Dreams Die First in the quarries of Kundrathoor

Everyday childhood dreams are crushed in the stone quarries of Kundrathoor, near Madras. Young labourers oscillate between the crushing units and lorry-carriers with basketloads of crushed stones and dirt. Languishing in unhealthy and hazardous surroundings while other children their age were attending school.

"I would like to go to school and become a clerk or join the army,'' says tweleve-year-old Sinu. Something he cannot do because he has to help his family repay a heavy debt. His parents and five-year-old brother Siva Shanker also work in the same crushing unit. The boys work six in the morning to two in the afternoon for a daily wage of Rs 30.35.

The younger sibling hobbled about a little distance away, his right foot swathed in bandages. A few days back, while carrying a pan filled with crushed stone, he stumbled and the load fell on his toes. He sustained bad bruises, but the remorseless quarry owner deemed it as a ''minor injury'' and refused to arrange or pay for necessary medical assistance.

For Sinu, his kid brother and others like them toiling in stone quarries, the future holds little prospects. Mostly belonging to indigent migrant families, poverty is to blame for their sorry plight as much as the attitudinal makeup of the parents, the employers and the local administration alike towards them. In that adverse setting, the only glimmer of hope appears in the shape of a model school, striving to reach out to improve the lot of child workers through education in the area.

Although it is a panchayat school, it receives expert advice and assistance from a non-governmental organisation called Cholai to cater to the special needs of child workers. According to the director of Cholai, T V Murali, the make-up of the school is part of a bigger vision, conceived on the firm premise that compulsory quality education is the only means of eliminating child labour in India. The concept envisages the adoption of a two-pronged motivational strategy: establishment of child-friendly educational infrastructure and a sustained campaign to promote awareness.

Cholai is involved with children working in similar dehumanising conditions in both organised and unorganised sectors. After working in stone quarries, leather tanneries, brick kilns and metal polishing units, the Madras-based NGO claims to have received a promising response from the targeted groups.

Since they began their work in the area, the NGO has succeeded in withdrawing 300 to 400 children from these work places. Many of them were then enrolled in government schools. Cholai even found sponsors for children belonging to families living in dire financial straits.

The NGO's activities with regard to working children in stone quarries is centered around three villages on the city's outskirts -- Sivanthingal, Sigarayapuram and Kollacherry. These village consist of 225 quarries and 200 crushing units.

Their survey revealed that of the 518-strong work force at Sivanthingal, 124 were child workers. Only eight of them went to school. In Sigarayapuram, there were 70 working children out of the total labour population of 332. While in the Kollacherry quarry there were 60 child labourers of 199 strong work force. ''We have made tremendous progress in Kollacherry where the number of child labourers in 1993 was 112 as against 60 now,'' says Murali.

Most of the children belong to migrant families. As they are always on the move, the parents seldom remember or bother to collect school certificates showing that their wards had attended school earlier. This, Murali says, is a major stumbling block in getting the children admitted to recognised schools. As they were temporary residents, many parents thought it was pointless admitting their children to school.

One such victim is 12-year-old Gandhi. A class three drop-out, he hails from Salem district and is presently working at a quarry in Sigarayapuram. He has been clearing debris off the ground and carting it onto the lorries for the past two years.

Cholai is also running four centres for the quarry children, coaching them for classes three, five and eight in government schools. The classes are held between five and seven thirty in the evening. The syllabus includes songs on personal hygiene, health and recreational activities.

Observing that Non-Formal Education centres, NFE are inhibited by many limitations, Murali says Cholai has been clamouring for more full-time government schools for the quarry children.

In this effort, they are also trying to enlist the support of quarry owners, lobbing for their cooperation in strengthening the infrastructure of existing government schools in the interim. The agenda in this respect includes the appointment of additional teachers in schools, and the availability of better services like improved sanitation and general cleanliness in the premises.

He remarked that at the present government schools only had one teacher for every hundred students. ''In the absence of adequate numbers of teachers and other facilities, parents withdraw their children and make them work to supplement the family income instead,'' he added.

Another stumbling block is the attitude of the parents. D Dayalan breaks stones at the quarry. His two young daughters also work at the quarry. He sees no wrong in this, and regards educating them as a worthless proposition. ''They will go to different homes after marriage so why waste time and money on schooling,'' he says.

MGR, a supervisor at one crushing unit, advances an interesting theory. He says as the children generally assert independence at the age of 15 or so -- about the time the girl marries and the boy branches out on his own -- till then parents exploit their progeny by making them work in their tender age. If they send their children to school, they would not get anything out of them ever.

After a gruelling day at the quarry, 10-year-old Amravati and her twin sister Bhagwati attend the NFE centre in the evenings. But the escape from reality is all too short, as Amravati comments: ''We will probably be doing the same work ten years from now.''

Similarly, 11-year-old Mariamal has been clearing mud for three years for Rs 35 a day. ''Both my parents work at the quarry. They do not encourage me to attend school, and are only happy when I go to work,'' she says with a shrug.

At the local panchayat school, where Cholai in joint collaboration with the villagers of Sigarayapuram has appointed an extra teacher, the lot of the children seems to be better. Muthmana, 10, who has been studying here for the past two years, used to clear mud at a quarry, earning Rs 12 per day. Says teacher Amuda: '' I persuaded Muthmana's parents to withdraw her from work and join the school.''

Amuda's persuasion skills and techniques reflect an aggressive tackling of the parents, landing up at their doorsteps if the child is absent from school for more than two days. There are 106 students at the school and she tries to keep in contact with all the parents, most of whom work at the crushing units and quarries. ''When I go to inquire about the children, the parents mostly shout at me because they want them to work,'' she says.

But Amuda has always had her way so far: her greatest advantage is that she is a local villager. At times when she was unable to prevail upon the parents to withdraw their children from work, she made them agree on a compromise -- studies during week days and factory -- work at weekends.

A common problem, according to another teacher, Jayanti, is that if a child is absent from work for even one day, quarry owners sometimes dismiss the whole family. In her view motivation level of the children is also very low.

Social worker S Rajendran feels that all is not rosy at the school either. He claims that after class five, most of the children drop out and are inducted back into work at the quarries.

Murali said they sought permission to set up balwadis in these areas under the Integrated Child Development Services, ICDS, a central government-sponsored programme. This has not materialised because the regulation says that a balwadi can be established only if the population of the place is not less than 750.

In the maze of such regulatory constraints and time-consuming government red-tapism, the main objective of the rehabilitation programmes tends to get lost, which is: ''To enroll the children is schools and stop the growth of child labour,'' says Murali.