JAMES

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

This is a story about a boy named James. 12 years old, James was a bright kid and had a dream of becoming a footballer and play for his country. His favorite team is Argentina and FC Barcelona just because he patronizes Lionel Messi and wants to be like him. James parents were both working and the family lived in a plush 3BHK apartment in Juhu. James was provided with everything he could ask for as both his parents were earning. But his parents used to work for long hours and they hardly had time to sit with James and listen to his ambition of becoming a footballer. Also for the past three years, James parents were not going along each other and every night James hear them shouting at each other. James loved both his parents and was sad that they hate each other now. James father has become a drunker since the past one year and every night he use to come drinking. James use to remember his childhood when he and his father used to watch English Premier League matches on television and how both of them used to cheer his Father's favorite team Manchester United. But now, James watches football alone while his parents are always fighting in their bedroom. Sometimes James mother use to come outside and just yell at James for no reason and ask him to go to sleep and not letting him to watch his matches. James was helpless and he wasn't able to do anything to make his parents love each other. He heard them saying getting divorced which sent shockwaves throughout his body. He became depressed at the very thought of his parents getting seperate because he doesn't want to loose his mother who loved him like an angel and his father who was his icon. James was no longer in the fantasy world he thought of as a kid and was getting the bitter taste of reality. At school he became a silent kid and stopped discussing football with his friends. He lost concentration in studies and was very much dazed and confused about what to do about his situation. He couldnt tell this to anyone as he has no siblings and his relatives stay in West Bengal. He stopped practicing football or watch on television and most of the time he kept himself locked in his room. His parents failed to notice this change in James as they had little time for their beloved child. At the half-yearly, James failed to pass. Suddenly James was numb and he shivered at the thought of revealing this to his parents who are already troubled. James being no longer able to cope with his situation started taking drugs. He continued like this until one day his mother caught him taking drugs.

There are many kids like James who become victims of parental conflict, negligence and domestic turbulence. Society should think of what rights they need to have to protect such kids.

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

Today we live in times where slavery is still all around us. As we move forward or strive to move forward in providing more freedom and equality and basic human rights for all; we have on the other side the horrible fact. Do we really need millions more victims in order to experience true wake-up call. I really wonder how many more young girls, your daughter my sister our children need to be forced into prostitution.

Girls that have been murdered, girls that have been abuse and still had to come out into the streets. Bounded to that life not by chains or locks but by a motion-Did not choose to stay so she could sell the body, she chose to stay there because she wanted to be with a man who loves her. She even won’t speak to the police because her mind was all brainwashed. Thus others will be too and soon.

City needs to be aware and need to say no we are not going to take it in our city. We can be agents of change too. Restoring faith Ensuring hope.  Protect those who has been survived from living hell- the daunting task of restoring human dignity. Let us break our silence, let us break our tolerance and strengthen the hands of those of us who are fighting this battle and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

VACCINATION IS EVERYONE’S JOB

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

We need to protect children. We need to preserve the right for freedom of choice and right to give the informed consent when a child is about to get a vaccine. Isn’t that what this is all about for an individual to do and doctors advice-the pros and cons-the alternatives. One of the alternatives is when it comes to vaccine is doing nothing.

It is the obligation of an individual not to allow anyone to die or to get sick of vaccine preventable diseases. This is not only a fight of the Ministry of Health. It is the fight of the whole country. It is a fight in which we need every partner.

What can be done being an individual?

Tell the parents how important it is for children to receive the vaccination.

Help by going around and giving flyers around the neighborhood.

Help guide the mothers to bring in their children for the injections.

Feel as though they are our children and that we are helping and serving and feel happy to serve them.

This immunization is important for a good future. Children will grow up without getting sick from serious diseases. Though the vaccination rate is increasing, these diseases continue to claim more than 300 children a day. 

WHAT SHOULD A PARENT DO

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

I think perhaps one of the most important decisions of parents must make is what to do about vaccination. And this is a topic loaded with controversy and there is no clear answer. So we really have to do research and then have to be an independent thinker and be willing to really think outside the box as one might say because there is a vaccine schedule and basically every practitioner abide and promote this schedule. And a parent have to decide is this the right thing for me. There is a ethical difficult conversation to have and that is the good of the population important enough that everybody must do exactly as the government says even if it might harm the child. Back when autism was one in ten thousand we did not have that much chronic disease in children. We work in the midst of these huge epidemics of asthma, diabetes, autism, anxiety, depression, bipolar etc. Kids’ brain s something is going on folks. I wish I could tell the perfect information and I know exactly and what’s causing all this things. Unfortunately I don’t. But nor do the individuals making the recommendations for the entire vaccine schedule. But I do recommend the entire schedule as it’s put out by the pediatrics. However for every individual child should be vaccinated. Because of the unique risk factors that exists in a family.

So every individual should understand we all have genetic vulnerability; the toxins to medications to various diseases.

Let’s just say there’s a very high likelihood of alcoholism in a family. If the children in the family never touch alcohol will they become alcoholics? Absolutely not. We are all genetically vulnerable. And we will hear over the next decade, twenty-thirty years this genetic trait has been associated with this that the other when we are talking about autism asthma all these things. The government is spending fifty to seventy percent of all their research data on genetics. Let’s not mistaken the fact that we are all genetically vulnerable. It’s the toxins we are exposed to that create the problem.

Therefore every parent is supposed to give their chidren the hepatitis b injection. And if the mothers already have the hepatitis b then she can give it to their infant.

DO NOT EMPLOY BUT EMPOWER

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

We know the laws definitely need to be re-looked at. The trafficker is roaming around the country after getting bails and all. This is something which is really hampering the whole system of putting a check on the trafficker, putting a check on how trafficking happens as such. So yes there is a flaw there. And also the awareness is majorly lacking in all the communities in India. The whole system of awareness the whole program of reaching out to the real grassroots person is this thing. And poverty, the main thing, government has to look at, is employ-ability and giving out some money related things to the people who are living in the villages.  

Even where the lord does exist, the child labour prohibition and regulation act, it is only concentrating on the employer. The majority of the children are being trafficked to work for pointed labour.

 For e.g. Rescued kids are being trafficked from the remote areas of India like Bihar or other areas from where this children are trafficked by organized people. One person takes the children to another than to another, than to another and eventually they end up in some unknown place and they are working for 12-14 hours a day for nothing to twenty rupees a week. And this is Slavery. So even when the authorities are able to do the raid and rescue the children and prosecute the employer, even in those situations the trafficker who has actually bring the children goes caught-free.

The problem of India is that it is not being able to cater to its own population in terms of equal distribution of essential needs. Despite laws in place there is no check in regulation on this crime.

WE WILL NOT BE SILENT

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

The worst victim of all sorts of abuse and exploitation among children are the one who are slave labourers what we call is the bonded labour system in India and child labourers-children who are trafficked, they are kidnapped, so they are most vulnerable to any sort of exploitation and all sort of diseases. So raising their voice was always very difficult in the beginning because nobody talked about those issues and slowly it gained momentum and people started realizing that these children, their voices have to be heard.

Talking about organizations- Bachpan Bachao Andolan or Save Childhood Organisation has been actively working over the past three decades in India as the Child saviour Organisation. They organized a program EDUCATION FOR LIBERATION LIBERATION FOR EDUCATION where they demanded the tougher trafficking laws and laws against child labour. They also invited the children that were being rescued from the small scale factories who were later sent back to their homes after counseling and rehabilitation. The minister promised quick action for this growing problem but such promises are hardly being fulfilled timely.

The main focus should be on

 PREVENTION- wherein we tell everybody that this happens, accept it. One needs to be vigilant, proactive in his/her approach when one talks about girls going missing, a boy is going missing or women getting into being trafficked.

ADVOCACY- with the government, with the stakeholders. That this things are happening and you should take a strong step in booking the trafficker and giving the means, spreading out the word.

LIVELIHOOD OPTIONS- for everybody who are there at the grass root level, who can earn and doesnot get into this hands of options of selling themselves or getting sold just to get money for surviving.

But this problem is such deep rooted in India that it will take long time to eradicate it if it goes by the same pace and that will engulf many more childhoods into this menace.

PUT THE BREAKS ON TRAFFICKING

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

Wikipedia says India is a source destination and transit country for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. In this edition of my writing I take a closer look at this growing problem of India.

Indian economy has grown tremendously over the past two decades. The spot remarkable growth in the GDP and literacy rate India continues to be overburdened for the highest number of child labourers, child slaves and trafficked victims in the world. Non government estimates say the problem of trafficking is affecting a huge chunk of India’s population ranging between 20-60 million Indians. The worst victims of trafficking are children. The children are used as cheap labour, domestic servants, beggars and many a times for organ sales.

Children are the most vulnerable. There voices are not heard because they are not the voters and the politics move around the voters so the chidren are normally neglected in the overall political debate and discourse. The second reason is that the whole dignity for children and dignity for childhood has always been a non issue and always neglected one. No body is talking about friendship with children or equal treatment to the children or dignity for children. Some people who are so called nice people they use to do the charity with the people and others try to exploit those poor children if they come from the background of poverty and illiteracy. There is nothing in between whether you do charity to the children or exploit them but how cant we consider them that they are also equal human being and we have to treat them like equal human being.

The issue of trafficking is not just confined to India but children from neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal are also brought to India and sold to Middle East and European countries.

India is a big country geographically. We have lot of porous and open borders. From Bangladesh children could be trafficked to India, from Nepal children could be trafficked to India. The Nepalese could be trafficked via india or through India to Gulf countries or to other countries. Similarily Bangladeshi girls and boys are brought to India first and then they are sold off o other countries in the middle east or other places. So it’s a source it’s a transit and it’s a destination.

For example if I were to go to any person, I m taking my daughter where she will be doing some light work in the house and she will be living like a queen so u don’t have to worry at all and she will be send back 5000 rupees a month, even then I’m committing a crime of trafficking but in substantive law this would be treated as abduction, moving of a person by deceit or kidnapping because the consent of the parent has been obtained fraudulently so or buying or selling of a person as a slave or all unlawful compulsory labour or procurement of a child and a juvenile for the purpose of hazardous employment. There are five to six different laws that are all applicable in this scenario but none of then used over trafficking. So the problem is we havethe laws but they are not very clear and therefore in the absece of clarity the enforcement is very little.

Thus huge junk of India’s population is the victim of trafficking. 

NOT FOR SALE

Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

Buying and selling of children for sexual and non sexual purposes is very much expanding, involving gross human rights violations. India is fast becoming a transit point for the traffickers and this is a great cause of concern. Available information indicates that women and children are becoming more vulnerable to trafficking because of decreasing livelihood options. Often being unaware of their rights, economically and socially deprived populations, thus it has become easy prey for the traffickers. Migrating populations are also vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers. Due to the secret nature of trafficking, this system has not been systematically studied. There is a wide gap between the official data obtained from government sources and that given by NGOs. Often research methods are unclear.

In the human rights paradigm, gender and child rights are a basic component of human rights. Therefore a human rights orientation to trafficking must be responsive   and must focus on realizing human rights equally for children.

Therefore the main focus is on the violation of child rights that occur in the trafficking trade. Trafficking-the criminal practice of exploiting children who has not attained 18 years of age (purpose of this study) by treating them like commodities for profit. Even after being trafficked they are subjected to long term exploitation.  Traffickers of course are the most difficult to find.  The culprits are the traffickers about whom relatively little is known. Though there is a large amount of information available, the reality of the trafficking in children in India continues to remain hidden.

SHATTER THE SILENCE

 Gitali Borpatra Gohain

MACJ

This is terrible to see what is happening in our country.  But one should do something. What we really say is somebody else should do something. But we have all got an obligation duty here and it doesn’t matter whether we are religious or not religious but we all have got a moral duty to protect our citizens from doing this crime. What we can do is speak up, write up to MP’s. It’s time for action, we can’t just seat back and let just a few people handle this situations. They really need to be done by us as a believer in goodness. People come asking for help for them being victims of child abuse. But what can they do about it. But they are also very much afraid of coming forward because there are being prospect of them being initially ignored and later being arrested or charged with any kind of crime. This is happening and we can’t allow this to carry on. Those of us who want to come forward but is afraid to do so and it’s our right to be afraid because whatever the evidence might be if we happen to make allegations against certain people who the establishments don’t like; the sound the names of some of the people that one have made, the allegation against us are likely to be in trouble with the authority and they will give us a hard time. If we are to come forward just write to the higher authority people  for protection against anyone who tries to intimidate you which help include the police or social services, NGO’s or other authorities. The higher authority does have an obligation that the victim should come forward and they will be listened to but not necessarily sympathetically. However that’s what I would urge people to do for the time has come to take action on everybody’s part. Everybody who cares about the country, about the children and that time is now and everyone has an obligation.

ARENT THEY CUTE ENOUGH TO MELT YOUR HEART?

ARENT THEY CUTE ENOUGH TO MELT YOUR HEART?
by Gitali Borpatra Gohain

This is not just time pass, the reality around us. A large number of children are trafficked for begging. Children with disabilities are in the most vulnerable position. Poverty and physical disability are the ideal combination for children to be trafficked.

 Drugging children for begging.  After drugging the child, a beggar uses the sleeping child to evoke compassion and seek alms. Some poor parents who cannot feed their children earn money by renting out their children on a daily basis to these beggars. Many other children are being abused in a similar manner. It is also likely that several persons are involved in the exploitation of children in this manner.

Children are exploited for begging within as well as outside the country. There are newspaper reports as well as other data regarding trafficking of children to Saudi Arabia for begging during Haj. In 1997 a large number of Bangladeshi children were deported to India from Saudi Arabia where they had been taken under the pretext of visiting Mecca. They however remained in the country and were forced to beg from the pilgrims there. On this return to India, it was discovered that several of them had broken limbs. It was further reported that the traffickers were well organized and knows the supply market well. By sending the children to Mecca the agents ensured profits and did serve well to religious sentiments of the parents who have deep religious feeling felt happy and elated when their children got the chance to travel to Mecca for free.

Where is our country going?