, helping their learning and childhood development.

I visited three different centers in different communities. Mufatnagar is today largely a Hindu community (thanks to segregation since the 2002 riots). The only 12^th graduate is a Muslim boy who stayed in school because of his involvement with Shaishav. Today, he continues to run one of their centers. Another center, run by a young Dalit girl is in a mixed community of Hindus and Muslims.

The shelters are run in a regular manner and fulfill a number of functions for these very poor communities. For one, it is a safe place for children to play and learn – and this is not insignificant for the lives of these children. Children – as young as 4 years and upto 14 years – come to these centers during fixed times in the evening. The center located within the community is sometimes a shed, often only an open space, with access to a suitcase, or a box that has toys and games as well as learning material.

Children use this space to share stories, play games, learn about the earth, about physical and biological sciences. Children from different age groups learn different things. And they also share learnings. They put together plays and performances, and through sharing of these between centers, these children have now learnt how to articulate themselves, how to organize and work collectively, how to put forth their ideas and opinions without being bashful at all. In some centers, the children even have small funds and bank accounts are learning about money, finances and account keeping. Besides visiting three centers, I spent three hours talking with two sets of children and was impressed by their confidence and their understanding.

It was quickly obvious that Shaishav’s work is neither uni-dimensional, nor is it funding or project driven. Child labor is understood to be a problem within the larger context of our society where there is profit incentive for greater production through greater exploitation. Thus it is not enough to end child labor – it needs an end to conditions that provide for a base that can be exploited; Shaishav recognizes this. Its work is not just to get children out of labor and into schools. It also works with local, state and national governments hoping to influence policies.

In addition, it also recognizes that empowerment of these children is necessary and it has attempted to do so through organizing these children into democratic groups – bal sena – where these children learn to be confident about themselves, their ideas and their needs. They learn to work together and organize together. Almost every child I met told me stories of how this organizing has empowered them. How they are more articulate, more confident about their abilities. Through numerous workshops and constant activities that require these children to organize, analyze and articulate, Shaishav has helped these children. They are also looking at adapting and implementing a program quite popular among US schools (Odyssey of the Mind, Destination Imagination) that helps being comfortable with open ended problems, creative problem solving and collaborative work styles.

Organized into these small groups (chapters if you will) that function completely democratically with the children making their rules and running their organization, with support from the Shaishav team, these children also understand democratic processes, the power it brings to everyone, and how democratic processes in our country should work but do not. They have begun to understand the politics of democracy. In addition, by having these children visit and understand government structures, offices of bureaucrats, of lawyers, of doctors, the fear from power is whittled and these children understand how these government offices can help them. (Of course, over years they have already seen the other side of these offices – so this is not an exercise in just creating rosy idealism).

Now, Shaishav also recognizes that these children who are beginning to reach high school and college need economic empowerment through livelihoods. They are putting together a program to help support and train these children not just in skills for livelihoods but also in understanding markets, economic forces and the broader socio-political context within which different kinds of livelihoods exist. My visit with Shaishav is to work with them on this effort.

Shaishav, in the recent past, has gone through an internal review and has decided to categorize its work into three components – bal sena or collectives for children, tarun sena or collectives for youth and bal dost or resource and community support for the children’s effort. In all these areas, Shaishav has decided that it will not actively run programs but facilitate through resources programs formulated and recommended by each of these collectives of children and youth.

That is a significant step in decentralization of operations and decision making and more importantly, it is a very important step in committing to democratization of these collective groups. It is also a commentary on its confidence in these collectives. Very few NGOs – and I do not know of any – have done this to such an extent.

At this point, then, Shaishav is facilitating discussions among its Bal Sena groups to find out what programs should be run in which communities. These recommendations will then supported. Similarly, plans for livelihood based resources are being put together for tarun sena. A teachers resource center is also in the plans. As these recommendations begin to include more details, Shaishav plans to share them with its friends and seek their comments and support.

- Sanat Mohanty