A day in the life of an Indian child mist

GAUHATI, India (AP) – Once school is ready for the day, 10-year-old Imradul Ali rushes home to take off his uniform so he can begin his work as a scavenger in the remote northeast of India.

Armed with a cannonball, he goes to a landfill in the slums of Guwahati, the capital of the state of Assam. Here he hunts piles of other people’s rubbish in search of plastic bottles, glass or anything you can recycle or sell. Around him, cows graze on the mountains of debris that lie along the site.

Ali comes from a family of scavengers, or ‘rag pickers’ – his father, mother and older brother all earn their living from it. He started doing this a year ago to help his family earn more money.

The family was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic last year because they could not go to the landfill and sift through garbage to sell things. They struggled during the months-long exclusion in India but were able to get food through aid organizations.

Ali says he does not want to spend his life on it, but he does not know what the future holds. “I want to continue going to school and I want to be a rich man,” he said.

He earns up to 100 rupees ($ 1.30) a day, while the rest of his family earns about 250 rupees ($ 3.30) each.

“It’s very difficult to run a family by picking rags,” said Ali’s mother, Anuwara Begum.

Sanding is dirty and dangerous work. Although there is no exact count, aid programs say that about 4 million people in India work as scavengers. It is effectively the primary recycling system in the country, but the work is not environmentally friendly. Those who do so have few rights and are exposed to deadly toxins every day.

The last census of India in 2011 put the total number of child laborers between the ages of 5 and 14, including scavengers, at about 10 million.

Thadeus Kujur, who runs the Snehalaya charity group, says it is always sad to see children collecting rubbish instead of going to school. His group has five childcare facilities that care for 185 boys and girls, and has helped 20,000 children over seven years. “We run motivational programs for poor parents to realize the value of education before placing children in schools,” he said.

According to a new analysis by the World Bank Group and the UN Children’s Fund, one in six children, or 356 million worldwide, lived in extreme poverty before the pandemic began – and the number is expected to worsen significantly.

Ali’s father wants his son to continue going to school, hoping he will run his own shop or get a coveted job in government when he grows up, which will end their suffering.

As for Ali, he wants to drive a car and wants to own one in the future. “I want good food and clothes,” he said.