While children like Santhosh, Saranya, and Reuben are only supporting their parents in these trying times, there are many unfortunate ones who get pushed into full-time labour; Murugesan* is one of them. Between 9 am and 8 pm every day, the boy sells ice cream at a crowded market area on Ranganathan Street at T Nagar. Express spoke with him as he was serving cone ice cream to a customer, a boy about the same age as he was.
Murugesan said he was from Thiruvannamalai and that he was 16. The boy, however, caught the glare of the older vendor next to him and quickly corrected himself: “18. I’m 18.” He refused to answer any more questions.
Another young boy, working at a roadside garments shop nearby, shouted: “Shorts! Shorts! Track pants! Shorts!” He looked no older than 15. Asked if he was enrolled in a school, he smirked and said: “I finished schooling in Tambaram. I am 18-years-old. Owner will come. Do you want shorts?”
Notably, over a dozen adolescent-looking boys like him working on Ranganathan Street said that they were precisely 18-years-old; no more, no less!
A dangerous spinoff
Another dangerous repercussion of the lockdown and school closure was children, especially those in peri-urban areas, getting exposed to a culture of drugs and drinks, said Ali Basha, who teaches children for free in Thiruvottiyur. “Children about 15-16 years old start with ‘Hans’ (a nicotine-based addictive); older children even use ganja,” he said.
Ali Basha said that with each passing day, more and more children in North Chennai are introduced to alcohol and drugs. “Access to drugs has become as easy as ordering food on Swiggy or Zomato. They call someone, fix a meeting point, meet the drug peddlar, and make the deal,” he said, adding that with abundant free time and nothing to do, many children have lost all their interest in education.
“There was a group of children playing on a vacant parcel of land near my house. I recently approached them and told them that I will take tuition for free. They stopped playing on that ground from the next day,” Basha said. He emphasised that parents must be sensitised to keeping their children occupied to prevent them from being dragged into “anti-social elements.”
S Prabhakaran, a government-school teacher from Chennai, said one of his Class XI students was about to be married off last year; he stopped it by reporting to government officials. He said that many children were pushed into bonded labour too. “I was supplying Covid relief materials in Kadambathur village in Thiruvallur when I saw children going hunting and wood-cutting with their parents. They had even forgotten the name of the school they were enrolled in. That’s when I decided to set up an evening tuition in the village,” he said.
He said that the village neither had electricity nor public lighting infrastructure when he first visited it. “With the help of an NGO, we set up solar street lamps and lights for students to study in the evening. I trained an educated girl to take classes for the children; my senior students also visit the village to take yoga lessons,” he said. Prabhakaran opined that children until the age of 14 will return to school easily if the noon-meal scheme is restored. “The government will have to employ innovative strategies to attract older children out of employment and back to schools,” he said.
What can be done
Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC), in its recent report, suggested that the State ensure that the children enrolled in government schools have access to provisions and supplementary nutrition.
The centre also said that the government should identify community-level motivators or educators in low-income and informal settlements to monitor and follow up on children enrolled in government schools. Devices like tabs designed to run specific apps could be distributed to students.
“Other applications should be disabled in this device to prevent misuse,” the report said. Vanessa Peter, the founder of the centre, said that children also need to “just ventilate” from being cooped up indoors all day long during the pandemic. “They are exposed to the grim financial realities in their families. They need to socialise and engage in activities to keep themselves occupied,” she said. Though Express reached out to the school education minister and the department secretary, a response could not be obtained.
*Names changed