Example of Kamaiya Child Labor

The entire load of cleaning in the restaurant is on the shoulders of young Shankar. Having taken the afternoon tea with snacks at about 4 p.m., he gets on with the kitchen work to prepare evening meal. His mistress too helps him in cooking. At 9 in the evening, he takes evening meal and he again starts washing dishes. His time for going to bed is usually between 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. In this way, Shankar's one day passes in the restaurant.

Silent by nature, Shankar is a boy of few words and takes some time to open up. When you talk to him in Tharu dialect, he starts telling you his story. As told by him, Backward Society Education (BASE), an NGO, had taken him to Dang for schooling when he was a small boy. His mother was alive at that time and he has some faint memory about her. His schooling went on for three years in Dang. Then all the other students returned home. As his mother was no more by that time, Shankar went to his maternal uncle's home and stayed there. After some time, his elder brother started sending him to work at different places.

Now he is busy doing washing-up in a restaurant. He says that he will not go to school even if someone wants to help him go to school. "Now I have no wish to study. I am not sure whether I will go to school or not even if someone wants me to go to school," he told this scribe in Tharu dialect. He does not know what ‘future’ is. He has not thought of what he will become in the future.

In the view of the hotel-owner, Mrs. Deepa Subedi it is not unusual to employ such children to work under the Kamaiya system. She says, "Shankar's brother brought him here and asked us to give him work. With our mutual consent, we fixed his wages as two hundred rupees per month. We will increase his wages as per his efficiency. We always tell Shankar to study with our children but he shows no interest."

Now it has been two years since the Kamaiyas were made free. Ausya Tharu, an illeterate old man of 71 from Jagatpur, eastern Kailali, was a participant in the peace march and the mass meeting organized on the occasion of the Kamaiya Emancipation Day. When the procession was going round the Dhangadhi Bazaar, Ausya was not aware that he was carrying the placard upside down. Though he is a freed Kamaiya, he has not been able to obtain the Red Card, neither has he received any land. Before coming to the procession, he had hoped that voices would be raised about his problem in the mass meeting and he would receive the land. Enough to disappoint him, nothing happened as he had hoped and had been told. The procession went round the main thoroughfare of Dhangadhi. Upon reaching the Open Air Theatre of Dhangadhi, the procession turned into a mass meeting. Representatives of various political parties spoke on the occasion but no one raised Ausya's problem there.

In a great disappointment he said to this scribe, "We did not know it, Sir. They said we would get land and everything if we joined the procession. Telling us such things, they brought us here. But no such things happened here. We received neither the Red Card nor the land. We have to continue living in the Jungle amidst much fear."

This is a story about an old man who is a freed Kamaiya and who has not received land as promised. Land Reform Officer of Kailali district Rebati Dhakal admits that the office has not been able to issue the red card and distribute land to all the freed Kamaiyas. He said, "It was due to the mistake made at the time of data collection. The census of freed Kamaiyas was collected after the announcement of emancipation from different villages. And the Office prepared the record on the basis of the data collected that way. Those who were not included in the data remained unrecorded." According to the record in the Land Reform Office of Kailai, land has been distributed to 2,088 families who hold the Red Card.

According to Bardia Land Reform Office, 503 bighas of land has been distributed to1, 2,326 families of the freed Kamaiyas who hold the Red Card and they have received the land ownership certificate. Similarly, 1,260 families who had the Blue card have received 235 bighas of land. However, the statistics brought out by various NGOs show that more than 4,000 families of the freed Kamaiyas in Bardia and Kailali are still homeless.

Land Reform Officer of Bardia district Mukti Bahadur Swanr says that the land reform offices of all the five districts where there are ex-Kamaiya Camps have made a request to the Ministry of Land Reforms to review the matter. As soon as the Ministry approves the request, a review will be made and more Red Cards will be issued, he says. But the freed Kamaiyas doubt the statement of the Land Reform officer. There are hundreds of freed Kamaiyas in Bardia who have received neither the Red Card nor the land nor other relief materials provided by the government and non-government organizations.

The Land Reform Office of Bardia has settled the freed Kamaiyas from 11 VDCs of Rajapur region in Tepari and Govindapur Village at ward no 12 of Gularia Minicipality by providing land recently. But as there is no school for children in that area, the Kamaiya children who used to go to the primary school in Rajapur are now spending the days playing in the jungle and collecting firewood. Prem Tharu, a 34 year-old freed Kamaiya, says, "The Government gave land to the freed Kamaiyas in the area settled by NOn-Kamaiya landless squatters. There is always a quarrel between the squatters and us. Children who are in grades above five have to go to Gularia to study. How can it be possible for the laborers like us to send our children to the school two hours away?"

Improper settlement has discouraged the ex-Kamaiya children from going to school. The freed Kamaiya parents prefer keeping their children at home rather than sending them to school because such children take care of the younger ones and do household chores while the parents are gone out for work. One can see such examples in every ex-Kamaiya camp.

Jaggu Tharu, 30, has two sons – Sanjeev Chaudhary, 12, and Sanju Chaudhary, 9. When they were in Manpur Tapara, both the boys used to go to school. Sanjeev was in grade 5 and Sanju in grade 3 in Koili Primary School in Manpur. Meanwhile, the Government shifted the freed Kamaiyas from Manpur to Tepari. Now it has been three months since they came to Tepari but it is not so easy for Jaggu to continue the education of his sons because it takes more than one hour's walk to reach the school in the Bazaar area from Tepari. Jaggu has no money for the transportation to send his sons to Gularia to study. The District Education Office has launched the Primary Education Extension Program in Tepari, but it is only for children younger than Sanju. Thus Sanju has been deprived of education.

While in Manpur Tapara, Sanjeev and Sanju used to get up at 5 in the morning. Nowadays, they hardly get up at 6:30 in the morning. It suggests that there has been a great change in their daily routine. Instead of carrying books and pens in their hands, they carry a catapult and a fishhook. It is no more a matter of surprise to the family to see Sanju killing a bird with his catapult and fishing in the nearby river. The parents feel happy when they see Sanju reading a book, but Sanju feels that his immediate need now is a good catapult. He had one, made out of a bicycle tube, but it got broken while he was trying to hit a large bird in the jungle in the Indian Territory nearby.

Jaggu says, "We have no money to send our children to school. They are still young. They are Tharu children. Naturally, they do fishing and hunting." Jaggu's statement shows that in Tharu community fishing and hunting birds with a catapult are not taken as mischievous activities of a child. Sanjeev and Sanju were not alone who used to go to school. More than 50 children of Tepari used to go to the government school but now hunting has become their favorite pastime.

A great change has taken place in the daily activities of Sanjeev and Sanju in a short period of three months: