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Bhima Sangha
By Anthony Swift Excerpts published here (with permission) from "Working Children Get Organised," published by International Save the Children 1999, £4.50 + 15% postage and packing, ISBN 2-940217-07-2. |
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Bhima Sangha, a union of working children, came into being as the result of the interventions of two trade union activists in Bangalore in the early 1980s. Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, has long been subject to bouts of rapid growth, marked by a booming hotel industry and a rapidly expanding population of migrant work seekers – many of them children &150; from rural areas.
The two activists, Nandana Reddy and Damodar Acharya were brought face-to-face with the problems of child workers when they were trving to organize adult workers in hotels and small-scale industries for the Bangalore Labor Union. Unusually, instead of concentrating on grooming leaders, they attempted to train the rank and file of workers in labor law and organization and negotiation skills. Child workers simply turned up at their meetings, squeezing into the front rows and sometimes comprising 40 percent of those present. The activists began talking to them and realized they were confronted by a new dispossessed class of workers. The children asked very basic questions about working hours and conditions. Among many heart rending cases they raised was that of a boy who had lost a hand in a work accident. "Could he get compensation?" they wanted to know. Unions had told them they didn't act for children. The activists explained that, as the law banned child labor, officially they didn't exist. Their reply was that the law should be changed. Nandana Reddy and her colleague [Damodar Acharya] picked up the challenge and, in dialogue with the children, set about drafting a child labor bill, though child labor at that time was neither a political nor a union issue. Completed in 1985, their draft bill distinguished between child labor and child work, identifying occupations in which it should be illegal to emplov children and those which might be phased out gradually in ways that protect the best interests of children and their families. In order to present the bill to the central government, they formally registered themselves as a voluntary agency, The Concerned for Working Children (CWC). Some of the children they had consulted went with them to Delhi to take part in the presentation. Their presentation prompted the government to review the Labor Act and invite Nandana Reddy. to join the working committee. The Child Labor (Prohibition and Labor) Act of 1986 was troubled by loopholes – the greatest of which was that it governed only the organized sector – but its formulation and the controversy around it helped put child labor on to the political agenda. The declared purpose of CWC was to improve life for working children and their families, using a child-centered methodology. In continuing their work, CWC activists were responding to the children as de facto workers. Inspired by the idea of a society free from exploitation, they employed and adapted the same empowering approach thev applied with adult workers to their work with children, encouraging them to discuss their lives, identify problems and formulate lines of action. From its initial involvement in industrial legislation and advocacy, CWC developed its program on the basis of ongoing discussions with working children, involving them in collection and analysis and responding to their appraisals of what worked and what didn't. A major problem for the children was that conventional schooling took no account of the realities of their working lives. In the city, CWC developed a center that now provides more than 80 children a year with occupational training and doubles as a refuge for children urgently in need of care and counseling. Realizing that most working children were migrants from villages, CWC activists established a presence in rural areas with the idea of gaining a better understanding of the children's situation and identifying a preventative course of action. One outcome, developed in close collaboration with children as well as experts in the field, is a project designed to strengthen the ability of government schools to meet the needs of children generally by training teachers in child-centered methodologies. CWC also designed a curriculum more suited to the needs of working children with the intention of having an impact on the formal education system. It is currently training teachers in 53 government schools to use the curriculum. It also set up a number of extension schools which provide education and occupational training specifically adapted to the needs of working children in more than 60 villages who cannot go to conventional schools. CWC has gained agreement for the children attending the extension schools to be officially registered so that they can gain certification and other benefits of the formal school system.
In 1989, CWC launched a research and documentation center, and published a newspaper for young workers that stimulated a great leap forward in the participation and organisation of working children. Bhima Patrike – effectivelv an open letter to which any working child can contribute – was intended to be an educational tool and to promote communications between the children. The name of the newspaper was chosen by the children, Bhima being a character in the Mahabharatha who has the strength of 10,000 elephants. Distributed widely in the city and rural areas by CWC activists, as well as through other NGO subscribers, it carries announcements, observations and stories by children about their experiences. It can be read as a newspaper or opened and stuck on a wall wherever children are likely to see it. The paper enabled many children to realize for the first time that there were many other children like them. From describing their own experiences they progressed to writing about issues they had in common. For the first time, children in villages could see that life for child migrants to the cities could be very tough and unpleasant. Children who could read would often read the paper to those who couldn't, but its existence also stimulated non-literate children to want to read it and write. The paper promoted discussion between working children and encouraged the formation of many small groups. Some of the groups began to take action on their own initiative. In one incident a boy was beaten up by a security guard and wrongly accused of breaking a car windscreen. A group of young workers who witnessed the event shouted out protests and went to the police station and laid a complaint. The car owner was made to apologize and pay for the boy's medical bills. In another example, a boy had been abused by a hotel keeper and then thrown out of the hotel without his wages. In discussing his, problem, his group decided it was too dangerous for him to go back to the hotel for his money. Instead they chipped in to buy him a basket which would enable him to begin selling vegetables. Some of the groups of children began thinking of forming a bigger association and in 1990 CWC suggested they start a union. They took the name for their organisation, Bhima Sangha, from their newspaper. Having had little help from organized labour, Bhima Sangha decided to celebrate April 30th as Child Worker's Day, rather than celebrate May lst. Their decision was less of a rebuke to the unions than a statement of pride in themselves. An early action by Bhima Sangha arose from the realization by its members that children presenting widely different ailments at a hospital outpatient's clinic in Bangalore were being given the same medicine. Whenever they tried to meet the hospital management to discuss the matter they found the clinic closed while their letters were responded to with stock circulars' about opening times. They resorted to staging a dramatic portrayal in front of the hospital of people arriving with very different ailments and being given identical medicine. The clinic doors were suddenlv opened to them. Subsequently, instructions were sent to every hospital in Bangalore saying that any children carrying a Bhima Sangha membership card should be given treatment without having to make the minimum payment. Through their movement, the children found they could negotiate access to services not normally provided by the official structures. Membership of Bhima Sangha and public recognition of its work was spurred by a series of exposes of the appalling conditions in some city hotels. In 1993 children from Bhima Sanha staged demonstrations outside a hotel called the Ayodhya against the owner. They had found that the hotel's 26 child workers were quartered in a "hell hole" without windows, lighting or fresh air. The children were made to work from 4 am to midnight and were often woken by having boiling water splashed over them. Beatings were routine and some children had been branded with an iron. Wages and food were summarily withheld. The members of Bhima Sangha also discovered that the hotelier came from a village where they had members and so they demonstrated outside his village home. The hotel has since been shut and its license cancelled but Bhima Sangha is still demanding that the children's wages are paid. At another hotel several child workers died in a fire. None are identifiable; because child labor is illegal, hotel owners kept no records of the names of children in their employ. Bhima Sangha drafted a report about the fire and abouyt working conditions in the hotel, as a result of which the hotelier's license was withdrawn. Because of these and other similar outrages, the city police subsequently set up a Child Help Line, adopting a name suggested by a Bhima Sangha member. In another acknowledgement, the police took to informing Bhima Sangha whenever they had reasons to detain or question one of its members and have recently announced their recognition of the Bhima Sangha membership card. Other kinds of action have included negotiating with employers for better wages and working conditions and with middlemen for better prices. By adopting an approach of prioritizing their demands and then arguing forcibly for two or three of a list of ten they have won some small victories. More importantly they have won a growing sense of solidarity and a greater grasp of the benefits of collective thought and action. Because their decisions are taken by consensus each of their actions is an expression of their collective wisdom.
CWC activists make contact with working children at various contact points and centers in the city, and in the villages where they operate. A contact point is one of the entry points to the movement and is a place where children can find an activist and have a chat or seek advice or help. Where a number of children begin to use the contact point frequently, they might agree to establish a center. A center is an official meeting place it may be out in the open under a tree, or someone's home or shed, or a shop. At centers, groups of young workers schedule weekly and monthly meetings of their members, usually speaking to an agenda planned at the preceding meeting. At their meetings, they discuss problems, plan and report back on information collection and analysis and identify courses of action. Initially CWC activists attended most center meetings in the roles of facilitator, supporter, friend. Asked what working children get from CWC, a Bhima Sangha member replied: "Respect for what we are." But Bhima Sangha has increasingly claimed its own identity as a social movement of and by working children, developing its own political agenda as distinct from CWC, which is a voluntary development agency. With this shift, Bhima Sangha's members and office bearers have developed their own facilitating skills and the involvement of CWC activists in their meetings has become more focused on the setting up phase of a new center. In the opening stages of the relationship, Bhima Sangha's membership was limited to children in CWC programs but now it recruits its own members directly and is beginning to set up its own relationship with children in other organizations. In CWC's view, the emerging organizational relationship between Bhima Sangha and itself is akin to that of a trades union and a social institute. While CWC's agenda is largely based on issues raised by Bhima Sangha, the latter regards CWC as a resource center which it can turn to for support and information as well as capacity building of its office bearers and members.
Because CWC and Bhima Sangha come at the problems from different angles and with different resources and, for the moment at least, continue to operate in the same localities, they have proved a powerful partnership. An example is CWC's "Wind of Change" program through which it, along with Bhima Sangha, has negotiated the setting up of village "Task Forces" which enable children to play a part in local policy-making and planning. Task Forces are composed of elected members of the village parchayat (village council), as well as local government officials, elected delegates of organized children and members of their families, employers who directly or indirectly emplov children and a CWC representative. Because all members have equal standing, Task Forces represent a remarkable coming together of different caste (predominantly upper-caste men and lower-caste children), gender, age and interest groups and are having gradual impact on social attitudes. When she was interviewed for this report 15-year-old Bahivani from the village of Alur said:
If you had asked me a question three years ago, I would not have answered it. Thev would not have allowed me to speak to you – there is no gender discrimination in this village. Even if they had, I would have just grinned and run back to our house. The children representatives on the Task Force are delegates of Bhima Sangha and Makkala Panchayats' (Children's Councils). The latter, which Bhima Sangha has been instrumental in setting up, are run along similar lines and parallel to the village panchayats. They were developed because working children realized there were many issues they wanted to discuss which it would not be appropriate to discuss in Task Force meetings. Through their councils, children are now able to identify their problems and priorities and formulate proposals for their representatives to take to the Task Forces. The skills developed in Bhima Sangha strengthen the whole process, with the result that instead of just telling a Task Force what they want, children's representatives also put up a convincing case. In demanding a footbridge to enable them to get to school, one Children's Council found out how many communities would also benefit from it, established reasons for its location and identified what contribution different interest groups might make. Given such a presentation, it was hard for a Task Force to dismiss it out of hand. In one case, where there was a dispute over the location of a footbridge, a Bhima Sangha representative on the Task Force said in exasperation: "Well, you know you want it there because it is near to the village arrack (drink) shop." That settled the matter. In another example, children in an outlying village were unable to get to school. The Children's Council identified someone in that village who was willing and able to provide tuition. They investigated alternative approaches to constructing a suitable building cheaply and decided how much time they could contribute to constructing it. They then took their proposal to the Task Force, which accepted it. Children, the main fetchers of water for domestic use, have also persuaded Task Forces to redistribute water supply points. As the main collectors of firewood they have planted community forests as a renewable source of fuel close to their homes. Task Forces have subsequently agreed to manage them. In the five villages which have Task-Forces, planning has become more child-centered as the local authorities have come to realize that what is in the interest of children is also often in the interests of the wider community. Members of Bhima Sangha have also gained a sharpened perception that the well being of children is intimately tied up with that of their families and communities. "We are working children," said Manju, another interviewee for this report. "We believe our problem cannot be solved in isolation from the problems of our communities." In the villages children, have taken their political activity a stage further by presenting political candidates with their concerns, offering to endorse those who pledge to their support. In the 1993 elections thev backed 28 candidates in one district of which 18 were elected.
Bhima Sangha currently reaches some 13,000 young people aged between six and eighteen in Bangalore and six districts of Karnataka. In the city, half of its members are girls and half boys. In the rural areas the percentage of girls is higher, as boys are more likely to migrate in search of work. Initially, the leadership of Bhima Sangha consisted of a core of more experienced teenagers representing the various districts in which the union operated but a more democratic structure has now been introduced, resembling that of local government, and presided over by an elected committee. In another new development, Bhima Sangha and CWC are working with other NGOs in the country to build children's unions. During visits from other NGOS, Bhima Sangha holds its own meetings with the visiting working children, establishing its own lines of contact, and it has become the main resource for them.
Bhima Sangha has been very active in developing international links with other movements of working children and is committed to helping develop a national and regional Asian movement of working children. Along with CWC it hosted the First International Meeting of Working Children in Kundapur in 1996 bringing together 28 representatives of working children from 33 countries. It has also participated in national and regional meetings of working, children in Africa, Brazil and Latin America and in the Amsterdam and Oslo Conferences on Child Labor and in the Working Children's Forum in Oslo. Along with the African and Latin American and the Caribbean Movements of Working Children. it is a founding member of the International Committee of Working Children's Movements. Bhima Sangha has a clear position on the two key issues of education and work. Given the way that national and international economies are managed, children have to work. Governments should strive to eradicate the main cause of the hardship they, their families and communities suffer, namely poverty. Meanwhile children must be allowed to work in safe and dignified occupations that allow for their education, leisure and personal development. Working children themselves must be involved in identifying work problems and solutions because only then will interventions be likely to be of both short- and long-term benefit to them. Those in very damaging occupations, as well as their families, must be provided with sustainable alternatives. As for education, it is not an alternative to work but a universal right. For children who have to work, education and occupational training should be provided in appropriate, accessible forms which are integral to the mainstream education system and which will equip them for adult employment and to become agents for social change. The work of children, coupled with such education, they believe, will help break the cycle of poverty and oppression.
 April 2000 Journal
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