About 93 per cent of the children never celebrated their birthday, 60 per cent have never seen a movie, all children gave their wages to their parents, 90 per cent of the parents were illiterates — these are some of the shocking findings of a study done by MV Foundation among adolescent children in the age group of 15 to 18 years, who dropped out in Telangana. The study was conducted in slum clusters of Bahadurpura, Balanagar, Ramagundam, Mahabubnagar and Medak by the NGO over a period of 45 days.
The one silver lining to the study, helmed by Rajendra Prasad of MV Foundation, was a 27 per cent drop in participation of children in the age group of 15-19 years in the workforce of Telangana in comparison to 2001 Census. “We chose urban slum clusters and areas where the child labour percentage is high while literacy is lowest. Areas in Bahadurpura, Balanagar and Mahabubnagar were chosen for that reason. Each child answered 300 questions which required each volunteer to spend about 3 hours, and 15 volunteers worked to gather the findings,” said Mr Prasad.
It is in the gender divide that the findings of the study show real disparity and bias. Over 40.3 per cent boys never went to movies, in contrast, a whooping 82 per cent girls never saw a movie in a cinema hall. Though the boys quit studies and were working they managed to stay in touch with friends, while the girls rarely or never stayed in touch with their friends.
“The area under Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority has the highest density of urban child labour. There is hidden child labour, there is disguised child labour. Unless we understand the problem we cannot solve it,” said Mr. Prasad.
For the newest State of the Indian union which wants to rise in ranking of human indices, the study found a significant reduction in number of children out of school as against the national average.
“There are 2.2 lakh children who are neither in school nor are part of work force. But nearly 33 per cent of the children drop out in the 15-19 age group,” informed Mr. Prasad. A total of 552 children in the 15-18 age group who did not complete 10th class studies formed the representative sample for the study which had 51 per cent teenage boys and 49 per cent teenage girls.
