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These children go to residential schools but in vacations the footpath beckons
Children taken under their wing by social initiatives like the Child helpline 1098, send street children to residential schools where they can pick life skills. However, during vacations these children have no other place to go to except back to sleeping on the footpaths
Karan Nayi, 7, attends a regular residential school and does fairly well in his class. However, twice a year when he comes ‘home’ to his family to celebrate his vacations he lives on a footpath near a petrol pump on the Nehru Bridge Circle on the Ashram Road. Before you think this is some kind of a social-studies project for Karan, it is a reality as his father Bhanwar, a mechanic, lives there.
"After my shanty on the banks of the Sabarmati River was demolished to make way for the riverfront, I had nowhere to go," recounts Bhanwar, native of a village near Udaipur. "As I earn a living on the Ashram Road, going too far was not an option. My wife left me years ago when our three kids were very small and thus we started living on the footpath."
Karan and his sister Chanda were spotted by the Childline 1098 initiative who the children to residential schools. While Karan has completed class II education at Vishwagram, an organization near Mehsana, Chanda has passed the class IV examination this year from Mahipatram Ashram in Ahmedabad. For the brother-sister duo, it is going back to the footpath after 3 years; their father generally visits them every 3 months.
Binal Patel, the Childline coordinator for Ahmedabad, said "For the girls, safety is a factor on footpaths but for boys, the risk is of falling into the criminal world," says Patel. "Thus we decided to intervene. In absence of father or mother, the situation is aggravated. For other kids, vacation means going to their relatives' residences or coming back home. But these kids are unique as they have no home to go back to."
Karan dreams of becoming a professional driver and start earning soon so that he can support his father. He admits that there is a stark difference between the life at the hostel and on the footpath but he is also happy that his long-due trip to Rajasthan will take place in May.
Sanjay Bhavsar, of the social-worker couple Sanjay-Tula that runs Vishwagram, says that their organization is one among the many in the state that admits and provides for children living on footpaths.
"Older kids can adjust to reality but for smaller kids, it creates a psychological conflict and thus we insist that they be kept in the hostel even during vacations and go home for the minimum period possible," says Bhavsar whose organization has 9 such kids from across the state. "Parents' love and care is also vital for the kids and thus we ask them to visit the kids periodically. We conduct a number of vacation programmes for the kids but many decide to go back."