Silent Angels:Chennai : NGOs activity centres for child domestic workers

NGOs start activity centres for child domestic workers

M Ramya | TNN

Chennai: After the case of 10-year-old Rameshwari Jadhav being beaten and scalded by her employer — a small-time TV actor in Mumbai — came to light, the labour ministry is trying to curb the practice of employing children as domestic workers. But not many people are interested in children like 15-year-old R Ragini, an orphan living with her brother and sister, who has been working as a maid in a house in Rajapillai Thottam in T Nagar for 12 years.

Ragini dropped out of school when she was in Class III, and can’t even write her own name. If she had been discovered a year ago, legal action could have been taken against her employer for hiring a child in hazardous labour, but now the Child Labour Prevention and Regulation Act (CLPRA) cannot help her since she is over 14 years.

An ongoing survey of child domestic workers in the city by two NGOs, Save The Children and Arunodaya Centre for Street and Working Children, shows that there are 35 children being employed in households in Kodambakkam, T Nagar and Choolaimedu, and 22 children in T P Chattram, Anna Nagar and Aminjikarai, many of them between 14 and 18 years.

Programme manager of Save The Children in the state Sandhya Krishnan says, “Though child labour has been included as a hazardous form of labour under the CLPRA, it states that only children under 14 cannot be employed in hazardous forms of labour, leaving those aged between 14 and 18 years (who are also children under Article 32 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children) without legal protection.”

Many of the children in this age group grow up to become poorly paid unskilled domestic workers. Extra-curricular or recreational activities or learning vocational skills is out of the question. To change this, the NGOs are setting up six contact and activity centres across the city. There are three centres in the city — two in Kodambakkam and one in T P Chattram.

It gives children the opportunity to play games and learn vocational skills such as tailoring and beauty techniques. Where such centres are not possible, the organisations are talking to resident welfare associations in apartments to allow them to use parking areas to give the children vocational training.

E Mala, who handles the centre in Rangarajapuram in Kodambakkam which caters to 23 children between 15 and 17 years, says, “Children can express themselves, increase their self-esteem and have fun. These are things that they never seem to have time for.”

Mala, who started working as a domestic help when she was 10, is now studying second year BA History in Quaid-E-Millet College for Women and wants to become a social worker.

Through these centres the NGOs hope to have many success stories like that of Firoza in Kolkata, who successfully completed a six-month beautician course. She has since left her employer and returned to her family in Joynagar, from where she commutes five days a week to Kolkata where she is a practising beautician and to continue her training.

Firoza is Ragini’s idol. “I just learnt how to apply mascara. Next week I’m going to learn how to shape eyebrows. Soon I’ll be working just like Firoza akka,” she says.

Unsung Heroines and Heroes

Not Without My Daughters

VIMALA SESHADRI, WHO MOVED FROM THE US IN 2000, LOOKS AFTER 10 UNDERPRIVILEGED GIRLS

Shalini Umachandran | TNN

The only male in this family of 13 is a gorgeous brown German Shepherd named Lupin. Pharmacologist and medical researcher Vimala Seshadri lives with 10 girls between the ages of four and 20, who come from underprivileged backgrounds, and two dogs.

“We’re an all-women household,” says Vimala, who has been bringing up the girls as her own daughters in a small home in Injambakkam for the past nine years. While the younger girls study at a nearby CBSE school, the older ones have just started working.

Twenty-two year old Sashi, who came to Vimala when she was 14, is doing her BCom through correspondence and works as an au pair for an expat couple. “The older girls also babysit for expat couples on weekends. The money they make is put aside for them,” says Vimala.
In Vimala’s home, the focus is on education and being independent. The girls live with her through the year and go back to their parents during the holidays.

“We go back for a while, but this is home too,” says Divya (18), who’s paraplegic and has just finished class 12 at a special school. She’s planning to start her own baking business.

Born to Indian parents in the US, Vimala had never really visited India, though her family was originally from Chennai. “I could just as easily have gone to Cambodia or Vietnam, I had no particular affinity for India despite being of Indian origin,” she says.

She decided to work with children while she was living in Michigan in 1993. “Soon after I had made that promise to myself, I got a call from the local hospital asking I could help out with a little Indian girl who had come in and couldn’t speak English. That’s what made me think of coming to India.”

She came to India in 1994 and until 1997, worked in an orphanage in Tirukundram. “It made me realise that though the children were well looked after, they needed one-onone attention.”

So in 1998, she set up the Nivedita Centre for Learning in the US as an organisation that not only focussed on education but on making girls financially independent. She and trustee R N Prasad started an India branch in 2000 and Vimala moved to Chennai to put her idea to practice. “We found this property and moved here in 2000.

The lease runs out in 2010 and we’re still looking for a place. It’s hard to find a place that is willing to take in a family as diverse as ours,” she says. Vimala’s been putting her own money into the home with help from a few donors — it costs about Rs 5 lakh to Rs 6 lakh a year to keep the centre running.

She juggles work as a senior project information and feasibility associate at Icon Clinical Reasearch in Perungudi and her large family.
Vimala also conducts tuition classes for girls from the nearby fishing village. She pays for a master to tutor the older girls, while Esther teaches the girls from classes one to three. “That’s how I realised I wanted to be a teacher,” says Esther. “I want to become a Montessori teacher and also study abroad” she says.

The others have big dreams too — Maheswari wants to be an astronaut, or the President of India. Vaishali wants to be an accountant. “I wanted to be a pilot, but realised I loved numbers after I started doing Vimala Akka’s accounts,” says the class nine student. “You can be both,” interrupts Vimala. “You can get a licence after you finish your CA,” and then adds, “Vaishali’s been doing my accounts for three years. My auditors have never found a mistake.”

Vimala believes that every city should have at least one home based on her model. “With a little bit of money, you can do a lot,” she says. “You just have to be ready to give each person one-on-one attention.”

Lighting the lives of less privileged

TOI honours the city’s unsung heroes who are doing their bit away from the public glare

Kalyani Sardesai | TNN

Pune:

In his modest little ways, 39-year-old businessman Sanjay Deshmukh seeks to brighten the lives of the less privileged. Be it distributing a hundred solar lanterns for free to villagers who don’t have electricity in their homes, or sponsoring the education of needy children in his native village Kasegaon in Sangli district, Deshmukh believes that it is the small things make a big difference.

“There is so much poverty in rural areas that despite the government providing free education to children, they sit at home because their parents can’t afford to buy books or uniforms,” he says, adding, “They are usually the children of poor farmers or landless labourers, and it’s really sad when the parents decide to keep the child home just because they can’t pay for these essentials.”

But even as Deshmukh ensures such children are able to attend school, he is careful to stress that the funding is strictly performance based. “I insist on a copy of their report cards,” he says.

Apart from this, Deshmukh, the owner of a factory that manufactures solar products, distributes about a hundred solar lanterns to needy villagers or school-going children every year, free of cost. “The solar lantern is a far better option than the traditional kerosene lamp. Not only is the light from this lamp much stronger, it is cheaper and pollution-free. It helps the villagers save a lot of money and improves the quality of their life. In fact, so many of them have told me that it feels like Diwali after their days spent in darkness,” he smiles.
“To me, social work is not a solitary effort,” he says.

In order to ensure that help is extended to those who truly need it, Deshmukh sources the relevant database from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and social workers. “I also have friends in Zilla Parishad schools who let me know about school-going children who don’t have electricity at home. My company gives out lanterns to them too,” he adds.

Having helped around 30 children with their educational needs over the last four years, Deshmukh is now in the process of opening a school near Kolhapur. “The trust has been registered and we are now seeking approval. Initially, it is going to be for children between standard V and VII,” he says.

56 jail inmates clear Class X examination

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:

Fifty-six of the 98 inmates of various prisons in the state who appeared in this year’s Class X examination have passed, while 16 failed and the results of 26 were withheld for various reasons. Dinakaran (29) of Nagercoil, sentenced to life imprisonment in a murder case, was the prison topper with 330 marks out of 500 while the youngest was a 19-year-old inmate of a Pudukottai juvenile home.

“At least 6,000 inmates have attained primary education after the launch of the 100 percentage literacy programme a few months ago. Udhaya Karan of Orissa, arrested and remanded by RPF personnel on theft charges, is now able to write in Tamil.

In the 2008-09 academic year, the prison department spent Rs 7 lakh for prisoners’ education. Tamil Nadu Liberation Army leader Maran alias Senguttuvan, an accused in the Rajkumar kidnap case, has completed his PhD,” director-general of police (prisons) R Nataraj said.

“We have invited many NGOs to conduct courses periodically for prisoners.

Emphasis will be on vocational and professional courses like computer applications, animation, carpentry, electrical and masonry work,” he added.

Kendriya Vidyalay: Parents left in lurch as KVs reduce seats

Parents left in lurch as KVs reduce seats

Move to Keep Optimal Student-Teacher Ratio

Karthika Gopalakrishnan | TNN

Chennai: Parents seeking to admit their children in Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) will have to brace themselves for competition. The authorities have been forced to restrict their intake for each class thanks to a new ceiling fixed by the government due to a change in the admission guidelines this year.

“The intake has been fixed at 35 students for each section in the primary classes, 40 in the secondary sections and 45 in the senior secondary sections.

This is a common policy which has been decided upon by the board of governors for all 989 KVs in the country and three KVs abroad. We have not been given the exact reason for this but it may have something to do with the recommendations in the National Curriculum Framework, 2005, asking for an optimal student-teacher ratio to achieve better results,” said E Prabhakar, assistant commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Chennai region.
Officials said it was easier to get admission in Class I at a KV than lateral entry.

However, this proved more difficult than usual this year with schools given only 20 seats per section in Class I; they were given 35 last year. A total of 15 seats were reserved for admission under the special provisions quota on a first-comefirst-served basis. This applies to children of Members of Parliam e n t , central government employees who die in harness and recipients of gallantry awards such as the Param Vir Chakra.

According to a parent who had succeeded in getting admission for his child at a KV in the city, there were several deserving candidates on the waiting list. “I met a person hailing from Kerala who had fought in the Kargil war and was having difficulty getting admission for his child. Even when I kept calling the authorities, they said several category-I employees (transferable employees of the Central government), who are given first preference, remained on the waiting list because of the reduction in the number of seats,” he said.

E Prabhakar pointed out that when choosing seats among category-I employees, preference would be given to those who had had more transfers.

However, another parent contended that employees from local government offices such as the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had shown a movement within city offices as a transfer. This gave them an unfair advantage over those who had gotten an actual transfer from one district to another, he added.

However, authorities said they were doing the best they could as there were only a limited number of seats available. “Since admissions go on till July 31, we have instructed parents to be in constant touch with the principal of the school concerned,” said Prabhakar.
karthika.gopalakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Holi: Wishing All A Happy & Colorful Holi

Watwani sends you the following message.

Let us join in and wish each other.

May God Splash

COLORS

of Success &       Prosperity over

You & Your Family.

Unsung Angels: Chennai and Bangalore

Healthcare for the underprivileged

Dr Georgi Abraham provides free treatment for the poor

Lakshmi Kumaraswami | TNN

(Chennai)

Ask Dr Georgi Abraham, leading nephrologist in the city, about the work he does for the underprivileged and what one sees is a picture of humility. “Everyone does something good for the society. It’s our duty,” he says. For over a decade, he has been treating economically disadvantaged patients for free.
Dr Abraham began the service in 1993, when he came back to India after completing specialising in nephrology in Canada. “I had been to Kuwait, Canada and the UK, where medical care was free and taken care of by the state. Then I thought of the number of patients who would come to seek treatment for kidney disease when I was doing my medicine in Vellore in 1975,” he says. That’s when he decided that he would give poor patients free treatment whether it was for a consultation, dialysis or transplant at Madras Medical Mission and, till recently, at Sri Ramachandra Medical College, from where he has now retired. “I request the hospital to give a subsidy and then ask well-wishers to pitch in,” says Abraham, who gives a part of his income every month for the cause.
According to him, kidney failure is a rich man’s disease and costs at least Rs 10,000 a month to keep it under control. He adds that the CKD (Chronic Kidney Disease) Registry of India, which has data on 35,990 patients, shows that 38 % of the patients have a monthly income of less than Rs 5000. “Most of the time, the patient is either retired or extremely poor. A few days ago, a patient from Pondicherry came to consult me; he was virtually penniless,” he states.
Abraham doesn’t know how many patients he has treated free of cost so far. “Some days there will be six patients, some days none. I have stopped counting,” he says. To help with his cause, he was instrumental in setting up two NGOs — the TANKER Foundation in 1993 and Kerala Kidney Foundation in 2006 — both of which provides dialysis for free or at subsidised rates for the underprivileged and also gives them financial support for treatment.

He adds that to help with the cause, the number of nephrologists in the country needs to increase. “There is a major brain drain when it comes to nephrology. Every year 200,000 people go in for terminal kidney failure and we have only 850 nephrologists to tackle this,” says Abraham who is on the board of the International Society of Nephrology.
However, the doctor feels that moral support for the patients is as important as medical support. “Most people think there is no life after kidney failure. When patients tell me this, I tell them the story of Dr Robin Eady, who at 68 is the longest surviving patient with kidney failure in the world. He never gave up and neither should they,” he says.
lakshmi.kumaraswami@timesgroup.com

Hoping for a better future

Hope Home helps underprivileged kids from North-East

Darinia Khongwir | TNN

Satkholen Ngamsai is just 11 years old. But he’s already seen so much in life. Now, thanks to Hope Home, he’s regained his childhood. Brought here by his uncle from a village in Manipur in 2005, Satkholen has not been home since. He has neither seen nor spoken to his father or siblings. But the love and care he receives is enough to inspire him to become a pastor like his caretaker he lovingly calls uncle.

The uncle is Pastor Obed Haokip, who started Hope Home in 2001 along with his wife Chong with seven children under their roof. Now, there are 32 kids, including three girls. “When trouble arose in Manipur, many parents sent their children to study here. At first, I tried placing the children in other homes, but they were not looked after properly. That’s when I decided to open my own home,” says Pastor Obed. He adds that this home is exclusively for NE children.

Hope Home was initially set up in the pastor’s house. The family along with the children slept in all of the three rooms in it. Now they’ve moved to a bigger house in Kothanur. “Though we still have space constraints, the children are not complaining,” says Pastor Obed.

The children are in Bangalore only to study. “Parents send me their children, but can’t support them. I depend a lot on philanthropists,” says Obed. The kids attend Parikrama and New Baldwin’s School. “Some study free of cost and others on concessions. Two older boys are in PUC in the Indian Academy College and Kristu Jayanti College.”

Currently, Hope Home can only help educate kids up to Class 12. “I want to provide education till they can support themselves.After Class 12,they can pick up some skills that can help them find work.”
That shouldn’t be a problem for these talented children. Five of them who were in Class 1 when they arrived in 2005, finished Class 10 in seven years.

The boys excel in sports too. Henginlen Chongloi and Lamthang Haokip were selected for Karnataka state football team. Jamsei Touthang, 16, won the Karnataka Governor’s Award in the 2007 Republic Day for sports and academic excellence. Neineilam, 16, is exceptional.

She led her school in the Independence Day March Pass and won third place in 2005 and accepted the award from the then chief minister Dharam Singh. The achievements prove that there is, indeed, hope.

(Tell us about similar initiatives at toiblr.reporter@timesgroup.com with ‘Sunshine Schemes’ in the subject line)

Andher Nagari: West Bengal : Children’s Education

A colossal wastage of human resources in West Bengal

 For a party which does not believe either in freedom or in justice, popular education is an anathema, because educated persons can neither be driven nor easily ‘enslaved’ for narrow selfish and sectarian gain and private profit and advantage,
says D BANDYOPADHYAY 

Extracts from an article in the Statesman

      Following that judgment and other action by the civil society groups, Article 21A ~ Right to Education ~ was inserted in the Constitution by the Eighty-Sixth Constitution Amendment Act 2002.

        The Article reads as follows: “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may by law, determine”.

 

       The term State has been defined by the Constitution (Art.12) as follows “the State includes the Government and Parliament of India and the Government and the Legislature of each of the States and all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India”.
It is a comprehensive definition which includes all Statal  and para-statal organisations and entities. Thus the Constitution recognises free and compulsory education of all children between 6 and 14 years of age as a fundamental right.

        It may be of some interest to the members of the self-professed Marxist party which controls the State apparatus in West Bengal what the Marxian education policy is. The main component of the Marxian education policy is the following: “Free public education, compulsory and uniform for all children, assuring the abolition of cultural and knowledge monopolies and of privileged forms of schooling… This has to be an education in institution”. (A Dictionary of Marxian Thought: ed by Bottomore et al Oxford, U.K. 1983 pp 145-45).

       Thus apart from the Constitutional mandate, those who proclaim themselves as Marxists at least in public have the moral obligation to provide free and compulsory education through publicly run schools.

       As against this Constitutional and philosophical background, let us look at some of the hard facts of primary and secondary education in West Bengal.

       Statistical Handbook: West Bengal 2005-2006 (combined) published by the Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics, Government of West Bengal, July, 2007, provides some interesting and dreadful facts.

        At the primary stage the total enrolment was 1.04 crore (see chart). As against this, the enrolment figure at the middle school stage was 33.92 lakh and the same for secondary stage was 14.05 lakh. Only 6.81 lakh out of the universe of 1.04 crore of primary student population could reach the Higher Secondary stage where the formal school education ended.

        One shudders at the colossal wastage of human resources in this process of moving from the lower to the higher stages of school education. If only 33.92 lakh students could go to the middle school from the primary stage, it meant 70 lakh (approx.) students fell by the wayside to lapse back to illiteracy soon, thus turning this human resource into brawnish biological entities. In fact, society’s time and money spent on them had become infructuous.

       More shocking was the fact that only 6.8% of the students who entered the primary stage could make it to the Higher Secondary stage which completed the period of school education.
Modern industries require knowledge-based workers. All sophisticated industrial units have to be highly automated. Some of them at the higher end of the technological spectrum would be robotised. 

       Workers in these units would require more cerebral power than muscular energy. Thus out of the student population of 1.04 crore at the primary stage, only 6.8% of them would be eligible to pursue higher courses to enable them to enter knowledge based labour market.

       What would happen to the other 93.2% of the student population? In all probability they would be hewers of wood and drawers of water for the miniscule elite of the Bengali society, including the super elites of the ruling establishment.

        This gigantic dissipation of blooming child power cannot be ascribed to personal failure of students only.

       Firstly, there is no infrastructure to accommodate about a crore or so of students at the middle and secondary stages.

         Secondly, the state did not provide any backup support system for the students who could not make the grade. “Free and compulsory education” implies that the state should provide for infrastructure and system to prevent such wanton destruction of massive potentials of young boys and girls.

        They are being forcibly pushed beyond the margin of civilised living. That is the supreme achievement of the CPI-M’s “glorious” mal-governance of three decades.

          One should also look at the quality of instruction that these students received at the school, particularly at the primary stage. In 2005-06 there were 50,522 primary and junior basic schools to cater to the educational needs of children between six and fourteen years.

        The average number of students per school was 208 (approx.) There are four classes I-IV in a primary school. Thus each class would have 52 students against the norm of 40 per class. To manage these four classes one would expect at least 4 teachers with one among them acting as the Head Teacher per school.

        The same Handbook (p 60, Table 3.4) shows the total number of teachers at the primary stage as 1,53,220 in 2005-06. It meant that on an average there were three teachers per school. Each teacher had to mange 69 students, perhaps, spread-over two classes. With the norm of 40 student per class total number of teachers should have been 2,02,088.

        Thus there is a shortage of 48,868 teachers. With this shortage of 48,868 teachers for the student population of 1.04 crore, the quality of teaching should better be left to the imagination of the readers.
It is no longer a matter of surprise that primary schools in this state generally turn out almost illiterate students at the end of a 4-year spell. It also, perhaps, partially explains this massive dropout of 70 lakh students between the primary and the middle stages. In course of time almost all of them would become stony men and women without letters.

        A slight scrutiny is also required about the enrolment figure at the primary level. There are some micro studies which showed that in the schools surveyed there were inflated figures. Since sanction of posts of teachers depended on the figures of enrolment, there could be an inherent bias to inflate the number of enrolment. But for this analysis I shall take the published figures as given and I would not contest them.

        A point which would arise would be, did this figure of 1.04 crore enrolment at the primary stage cover all the eligible children between 6 and 14 in this state as mandated by Article 21A of the Constitution? The Census of 2001 gave the figure of 1,54,48,428 children between 6 and 14. That was 2001. The rate of growth of population in this state according to the Registrar General of India was 1.93%. Thus the figure of eligible children in 2005-06, inclusive of incremental annual growth, would be 1,69,39198 (1,54,48428 + 14,90770).

          Against this target child population of 1.69 crore, the total enrolment figure of 1.04 crore indicated enrolment percentage of 61% which was way below the national Gross Enrolment Ratio of 93.54%. (Eleventh Five Year Plan Vol.II - Major Educational Statistics 2004-05, p 38).

        These figures are so self condemnatory that any further comment would be superfluous.

          hese 65 lakh children who had had no chance to get into any primary school and would have no chance of any formal schooling would constitute the hard core of illiterates of the state.
The situation would look more appalling if one added the figure of roughly 70 lakh dropouts between primary and middle stage with the hard core illiterate figure of 65 lakh making a total of 1.35 crore.

         Devoid of any education and even of literacy, they would eke out a miserable life of initially petty and then serious crime requiring the protection of the ruling party. In return they would provide the soldiery of the ruling party for all their heinous and abominable political crimes including the “cleansing operations” in Nanur, Chhoto Angaria, Garbeta, Nandigram and the like and would manipulate votes illegally to ensure safe return of the ruling party’s candidates.

         The ruling political establishment in West Bengal has thus a massive political vested interest in denying children between six and fourteen their fundamental right to be educated compulsorily and freely by the state.

      A savant once said: “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained”. But for a party which did not believe either in freedom or in justice, popular education was an anathema, because educated persons could neither be driven nor easily “enslaved” for narrow selfish and sectarian gain and private profit and advantage.

       Hence, children of West Bengal between six and fourteen are condemned to see darkness at noon as they grow up.

(The author was secretary to the Government of India, ministries of finance [revenue] and rural development and executive director, Asian Development Bank,Manila)