Once forced into child labour, young Biharis cycle across villages to create awareness about the horrors of child trafficking, as financial needs force families to send their children away on false promises of better livelihoods.
Md Shabaz wakes up at the crack of dawn. Any lingering thoughts of going back to sleep disappear when he thinks of his childhood years. Years spent in distant Delhi when his tiny hands embroidered for hours without a break. Until he was rescued.
As villages stir to life, he wants to be there to catch people’s attention. He leaves home early so that he can start his solo bicycle expedition. He is not on a joy ride but a mission.
The 20-year-old visits at least five villages to spread awareness on the sensitive issue of child trafficking and labour.
Shabaz knows all about the horrors of being forced into labour and exploitation as a child — he was trafficked for work at a young age. After his rescue, he and other trafficked children are creating awareness to prevent it happening to more children.
Shabaz, who now lives in the Kathotiya village of Bihar’s Katihar district, was rescued from a zari factory in Delhi in 2018.
His father is a farm labourer and his income was hardly enough to feed his family of seven. He says he was tricked into sending his son to work in what was supposed to be a good job.
“The financial hardships forced my father to send me to work at a tender age. He sent me to Delhi after a villager promised him a better livelihood for me there,” said Shabaz.
But the reality was completely different. At just 13-years-old Shabaz was made to work for up to 17 hours a day in the factory.
“I embroidered clothes and was paid a paltry 3,000 per month. I was denied food for several hours as a break meant loss of work,” he reminisced.
He was rescued in 2018 thanks to Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a wing of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF), a non-profit organisation working for children, along with around 30 teens from different Bihari villages.
Shabaz is now in school, studying in class IX. His wish is that all children get quality education and enjoy their childhood.
The Mukti Caravan (the liberation caravan) campaign to create awareness on human trafficking was started in Bihar in September 2020 by the Kailash foundation.
It was created after hundreds of children and young adults returned to the villages during the lockdown.
“To prevent them from going back to the inhumane working condition after the lockdowns eased, we roped them in for our anti-trafficking campaign” Rashmi Priya, KSCF’s district coordinator told Village Square.
Shabaz and the other campaigners are paid salaries in the range of Rs 9,000 to 13,000, depending on the number of years they work, and follow a daily routine of bicycling to create awareness.
They are passionate about alerting parents about the menace of falling into traps of villagers who work as traffickers’ agents.
If the narrow – often mud – roads make cycling difficult, it is more difficult to convince the parents.
“Because poor families consider even small children as breadwinners and dissuading them is not easy,” said Priya.
“People live in utter poverty here and there are no avenues to earn money. How will we eat if they don’t go to cities and earn for their family?” argued Rabina Khatun, a homemaker in Imamnagar village.
Md Chotu of the Imamnagar village – also a survivor – finds campaigning risky as child traffickers consider them a threat.
“We don’t ask people directly about the whereabouts of their children. But we try to explain them the dangers of child trafficking,” he said.
Other issues, like child marriage, become passionate issues the campaigners advocate against.
“Child marriages increased during the lockdown as impoverished families married off their daughters to ease their economic burden,” said Md Sarifull, one of the campaigners.
He said he was attacked last year when he tried to stop a child marriage.
“I received severe injuries. But that hasn’t deterred me,” said Sarifull.
With the change in mindset being very slow, it is little wonder that Bihar has a dismal record of human trafficking.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2017, the state ranked third just behind Rajasthan and West Bengal. That year 362 boys and 33 girls below 18 years of age were rescued from traffickers, which translates to one child being rescued from trafficking every day.
In 2019, 294 minor children from Bihar were rescued from trains across the country, followed by 426 last year (till August 2021).
Priya said that KSCF chose villages that depend heavily on agriculture and face severe impacts from climate change.
Farms and houses in villages, like Imamnagar and Kathotiya, situated on river banks become submerged when the monsoon wreaks havoc.
“People lose their crops and have nothing left for their family expenses. Because of their circumstances, they fall into the trap of traffickers who take advantage of the situation and lure them with good income,” she said. “But sadly, children face hardships and torture in the hands of the traffickers and employers.”
“It’s difficult to stop trafficking because the families willingly send their children,” said Pramila Kumar Prajapati, chairperson of the Bihar State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (BSCPCR). “But we’re taking serious steps to prevent it and ensure that children go to school. We regularly check trains and buses heading to different cities,” Prajapati told Village Square.
The campaigning youth are active in trying to rescue children sent away. They have a group on a social media messaging app with youth volunteers in every village sharing alerts about missing children.
“Immediately we contact the cops and check trains going to Rajasthan, Mumbai and Delhi as children are mostly sent to factories in those places,” said Chotu.
The campaign running in 12 districts of Bihar and the coordinated efforts involving the police, have resulted in 323 rescues so far.
