Millennium India Education Foundation

India has an estimated 17 million child workers – the highest incidence in the world. According to a report by UNICEF, about 12% children in India aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour activities, including Rag Picking

Anyone who’s been to India has seen little kids near large areas of dumped waste, some of these images glorified by Slumdog Millionaire, things we know and yet choose to ignore on a daily basis. Rag pickers are involved in recycling activities for instance picking up empty plastic bottles, paper, even hazardous materials like disposable batteries or materials with chemicals. Rag pickers pick trash door to door, or are potentially street children picking waste off the road or even whole family units that just live by sifting through garbage. usually, they fend for recyclable materials e.g. glass, metal  & plastic and sell these to scrap dealers.

You may also be interested in our previous story on Child labour in India.

Here are some facts:

Shocking facts on rag pickers of India

• Many rag pickers start at 4-5 years. In a recent study, in Patna and Raipur ~20% of total rag pickers were between of 5-14 years, and 40% of the total dump site waste pickers were children. New Delhi and Mumbai have about 300,000 rag pickers and around 120,000 are under the age of 14.
• Children as young as 5 work from morning to evening to collect enough trash for sustaining themselves
• Many rag pickers come from rural areas into huge cities for better living and are unable to find opportunities and end up collecting trash.
• Many rag pickers live on the street, are homeless and have no access to education or healthcare.
• Rag pickers mostly work barefoot in the Indian heat, get exposed to chemicals and hazardous substances and often suffer from life threatening diseases as a result.

There are so many issues that bring complexity that it is difficult to find out where to start. India needs a proper programme for waste management, the laws pertaining to child labour need to be enforced– all these activities are illegal, and mostly the scrap dealers who buy from these kids and families need to be held accountable- even punished, if we can go that far! It is the responsibility of everyone in the value chain. We need to ask our companies what their own recycling methods and plans are. Why can’t consumers give back the worn out products to companies and have them recycle instead of throwing stuff outside to rot and for the rag pickers to struggle with? Every small step here, is a step forward.

More reading and data sources– NYTimes,Knowledge Alliance, NPR’s radio show

DISCLAIMER: The facts and statistics presented in this post aren’t owned by MIEF. The data is from trusted third-party organisations already mentioned above. MIEF shares this info only to create more awareness.