Classroom joys, caked in mud

Chhotu’s mother takes time off to be with him at a brick kiln in
Hariharnagar, North 24-Parganas. Picture by Pabitra Das
A red rag is Chhotu’s constant companion. The scrap hangs from the
makeshift canopy that shelters the two-month-old, a faded gamchha
suspended from stacks of unbaked bricks. He lies on another gamchha,
the only protection from the sun-heated soil that is his bed. Chhotu’s
mother piles grey blocks 10 feet away. She keeps an eye on him, as
best she can.

Families — fathers, mothers and children — are at work all around
under the sweltering sun, carrying mud, moulding it into bricks, ready
for the furnace.

Hariharnagar mouza, just 40 km from Salt Lake, has been identified as
one of two “backward and vulnerable areas” of North 24-Parganas. There
are around 25 brick fields here, attracting migrant workers from
around Bengal, as well as Bangladesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and beyond.

After the 2001 census found the area — which has no permanent
population — without education, health, sanitation or other essential
services of any kind, the district administration started a project to
educate the migrant children. In February 2005, Prayasam, an NGO, set
up three non-formal centres, supported by Unicef, for around 150 kids
from six kilns in the area.

There is a “season” for brick making — November to June. Labourers
come when the rains leave, and go back to their native villages — and
little income — when the monsoon returns.

Husbands and wives bring their children with them, older kids are put
to work or made to look after the younger ones so mothers waste no
time. The more bricks you make, the more you get paid.

“There is no child labour in our brick fields,” insists Ashok Rahara,
president, Brick Field Association. “The children you see fool around
while their parents work.”

Parents, too, deny the little ones are on the job. But ask the
children, coated with mud, sitting in class after working in the bhata
from 4 am till late in the evening.

Last Thursday, a batch of 40-odd kids between the ages of three and 14
were at Sahaj Path One, where caked mud on tattered clothes is their
only uniform. At Sahaj Path Three, where kids had their weekly off,
they showed up squeaky clean.

Taslima Khatoon chatters about her daily activities. “I wash dishes
and smoothen out bricks,” grins the five-year-old. Elder sister Rina
has graduated — she moulds and stacks them. Both have shaved heads to
tackle the prickly heat.

“I work because abba told me to,” explains Rina. They work from around
4 am to 8 pm, with a few breaks in between. Three months ago, their
favourite — and only — thing to do was make bricks. Now, it is coming
to school, five days a week, around noon.

It has taken time to get this far. When social workers first came to
this hinterland, parents had two fears: that the babus would take
their children and sell them or that police would lock them away for
child labour.

The upshot of the intervention is that apart from education, adult
awareness is on the rise. Immunisation, health and hygiene, sanitation
and even adult education are issues being explored by the Prayasam
team.

“The target of the project is not child labour. Since the kids are
away from their villages for six months of the year, they lose out on
education,” explains Manoj Pant, district magistrate, North
24-Parganas. “Working with bricks all day, they don’t have a proper
environment to develop,” he adds.

The system leaves parents and kids helpless. “After Class IV or so,
village schools refuse to let students continue if they are absent for
half the year,” explains mother Ayesha Khatoon. So dropout rates
skyrocket, though such roadblocks rarely dent child labour rates.

But with every season taking these migrants to a different place, what
is the guarantee that education — even in this non-formal form — will
continue? “If multi-activity centres can be set up in brick fields
across the state, kids could have a continuing education,” explains
Prayasam’s Amlan Ganguly.

Fires burn underground, turning clay dredged from the canal-fed river
into money. But on the surface, change will take a generation, if
Taslima and Rina are lucky.