A little past 8am on a chilly December morning, Mumal, a Banjara woman, tethers her two-year-old son with a piece of cord outside her tent as she prepares to leave for work as a domestic help.
For the next eight to 10 hours, the toddler spends tied up to a post along with three other children – all two years old or younger. A little distance away, there’s another post for tethering older children. And all this at a settlement for nomadic tribes barely 30 kilometers from Rajasthan’s capital Jaipur.
Mumal’s son Bhola cries as he struggles to free himself but other children looked resigned to their fate. There is a nip in the air but most children are not wearing woolens.
“The sun is out and it will be quite warm soon,” Mumal explains. Her husband, who sells garlic at a makeshift market, has already left for work. Her mother-in-law will leave soon to take the goats out for grazing.
But why tie the children like cattle?
{{/usCountry}}But why tie the children like cattle?
{{/usCountry}}“What other choice do we have? We have to go out for work to earn a living and sometimes to fill water. The elderly among us take the cattle out for grazing. We can’t take the small children with us, and they could run onto the main road if we don’t tie them up,” Gaindi, an elderly woman, said and added, “if we had a house, we could keep all the children in one room.”
Mumal’s family is among 24 families of the Banjara community who live in a settlement near Banskho village for the past three months. At present, they live in a cluster of tents covered with tarpaulin and cook food on earthen stove using firewood. There is no water pipeline, so they walk to the nearest tube-well about half a kilometre away.
A few elderly people and those who are unwell are left behind to keep an eye on the kids and give them food and water. Accidents have also been reported. “A child had died of snake bite two years ago. Then, a stray dog had bit one child about a month ago,” Banskho village chief Mangaram Meena told HT.
The Banjara community in Rajasthan numbers close to 300,000 and have poor access to schools and health care facilities.
“The Banjara community is mostly concentrated in southern Rajasthan districts of Rajsamand, Jalore, Pali, Ajmer, and Chittorgarh. While some of them move around, others who have been given pattas (plots) have settled down,” an official of social justice department told HT.
Meena says he approached the local administration several times to get funds released for those whose names figure in the PMAY rolls and also to include other families. Under PMAY, the government sanctions Rs 1.5 lakh to build a two-room house with a kitchen and a toilet.
“They have been living like this for the past 30 years. Earlier, they used to stay in another village Chittori before setting down at this hamlet Jatva Ki Dhani near Banskho. The men take up odd jobs or sell some commodity such as garlic and salt. Some women folk work as maids in the colonies on the outskirts of Jaipur,” he said.
The Jaipur administration promised quick action. “We will soon open an Aganwadi in the settlement,” Jaipur district collector Siddharth Mahajan told HT. Anganwadi is a type of rural child care centre started by the government to combat child hunger and malnutrition.
On the issue of housing, Mahajan said plots had been given and a survey held under the PM Awas Yojana. “It has to be seen whether their names are included in PM Awas Yojana or not. Some families have been included. There is a system as per a seniority list and nobody can change it.”