Gaya Rescue

To the thousands of travellers who flow through the city of Gaya, its ramshackle train station is a place to leave – fast. But several hundred children have another name for it: Home.

In Bihar, India’s most lawless state, working conditions are notoriously difficult and (as civil administration fails) increasingly dangerous. Kidnappings are routine, public services a by-word for corruption and regular armed raids on its struggling trains are facts of life.

To the thousands of travellers who flow through the city of Gaya, its ramshackle train station is a place to leave – fast. But several hundred children have another name for it: Home.

Many aid agencies have pulled out of Bihar but Karuna have deepened and strengthened their relationship here with People First, a local charity who run schools in some of the very poor outlying villages. A year ago Karuna started supporting a new project for street children living rough at Gaya railway station.

It took a while to be able to visit this project. Communal rioting, a curfew and shoot-on-sight orders followed. When we could visit, the surrounding instability seemed only to further underline the project’s value.

Away from the railway platforms, here at last, they can be children. Many spoke with gratitude for being in safety, where other people don’t mean imminent danger.

The main challenge is getting them here. Winning the children’s confidence is key since their experience of the adult world is fraught with risk and violence.

Most get up around 6am and work until noon, collecting rubbish and coal dropped from goods trains. Living on their wits, many beg where and when they spot a chance. About 5-6 kilos of rubbish will get them 30-50 rupees a day. Enough to make it to the next day – and pay off the railway police who deliver regular beatings if they don’t get their cut.

“In one month the police may take more than half what money I have,” says Rahoul, a boy who looks about seven but with the eyes of a man of forty.

These children are vulnerable. Rumours abound of kidnappings and disappearances, a child prostitution racket plus a trade in organs for transplants. But here there are no families to check up on where the kids are if they go missing and it’s hard to check whether they’ve just moved on. Police investigations are notoriously inconclusive. Many believe the authorities to either mastermind some of the abuse – or to take bribes that preclude possible investigations.

The station clock flicks over to 6pm. Suddenly there’s a rush of unshod feet as an Express Rajdhani train to Delhi pulls in. The few minutes when these trains stop are critical for the kids. Rajdhani trains are used by the rich. Passengers may give a few rupees or throw away unfinished food. Strike lucky and a square meal plus enough money to stave off a beating could mean a good night’s rest and the space to choose a few hours in school.

Serial disasters, compounded by misfortune leave dozens of children weathering cold nights on Platform 1. Kids as young as five bed down here. They eke out a living in foul conditions – gleaning what rupees they can to make it to the next day.

The Rescue Project at Gaya railway station tries to help these children recover their future. Encouraged by a well-liked cycle rickshaw driver, trusted by many of the kids, some children have started coming to a free open air afternoon school now running in a disused siding. For some it’s their only chance to learn to read and write. The school itself comprises a blackboard, a teacher, some shade from a tree and a chance for the kids to learn in safety.

Here, the kids sit smartly on the bare ground newly alive with attention for their teachers. It’s a pool of positivity in an impoverished place. They copy the Devanagri alphabet and help each other learn and understand. The atmosphere glows with their potential and the kids are suddenly kids again – excitable, being themselves and more responsive to kindness

Drawing these children into a stable rhythm of regular education is often tough.

Rajan is twelve. His sparkling eyes and ready smile attract attention. Recently he had a chance to leave the station but refused. “I’ve been offered work cleaning in some big house but I don’t go. They may trap me there” he says. The railway – despite its perils – still means a kind of freedom for the children, who survive by looking out for each other.

The Rescue Project rests on its credibility to win over those children who can see that education will help. The project is very cheap to run. Administration and management costs are tiny since there are no buildings or fixed assets. Money goes directly to buying materials and paying for teaching time, which some teachers augment by donating more of their time. So far the railway authorities are on good terms with the project and have allowed it to continue. It’s a young project but it is starting to scratch the surface. At times, the kids see other, brightly uniformed children pass gaily in rickshaws. Now some of them too have a chance to learn.

The most valuable currency here is the children’s word of mouth. Gradually, change is coming. Seeing other children and friends going to school and becoming literate encourages newer arrivals to railway life. More get curious. Many are overjoyed that people from a long way away want to help them succeed.

After school the kids return to the station to work the lines until dusk. Night drops fast. In mid-December the cold closes in with sub-zero temperatures. Few have more than a thin discarded blanket – one between three huddled bodies- to keep out the snap chills of winter on the northern plains.

Other children - as young as five - fend for themselves. Living rough in Dickensian conditions, while passengers pass with their mobile phones ringing with the latest Hindi film themes.

On our last morning, a new child made it across to the school. He toddled about, malnourished and non-plussed. No strength left to wave away the flies nestling in an open wound sunk perhaps a quarter of an inch into the side of his right foot. “It’s OK” a teacher said. “If we can get him to stay, then nursing care will come”. He plopped down, exhausted but still drawn by the scene of an open-air school class at work.

The Rescue Project of Gaya station is aptly named. It’s difficult to run because it tries to step in where so much else has fallen apart. No child should have to invent a childhood from the serial failures that deliver them to life on a railway platform. Yet thousands do. The school is a critical first stage to recovering a childhood and some options. The classes have so far helped eighty children with a stepping stone to education, medical care and beyond that there are plans for vocational training. For some at least, Gaya’s Rescue Project offers a ticket out of hell.

Ratan Akash is probably about 13. He has a shining smile but vulnerability is written all over him. He collects another sack of rubbish among the excrement on the lines. His father’s dead. He doesn’t know his birthday or his true age but has put together a life from the base opportunities of Gaya railway station.

“It’s home. It’s freedom for me. I can’t remember when I first came here, or where I used to live. I only know that the police knocked down our hutment and told us to get out. It was too hard to stay with Mum because she had no money and beat me when I asked for food. ‘If you want to eat then go and get some money’ she’d say”.

It’s strange to hear Ratan talk of his ‘Freedom’ here. Freedom; an ideal known the world over. Yet his freedom is the kind that starts the day at 6am with what breakfast he can find and continues with begging and scavenging until noon. But at school, Ratan smiles with a new dignity, writing and looking like a young man who will work his way out.

Ratan’s story plays in my mind – his eyes bright – still unused to be spoken to with warmth or interest. “I dream of earning enough so that I can live in a house. With a tin roof to keep out the rain” he says.

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