Anything for your smile
She was the first one to enter the class and be seated in the front row. She was also the youngest one in the class, attentive and silent. Though I tried to interact with her in-between the class, towards the end of the session only she started speaking.
I met her in an interactive session on Safety of Children through Prevention at one of the Government Schools in Greater Noida. Nowadays, at most of the places in India, children studying at Government Schools are generally from lower economic background. Though we proudly acknowledge that India is a land of diversity, the economic strata has clearly demarcated India into two parts: one part is affluent India and the other part is marginalised India. And thus it becomes a real challenge for any change makers to address one issue with one frame-work that works for all.
Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi's call for Bharat Yatra to take pledge to make India safe for children and recent horrific incidents at schools triggered a wave of information circulation in press media and social media regarding the issues of safety of children.
However, safety has a different connotation for the children of Government Schools. Children walk down to the school on their own. Nobody would come to drop them or pick them up from the school. There is no school bus, no driver, no conductor and no security guard to look after their safety. As if these children are born with a destiny tuned skill to rough it up. From a very young age, as young as five/six years, they need to learn to be confident while walking on the street, they have no alternative but to learn in a classroom even without a fan in the summer of June. Still, children at Government Schools, generally feel happy to be at the school. One of the reasons behind their happiness is that it gives them enough space to play and be with friends. In case of abuse of any kind, if any, common scenario is that the child simply drops out of the school and after sometime parents would migrate to another location.
Life of these little ones outside the school is tough and full of challenges. From a very young age, as small as seven years, they learn to clean the house, cook and serve food for their younger siblings. They need to learn to keep themselves safe from drug addict, alcoholic neighbors in absence of their parents and elders at home. Most of the children's parents work as labourer, they leave home early and return late in the evening. Children have no option but to learn to grow on their own. For these little ones, question of survival is more important than their safety. They learn early in life meaning of good touch and bad touch from the neighborhood environment, but then they also learn to remain silent.
Children from this part of India have to fight everyday battle for their survival and safety. They grow up fighting everyday against the abuses of addicted people, jobless & idle neighborhood women and youth. They try to learn to stay safe from the traps of people whose livelihood option is trafficking. They learn to identify and stay away from people with unattended mental health issues who could abuse, assault and harm a child at any point of time. For these children, their poverty is a big threat to their safety.
Recently initiated preventive measures by schools and state administration on policy guidelines for safety of children at schools, Radio Frequency Identification Card for students, awareness amongst parents and children through posters, stories and pictures on good –touch, bad –touch, circular by schools on CCTV coverage and declaring the school as 'no touch' zone etc. will certainly bring intended positive outcomes at the schools. Bharat Yatra has already received huge response and successfully creating mass awareness.
While safety of each and every child is our responsibility, it is also important to ensure that they grow healthy, both physically and mentally. The children must not receive a message from us that the world is not safe for them. May be some of us will need to be trained on how to share safety information with children, may be some of us will take sabbatical and spend more time with the little ones, may be some of us will get back to the joint family to ensure that they are at the safe hands and may be some of us will be more visible at the neighbourhood community to make our presence felt to any such elements who might intend to harm a child, as a whole, the onus is on us to ensure that these little ones grow up as confident women/men wearing that million dollar smile always…!
