Mukti Ashram

Situated on the outskirts of Delhi, Mukti Ashram is an immediate shelter for the children who are rescued from Delhi and its surroundings. They are immediately provided with medical help, food, clothing, recreational facilities, sports, theatre and counselling during their stay until the legal formalities are completed and they are repatriation and reunited with their families.

Many of the rescued child labourers have seen to be trafficked at a very young age. As a result of which these children lose out on their valuable years of education. However, their immediate need, before anything, is that of their reunification with their families. BBA has witnessed that in majority of the cases, either the children have been kidnapped by force or by fraudulent promises of a good life and education made to the parents. These parents wait for months and years for the return of their missing children.  BBA, thus believes that reintegrating these children with their families would give the children the best psycho-social support that cannot be compensated by a foster care institution. BBA also fights for the recovery of back wages on the amount of statutory rehabilitation for the children to enable them to lead a better life. This also prevents these children from being re-trafficked.

After being reunited with the parents, there is a follow up process of the children, reintegrated within the community. If a child is then seen to be in need of a long term educational support, he is brought back to BBA for a longer and more intensive rehabilitation process.

The Meaning of Freedom for Bonded Child Labourers

Everyone perceives freedom in their own ways. Now days for teenagers freedom means to have their own room and space.  A women to have freedom means to walk on lonely streets without being scared.

What would be meaning of freedom for a child working 12-14 hours a day in zari, bindi making, batch making, and leather shoe manufacturing unit. The child who is not allowed to go out of a small room stuffed with 7-10 people , 3 adults and rest children of his village and same age, who is only given  break for 10 min to eat his lunch and dinner so that his body is not giving up on the hard labour that he is doing.

We asked the recently rescued children.  Do they feel any change and how different is freedom then work. As most of the children didn’t knew how to read and write so we told them to draw the difference. We were not expecting them to make beautiful drawing but the purpose was to know what is children’s perspective is toward freedom.

Gaffar , 10 year old child in two simple pictures described his grief and happiness in the first picture he drew a child all alone and sad without any friends and family.  In the second picture he met friends and playing football and now he is not he is not alone.

The above picture depicts how night and day he was making batches and the employers holding a stick in his hand to beat him and in picture below it shows his wish to to go to his village back join the school and make new friends.

This is a very strong picture of hatred and suffering in this picture Jahid drew Zari shirt design that he was working on and then an employer who is really rude to him. He used to work in the factory from 2003 and was forced to work day and night after getting free he would like to play and go to school and also would like to prosecute the employer.

On other side Jahid made a picture of hope and desire, in extreme right he is holding hands of his sister reading and writing and also playing football . This is how he predicts his freedom.

In this picture the child has depicted his life as just doing work and making batches that is how he depicted his life and in the second picture its meeting his father in extreme left and going to school and playing cricket and football.

He also described in one line in the end in home I would play and I would get love.

Children who made the drawings

"A child in slavery is a failure of a democracy a death of future, an assault of human dignity, mockery on religion, culture and civilisation, denial of rights and the shame on the face of humanity. Any excuse to continue it for this is an evil and a crime. It is possible to put an end to this human scandal. Let us act together NOW". Kailash Satyarthi , Chairperson of Global March Against Child Labour.

Children showing their drawings  and Ajay,  Volunteer who conducted this activity with children