For want of identity cards such as Aadhar, street children at railway stations face deprivations
As Covid-19 raged and forced a shutdown on Indian Railways in March 2020, tens of thousands of children dependent on the railway platform - directly or indirectly -- for their livelihood suddenly had nowhere to go. Many such children spilled over to temples and gurudwaras in search of food, begging for alms, while others tried their luck at streetlights, though often chided by police from time to time. Some others took shelter in Rain Baseras (night shelters), and a few left with no choice returned to homes, which some of them had left after facing abuses, violence in the hands of elder relatives, sometimes their own parents. Not having an Aadhar Card, or an identity card, or a Jan-Dhan account meant many of them couldn't avail the basic ration and paltry welfare dole outs which were being distributed by the government.
"It was a very tough time. So many children just didn't know what to do, where to go. Some parents were suffering from illnesses. Others didn't have homes; so they were on lookout for food, shelter and other basic needs," said Rajan, a 20-year adolescent, who collected empty, plastic water bottles from Old Delhi railway station. Rajan was forced to return home to a neighbouring village in Delhi, which he frequented once in a month or two previously.
Another civil society volunteer said that some of the kids, dependent on a Delhi railway station, had to take refuge in a temple or Gurudwara after their earnings dried up once the pandemic struck. Some others like Lokesh, another ragpicker near a railway station in Delhi, said he hung around the railway station and lived off the food distributed outside the premises -- Indian Railways, sometimes through its catering unit Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, and at other times by NGOs, was distributing food. There were children who could not avail of such benefits.
Plights of children during the pandemic who were dependent on the railway ecosystem, including trains and stations, have also been covered in a newsletter brought out by street connected children. 'Street Connected Children were anyway hand-to-mouth: the coronavirus epidemic made it worse,' was the top story of the April-May 2020 edition of Balaknama. It narrated the story of Munna, a 13-year-old rag-picker near a railway station, and many like him who were suddenly left without food and clean clothes, even as their only earning opportunities near railway stations dried up. Another edition of Balaknama quotes Pankaj, another child ragpicker near Nizamuddin railway station, whose slippers gave away, and without footwear, his feet nearly burnt on the roads. "Life was never easy, but it turned to hell during Corona," Pankaj was quoted saying in the Balaknama July 2020 edition. It narrates many stories around how parents of children dependent on railway platforms and streets were losing jobs, forced to borrow, and were pushed into the debt traps. Many such families reduced the frequency of two daily meals to once a day eating, show the case-studies in the newsletter. Not having an identity card, or Aadhar card, did become a problem for many of us when ration was being distributed, said Amar.
As Railways return to normalcy in phases, after periodic interruptions since March 2020, (from a phase of complete halt during first wave, and curtailed operations during Delta wave to slowly opening certain stations and running trains keeping with the spread and intensity of the pandemic and local lockdown rules, too close to normal operations since late 2021), many children, if not all are returning to railway platform ecosystem to seek means of livelihood.
After witnessing a dramatic drop in children rescued from railway platforms during the pandemic period, railway authorities and NGOs are seeing a steady and clear uptick in the numbers, even though trends vary from one station to the other.
Number of children rescued from stations in 2020 by Railway Police Force (RPF) dropped to a quarter of the numbers rescued the year before. The RPF rescued 5193 children in 2020, substantially low compared to 16,294 in 2019, 17,479 in 2018 and 13,779 in 2017. This number has climbed back to 11,900 in 2021. In March 2022 alone, 1420 children were rescued, and in the January-March 2022, the number of rescued children who needed care and protection was at 3621.
"Till three-months after the Delta wave, there was a drastic drop in children rescued on platforms. Later, as train operations normalised, children started trickling in. This trend also varies from one station to the other. Some stations in North India and Eastern part of the country started seeing children coming back to railway platforms in great numbers, almost at the pre-pandemic levels," said a not-for-profit stakeholder, which helps rescue children from the platforms.
(To be continued)
(The author is a journalist.)