According to the UNICEF, violence against children includes anything that amounts to neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and exploitation of children. One of the most common and, at the same time, ignored sights in the metro cities of India today, is that of street children, who can be spotted in every nook and corner, because successive governments have failed in protecting and providing shelter to them.
They are an ignored lot, because as a society, we ostensibly lack empathy in helping them and being concerned for them. In the national capital, New Delhi, there are over 51,000 street children, and they are everywhere. You can see them at metro and railway stations, bus stands, under flyovers and footpaths – begging, rag picking, selling newspapers, pens, flowers for livelihood. The negligence by both the government and society makes them vulnerable to violence.
Who Are Street Children?
A ‘street child,’ as described by the Commission on Human Rights is, “any girl or boy who is homeless and the street is his/her makeshift house or source of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults.”
Atrocities On Street Children
In 2015, an investigative report by India Today revealed appalling facts about children on the streets of Delhi – it claimed most of these children were trafficked by organized mafia from states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and were tortured and forced into begging. The report claimed the same children could be seen begging in the morning and also selling flowers and pens- so basically, a nexus works which provides them resources for selling goods and they are also used to peddle drugs. The same report also claimed that they are often made disabled, to be obedient, helpless and to beg passersby for money, and sometimes they are even made victims of forcible flesh trade. Substance abuse among street children is common – they use paint thinner, glue etc., to get rid of hunger, pain and fatigue. A Huffpost blog says, around 40-70% street children across Indian cities are addicted to substance abuse. Selim, a 12-year-old boy from Dhaka, in a video uploaded by Save The Children on Youtube, while spreading a sheet of newspaper on the floor, says “It is hot in the summers and cold in the winters, but we have no place to keep us warm, and the police also beats us up for sleeping on the street.” He further says, “I am scared of being kidnapped and trafficked to the Indian border.”
Failure Of The Government
Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, mandates institutional care, rehabilitation and social integration of children in need of care and protection; however, the rampant visuals of children begging on the streets of Delhi, testify the failure of the system in its implementation. The Integrated Program for Street Children is an initiative to protect children, by providing shelter homes, but as reports indicate, some shelter homes aren’t even safe for them. A social audit by Tata Institute of Social Sciences in May 2018, reported sexual abuse of 34 girls in a government-run shelter home in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. And a 10-year-old girl escaping from a shelter home of Deoria, UP, in August 2018 highlighted the exploitation of girls living there. However, it would be unfair to expect that the government alone could eradicate this problem. The civil society, the NGOs, all should come together in finding a solution to this problem.