On 25th January 2015, Don Bosco Navajeevan (A home for street children/Young at Risk) in Hyderabad received 230 young boys. They were rescued by the police who raided bangle-making units in the Old City in Hyderabad. The children, aged between 8 and 18, had been held as bonded labour.1 This is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Mr. Satyarthi, the Nobel Prize laureate, says that the Indian cities have a lot more hidden child labourers working under near-slavery conditions. What is worse, the children did not quite appreciate their release from “child labour” and being sent to their home states: Bihar and West Bengal; many of them said that they would return to the same work later. Poverty has become ever more prevalent so as to acquire such a tragic dimension. What is appalling perhaps is society’s mindset where “Child labor is not a big crime” or a mindset which does not place children on a priority list. There is also the discrimination that “These are the children of the lower castes who really do not matter.”
