The Dark Side of Children’s Lives in India

India is the country where children’s are considered as the forms of god, but these little God’s are facing very serious problem in social life. India has become one of the fastest growing developing countries along with highest number of child labours in the world. All metro cities of India are home for the large number of children’s aged between 5-14, who are begging in trains, sleeping on streets, living in slums and working in the most innocent phase of human life. The root cause of child abandonment are poverty,population and noneducational, India also host one of the biggest slum. If India has to become a developed nation, then child labour, child abuses and all these issue should be tackled as soon as possible and the children should get the basic essentials such as education and food,Until then celebrating children’s day every year doesn’t make any sense.

Child Labour: Child Labour is one of the major challenge in front of developing countries like India. They forced to work by families for food and money in the most innocent phase of human life, childhood. Children work at the cost of their right to education, which leaves them uneducated and poor. India has the highest number of child labours in the world, total number of child labours in India are estimated at 12.6 million in the aged 5-14, some of them are engages in hazardous job. The worst form of child labour are hidden workers and bonded labour, refers to children’s sold by their parents for money specially girls.Child Abuse: India has become one of the most dangerous country for women and at the same time another worst problem that the country is facing is sexual abuses against children’s. Every day there is at least one child abuse case highlighted in the newspaper and more than 90 per cent of the abused children’s are girls. The children below the age of even five are getting raped, girl’s are sold by parents just for a sum of money. This is sound very shocking but its true and shameful, There should be a strict law to punish those responsible for these merciless criminal activities instantly.
Street Child: India is home to the world’s largest population of street children, these children’s are deprived of family care & protection and forced to live in junk boxes or parks or on the streets itself. They work as rag-pickers, in tea stalls and dhabhas, as shoeshine boys or vendors or kids street shows and some of little children begging at traffic lights too. One of the major reason behind this is slum dwellers in India,these are the same people who can be found in railway track, in dump yard or at the site of waste material. Street children are subject to malnutrition, hunger, health problems, theft and sexually abused, also they share their shelter and food with stray animals.Railway Children: These are kids who collect rubbish from train and across the railway stations, these child labour’s are widespread in almost all Indian train stations. They sleep at railway stations or in empty rail carriages, beg in trains and work as a vendor, or train cleaner. Railway children’s are always on the move, trains take them across the country and far away from their home in search of food and money.Rag Pickers: One who makes a living scavenging rags and other refuse is called as waste pickers and most of these rag pickers are young innocent children’s. Garbage centers are their workplace, even they share their workplace,food,shelter with stray animals like dog,cows, pigs and birds. Rag picking seems to be their favorite pastime and their main source of income for food. There are many metro cities which have a number of rag pickers, In the capital Delhi itself, there are more than one lakh rag pickers with most of them being young children.This is the biggest challenge before the nation,though government has been taking various pro-active measures to tackle this problem and Ministry of labour is working towards elimination of child labour in India, but still they have to travel many more mile to get it done. Many NGOs like Pratham,CARE India, Child Relief,I-India and You Global march against child labor etc, have been working to eradicate child labour, child marriage and child betrothal in India.