“Children as young as 10 had begun to directly offer themselves to traffickers because they could no longer go hungry, Sonia Faleiro wrote of children in the northern state of Bihar in The International Herald Tribune.
The author came upon the “unexpected and heartbreaking path to servitude,†which children from far-off towns and villages are being forced onto, while investigating child labor in India for a book. (Read her India Ink article on the topic.)
Recruiters from networks which hire child labor are so numerous, Ms. Faleiro wrote, that it is easy for children to approach them, sometimes even without the knowledge of their parents.
Arun Kumar, 14 , from Amni village in Bihar, was rescued by a local nonprofit organization from a rice mill in the state of Haryana. He shared his tale with the writer:
Kumar knew life in Amni had no promise, but the fact that he simply did not have enough to eat led him to seek what he called a “labor contractor.†He spoke to a few people who'd made it all the way to Haryana and back, a distance of over 22 hours by train. They were all children between the ages of 10 and 15; like him, they all believed they needed to work to survive.
“When I asked Kumar who had sent him to the mill, he said: ‘No one. I went because I wanted to.'†she wrote.
Read the full article.
