"For us earlier a construction site was just another upcoming building. We never realised how many lives are related to it when it is being constructed. But now whenever we pass by a site, our eyes tend to see the children that are wasting their time there rather than going to school. This work has changed the way we see and perceive things. The Right to Education Act is by far the best step by the Government of India."
- Students from Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies, Pune sharing their experience with Every Child Counts campaign, as part of their Service Learning Program
"We all supposed to complete 60 hours of Service by working for an NGO. The work can be of any type like teaching the students, doing some of the NGO’s Account work or conducting some survey in behalf of the NGO. So when the Doorstep School members came to our college we had no clue of the work which was to be done. But after they explained everything to us and what all tasks were supposed to be performed. All the interested students were asked to form a group of 10. So we all formed a group accordingly. Mr. Mandar Shinde was guiding us from the side of the NGO. We all were to report directly to him and tell him about the problems we faced during our work.
So then we had got instructions from Sir during our orientation. As per Mandar Shinde Sir’s instructions we had to get the names of the construction sites located in the area which was allotted to us. Since our group had got Kalyani Nagar as the area, it was difficult to find construction sites as it was an already developed area. But after thorough search through each and every lane in the area and on the internet, we were able to find approximately 12-13 construction sites, which were operational.
Next thing we know is that we went collecting names of the children who stay at the constructions sites with their parents. These children, during their early ages tend to just play in one corner of the construction site, but as the years go by they tend to help their parents at the construction sites, thus indulging themselves into child labour eventually just to earn the extra rupee.
As we visited the sites we saw different scenarios. The construction of underpass from New Airport Road to Kalyani Nagar had only men working. There we no females and no sign of kid at that particular site. The Trump Tower which is just down the road, a construction under Donald Trump Construction and Panchshil Contractors made sure that there were no females involved in the constructions as it was a huge construction and lots of manual labour was involved. There were similar cases in almost all constructions where only men were hired.
In 1 or 2 sites, the labour contractors only kept non-child bearing married couples. Regarding this the labour incharge had to say that, they do this to keep full productivity. Having children on site, female workers will have constant vigilance over their child and not work to the maximum extent and also having a child at the site is sort of a risk. At the riverside road construction that is Vithalrao Vandekar Road there were 2 children who were staying at a makeshift home provided by the contractors.
This particular family was originally from a village in Karnataka. The children were aged 5 and 3 respectively. On asking the parents about sending their child to the school, the mother was partially convinced about sending her child to school. The father of the child was very adamant about not sending his son to school. We took turns in trying to convince this particular parent and went to him for about 3-4 times. But he was not ready to change his mind. There was a bit of language barrier between him and us as he was only speaking Kannada and some broken Hindi so we had no idea what he was wanting to convey to us. We could only understand that he will send his child to school once they were back to their native village. After talking to Mandar sir regarding the problem, he told us that the child needed to be 6 years of age. Since the child was only 5 years old we did not pursue it further. Since these was the only child in the area we concluded the work."
[Note: Although the Right To Education Act covers children from 6 to 14 years of age, younger children (between 3.5 and 6 years) can be enrolled in Balwadi section, if available at the school. However, it is practically impossible to expect the child to attend school at so early age without full consent and support of its parents. Hence, the ECC campaign focuses more on children in 6 years and above age group.]
"The overall experience of the group was very good. Staying together everyone learnt a lot from one another. The weakness of one was covered by the strength of another. While one had the skill to talk other had the power to keep the conversation running. While one would collect the name of the site, the other would go collect the names of the children in that particular site if any. Then together go to convince the parents. Our group had people from Ambala, Hisar, Kanpur, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Raipur and Surat which contributed in getting appropriate information. Being from so many linguistic differences we could talk our way into the construction sites, and get the required information.
The 2 children that we saw at the site were playing in a very unhygienic environment while their mother was working at a distance. Playing amidst concrete and mud, the child had no idea how harmful it is to play near these things. Whenever the child broke into tears for certain reason, the mother was not there always to tend to him. And whenever she went near him, she used the same dirty hands to wipe his face which were used to carry a load of bricks or concrete, thus showing a lack of education among these people. According to them, education is a very costly affair. They are still not aware of the Right to Education Policy which allows free education to their child. They think the same future for their child which is doing manual labour, while they can send them to school and see them surpassing their knowledge and earning more money than them.
For us earlier a construction site was just another upcoming building. We never realised how many lives are related to it when it is being constructed. But now whenever we pass by a site, our eyes tend to see the children that are wasting their time there rather than going to school. This work has changed the way we see and perceive things. The Right to Education Act is by far the best step by the Government of India.
The lack of knowledge about the locally spoken language which is Marathi proved to be bit of setback for us, since the site incharges were mainly Marathi speaking folks, but it was overcome since these people also had the knowledge about the national language.
Some sites incharges were co-operative with us and also helped us to get the particular information but some were quite arrogant by nature and had to be dealt with utmost efficiency. There were certain sites which were shut when our group members go to collect the information so a lot of extra trips had to be made for this purpose also.
This whole thing made us aware how the world works. It doesn’t revolve around us, we cannot get all the work done in the easy way. You have to strive to do work which will make a difference in the society in general and to the person in particular."
