Childhood in bin!

What else could vividly exhibit the dichotomy of our country than the socio-economic discrimination we still have among our children! Last week, in the vicinity of my residence, a society organised a gala event for children to celebrate Children’s Day. Not only did the event allow the children to have fun, but also allowed them to showcase their talent and enjoy the evening that ended with a lavish spread of food and music! However, the very next morning, I found a group of children (read rag-pickers) separating items from the pile of remnants, from the previous evenings leftover! Such an irony not only echoes the distressed condition of a certain pocket of population but also questions the relevance of Children’s Day, where still millions of children celebrate their day, waiting for the day to get over, so that they can hunt upon the leftovers of such parties...
Delhi alone houses over three lakh ragpickers with most of them being children. Same goes for Mumbai and other cities. What’s worse is that in spite of waste-picking being included amongst one of the hazardous occupations, banned under the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986, rag-picking is still ignored in any legislation with respect to child labour. And it is not only boys but even girls (around 70 per cent of all rag pickers are girls) can be found indulging in such activities. With the kind of societal stigma that’s attached with rag picking, these children are subjected to every kind of social abuse and that’s why their vulnerability towards picking up habits like smoking and drugs are also found to be high. Not just this, the occupational circumstance also leads to malnutrition causing multiple deficiencies within them. Above all, we ourselves rarely practice separating different types of wastes (biodegradable, toxic and non-biodegradable), most of these children become vulnerable to chronic infections and other diseases as they are exposed to used needles, syringes, used condoms, saline bottles and other forms of bacteria/viruses. Needless to state that it is so common for ragpickers to fall ill on account of their exposure to contaminants and wounds inflicted by metal objects.
Though there is no secret with respect to the saga of ragpickers, we still do not  have any municipal waste management policy and no program of recycling, thus making ragpickers indispensable and irreplaceable. In absence of ragpickers, there is no mechanism in place to sort, recycle and collect garbage! And in doing so the children become vulnerable to infections owing to unsafe practices like working in decaying garbage with barefoot and glove-less hands.
To fight such problems, the largest organisation of waste-pickers in Argentina organised a historical protest against the government for the nationalisation of the recycling contracts and a general policy for cartoneros (known as waste pickers). Many other countries practice Participatory Sustainable Waste Management for safe disposal of waste. It's high time not just for the society to sensitise with the cause, but the local municipalities to ensure proper and safe arrangements for collecting and disposing of garbage. But most significantly, it’s an social imperative for government to put rehab plans in action for them. As a nation, we owe to our children and particularly those who are forced to pick our leftovers, on account of lack of dignified opportunity. Lets give them a chance to celebrate their own Children’s Day. As a nation we can celebrate Children’s Day in its true spirit, the day we create the bridge wherein these children can pick their life, over rags.