Children - Terre des Hommes

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Nature of Quarry Work
Traditionally, being born in the Vaddi community implies
that they have to continue the occupation of stone-breaking
and working in quarries. Literacy levels, among the adults,
are very poor–less than 25 per cent as per the survey of
MASS and as most of them are landless. Stone breaking
is the only occupation they are mainly involved in. Stone
breaking is like self-employment within the unorganised
sector. They are completely dependent on the contractors
to supply them with raw material. The contractors bring
the stones by trucks, to their village and dump them near
the houses of the Vaddis. The Vaddi community works in
informal groups of one or multiple families and purchase
the raw material from the contractor. Again the workers are
dependent on the middle-men who give loans or advances to
purchase the raw material and charge a high rate of interest
from the workers.
Child engaged in stone quarry at Kaliberi
(photo July 2009)
When the study team visited these villages, the women
workers reported that they purchase a truckload for around
Rs.600 and 6–7 persons work together to break the stones.
It takes them a week to break a truckload of stones, for which
they get Rs 1,500. This is shared by all the individuals who
work in the group. This includes mostly women and children,
particularly girls who work along with their mothers. The
age group of the children working in the quarry activity is
between 6 and 16 years. They earn, on an average, Rs.30–35
per day breaking the stones. The contractors return to the
village to collect the load again and this is supplied to the
highways which are close to these villages and to the real
estate industry. The workers say that there is an increasing
demand for stone as the construction activities around the
Bengaluru-Chennai region are rising at a fast pace. The men
take up heavy work of making foundation stones and selling
each for Rs.5 or they work in the stone factories as daily
wage labour where they earn Rs.150 per day. A large section
of male youth is also involved in this work.
Life of the Quarry Workers’ Children:
Child Labour and Education
Poverty is the most dominating aspect in these children’s
lives. Starved, yet working to make the day’s earning is the
typical day of a child worker. As the work is mainly done
just outside the house, the children are pushed into this
occupation right from childhood. The economic situation
being always on the brink of starvation, most children do
not attend school or drop out whenever the family situation
demands their time for stone-breaking activity. Adding to
the family poverty is the poor functioning of the education
system in the rural areas because of which, children do
not have motivation to go to school. When the study team
visited these villages, we found several children participating
in the women’s group meetings. When questioned about the
reasons for the children not attending school, the women
stated that, although they tried to force their children to go
to school, they keep dropping out because they do not find
it interesting.
Therefore, we found a lot of anguish among the women
who stated that they wanted their children to study so that
they could prevent them from entering the stone-breaking
occupation. But the children find the allurement of earning
a daily wage very hard to resist, as it gives them a purchasing
capacity at a young age. The women also mentioned that
while the girls normally give their majority earnings to their
mothers, the boys learn from a young age to fritter away some
of their money. The older boys’ who earn larger amounts,
start getting addicted to liquor and gutka.
We saw primary schools in these villages and also saw the
efforts of the local organisation MASS, which had earlier
run NCLP schools here but found it frustrating both with
respect to motivating the children as with respect to well as
the government to take education seriously. This is a clear
failure of the education system in the country which does not
impart quality education to the child, who prefers to work
hard in the hot sun breaking stones, than to study under
the roof of a school. It is a reflection on rural education in
India as we found similar problems being expressed by poor
parents in Karnataka and Rajasthan also, where they do not