Over 50,000 kids in city spend nights on streets

Around one % of total children population in Delhi or 50,923 children live on Capital streets, a new census to be released on Friday has revealed. About one-fifth of them are girls. And, the biggest reason for living on the streets was poverty.

Updated on: Apr 28, 2011, 23:40:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Around one % of total children population in Delhi or 50,923 children live on Capital streets, a new census to be released on Friday has revealed. About one-fifth of them are girls. And, the biggest reason for living on the streets was poverty.

There are three types of street children in the Capital as per United Nations definition of street children.

First, who are children of street families and constitute about 36 % of the total street children population. Second, are those working on streets, who are about 26 %. Third, are the ones, who live alone on the streets and they are about 27 %.

The highest number of street children were found in north Delhi followed by south-west district and west Delhi. Only 4 % of them live in NGO run shelters and many of them shift their homes within a month.

Over 90 % of them were from the deprived sections of the society such as dalits, tribals and other backward classes, the census by NGO Save The Children campaign has said. The census was conducted to find out the exact number of street children in the Capital and their problems.

The census found that a majority of the street children were from Bihar (21.2 %), followed by Uttar Pradesh (15.3 %), Rajasthan (6.8 %), Jharkhand (4.1 %), and Madhya Pradesh (3.9 %). “Nearly 92 % of the street children knew about their families and also knew where they hailed from,” the census said. But, only 4 % want to go back to their original homes.

One-third of the children on streets cited poverty and hunger as a reason for living on streets. Many of them were sent to Delhi by parents to do odd jobs in a bid to augment family income and only 9 % landed after running away from their homes because of abuse or curiosity.

The census found that on average a street child earned Rs 2,240 per month and half of them gave some money to their parents. The disturbing trend found was that more than one-fifth of these children were drug addicts and spent half of their earning on purchasing drugs.

Even though living in extreme poverty most of the children wanted education or some skill training to improve their earning. Most feigned ignorance about existing government schemes for them and said were not getting benefit from them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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