Scenes from the street — A script for young voices

But first, a word about these correspondents. They could have been 12 or 14 years old and their faces and bodies bore the scars of early encounters with malnutrition and physical danger. This was also a BBC with a difference the acronym in this case stood for Butterflies Broadcasting Company.

The impromptu radio unit was the result of an interesting partnership. One between the Delhi-based Butterflies, an organisation that has been working with Delhi’s street children these ten years and more, and the UK-based media ethics body committed to child rights and ethical reporting. In a workshop held recently in Delhi the 14 street children who staffed this latter day BBC, produced a recorded radio show that revealed with searing clarity the reality of their lives. In a sense, these children were already media personnel of a kind they produced a wall newspaper for Butterflies called Bal Mazdoor Ki Awaz. Now they were required to understand how to use speech on a mass scale to break the adamantine barriers of indifference.

Says Rita Panicker, director, Butterflies, “They were taught how to record, how to modulate volume, how to speak, how to edit. And they took it extremely seriously.”

Children, by their very nature, are direct communicators and BBC’s youngsters were no exception: “Namaste, this is a reporter from BBC. We welcome you. Now Bablu will give us some idea of his life.” In the 12-odd years that constitute Bablu’s life there is a full lifetime’s share of violence, trauma and uncertainty. His voice, however, gave little evidence of this. It was almost matter-of-fact, even as he talked about how his family fell apart, a drunken father, a mother afflicted by cancer, a cruel jijaji. “And so I came to Dilli,” he related. His young interviewer shot questions at him. Did the police trouble you? How did the police trouble you? What did you do? Slowly, under these short, sharp queries, the undergirding horror of the little life surfaced. Bablu revealed how the policemen at the railway station accused him of stealing something and hauled him off to the thana despite his pleas. “I told him, `Uncleji, uncleji, main ne chori nahi kiya, main ne chori nahi kiya’ (Uncle, I have not stolenanything). But he did not listen.”

The first interface these children have with the State is with the long and cruel arm of the law (see illustration). One child talked about being taken to a chowki where he was administered electric shocks “current laga” as he put it. He goes on to relate how he told the policemen at the station that he was very hungry and the only reply he got was that he would be fed on lathi blows (tum dhanda khayenge).

It is not just the police. There are also confrontations with the older, bully boys of the street who foist stolen goods on the younger kids, make them sell pudiya (small packets of drugs) and who sometimes separate their legs and assault them. Rape is as much a fact of life on the pavements as hunger, and it is referred for the most part by two words: galat kaam (wrong acts).

Through their radio interviews, these children also wanted to send out a message to others like themselves who may be tempted to run away from homes and fall victim to the brutality of the city streets, not to do so. There was also an implicit criticism of the media that spared so little time and effort to turn the lights on such a reality.

Observes Tariq, a 16-year-old from the Jama Masjid area, with a rare clarity in the interaction that followed the radio show, “They don’t write about us because we are poor. If children of rich families get kidnapped or hurt themselves, the TV and newspaper log rush to print their stories. But as far as we are concerned, even if we die they don’t care.”

This is why, says Tariq with unassailable logic, children like himself must become “reporters”. “We are doing this to make the world listen. We have so many problems but we have to live, we cannot be afraid. People don’t think of us either as children, who should be taken care of, or as workers, who should at least get a decent wage.”

He cannot understand why he, after working 15 hours a day, gets twenty rupees, while a pilot can comfortably fly a plane for a few hours and earn Rs 3,000 a day. “Is this fair?” Tariq wants to know.

Sunil, one of the staff members at Butterflies, who conducts theatre workshops with street children, explains that it is often the girls who are the most vulnerable. Their “parents” may well turn out to be procurers, and many relate stories of how they are sometimes fed some davayi (drug) and made to remove their clothes. “Reaching out to them is difficult. They have been so injured, so abused that many just don’t trust adults. It is only with time and effort can confidence be built up. But once they gain this confidence, it is their biggest asset and protection,” says Sunil.

Panicker hopes to institutionalise this radio training in some way and has already approached Akashvani for a regular slot for the children so that they can tell their stories to the world. Sarah McNeill, one of the trainers for PressWise, puts it this way,“The gain is that we leave these children with both the skills and the technology to communicate. It is a process that empowers them. This is our first pilot and we hope to replicate it in places like Kosova, Peru, Macedonia and South Africa.”

But it is Ashraf who must have the last word. “When I grow up,” he says, “I want to be a reporter like you. But you write on all kinds of things. I will only write on the lives of children whom nobody sees.”