The Times of India has covered one of the more active children’s groups of the Child Rights for Change project in Maharashtra:
Their keen eyes had been noticing for a few days that two teachers in their school hadn’t been coming to class. After snooping around a bit and making enquiries, they plucked up courage and asked their principal to check the teachers’ leave applications. Learning that there were none and no sign of the teachers returning, they took up the matter with the sarpanch of the village. When even that didn’t work, they called a local journalist and brought the issue into the open.
Welcome to the ‘baal gats’, activist children’s groups that have sprung up in Maharashtra’s Amravati and Washim districts where the agrarian crisis has exacerbated the already crippling rural poverty. The little crusaders from here have adopted a litany of issues—education, child labour, cleanliness—and taken it upon themselves to transform their villages into places that bring them closer to their innocent, near-perfect view of the world. And they may be only kids aged between seven and 14, but the collective power they exude over adults in the villages is unparalleled.
With the help of NGO Save the Children and other local organisations, the children’s groups were formed late last year in almost each of the 986 villages in Vidarbha, keeping the issue of child labour in mind. All the children of the village are encouraged to be part of the groups and join the monthly meetings of the bal panchayats to discuss seriously what ails them and their village. Ensconced in the zilla schools, away from the watchful eyes of the adults, the little ones devise methods to tackle issues directly or indirectly linked to child labour and education.
“One day, we saw a girl walking in the field with a school bag. She was crying. We asked her what the problem was and she said that she’d been going to school every day but the teacher never took her name during attendance. He said her name was not in the register and so she couldn’t attend class,’’ says 13-year-old Yogesh Bankh, president of the Ahilyabai Holkar Bal Samiti in Yeota village of the Karanja block in Washim. “Since we didn’t know what the process was, we approached the elders from the Gram Shikshan Samiti and brought it to their notice. We realised that the girl had come from Kolhapur and was late in seeking admission. But we had a dialogue with the authorities and told them to consider her case since she was very keen on getting educated. It was all done, and now she attends school with all of us,’’ he adds triumphantly. Ask the kids who Ahilyabai Holkar was, and they are quick to reply in unison: a warrior queen.
Just a few kilometers away, at the Saraswati Mata baal gat in Gaiwal village, children are basking in their victory of getting their mate Manda Nichale (12) admitted to school. When they went door to door as part of their project to see if all children were getting a formal education, they realised that Manda had been going to work on the fields after her parents separated and father remarried. “She was a very quiet girl who never spoke to anyone. She hadn’t been going to school for two years because her father made her work in the field and earn money. It took us a long time to convince her and her father,’’ says 12-year-old Vishakha Bhagat. However, convincing her younger brother Gajananan to get into a school has been a Herculean task. “Every time he sees us, he starts running away from us. He just doesn’t like going to school,’’ the children say.
But this is not a new phenomenon, say those who are on the local Child Protection Committee. There is just one school with classes up to Standard IV. The hamlet is two km from the main village and the road is non-existent. The teacher comes at will and students study at the most for an hour a day, if they are lucky.
So, convincing children to let go of their earnings and joining school instead becomes doubly difficult. “Although we try to have as many kids from the village as part of our panchayats, there are still some who are not. These are the ones who run away from us,’’ said 12-year-old Parvati Kher from the Rajashri Shahu Maharaj Bal Gat from Gaiwal village. Take the case of nine-year old Vaishali Vankhede. She failed the third standard and didn’t want to go back to school. “She told us she needed to earn money from the family and so her father was sending her to the fields. All of us contributed a rupee each and gave the money to her, but she didn’t relent. But we will not give up. We will continue our efforts in convincing her,’’ she adds.
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Great article!
Thanks! And thank you for linking our blog to the Cross Border Programme–we will be doing the same! Keep up the excellent child rights and protection work