Area scan.

Friday 16th april 2010,
Area: Lokmanya tilak nagar, Indira nagar.
Time: 10:30 am.
we (Divya & Ratna) started our day from Thane station. we reached Indira nagar which i s very close to Waghle estate, for the area scan. As it was an area scan so the first thing i noticed was the shops on the sides of the road. I could see the people working there on carpenter shops. There were children too. Moving along the road side i saw a big garbage bin which was almost empty & all the garbage (kachra) lying outside. There were few children peeping inside the bin just to find out some toys. I took some pictures & didnot speak to the children regarding their task they were doing there. Our goal was to find out the primary schools nearby in the area so we started to ask people around. We came to know that there are 4 schools in the vicinity & one aganwadi as well.In the four schools three were private & one municipal school. We decided to visit the municipal school first.The municipal school itself had two segments, one English medium till 4th standard & other Marathi medium which has two sections primary section was till 7th standard & secondary section was 8th to 10th standard. we met a teacher named, Samiksha kadam. she was very eager to help us & she took out her attendence register & gave us some names of the students who are studying as well as working. We decided to visit the places of the students so the first name was Ganesh who stays in Rupa Devi Tekdi as Ratna has mentioned in her mail. When we visited the family of this boy they all were against the child labour. At same time Ratna was discussing with another boy standing outside, I started querrying about the family status of the Ganesh. What i came to know was he had four sisters & was the single brother. i was speaking to his eldest sister named Geeta. Geeta left her School after 6th due to some family problems & now she is getting married in the next month. Because she was the eldest child of the family she compromised with the situation & problem & stopped going to the school.But other four are going to the school so she was satisfied with her sacrifise .When i told her that there is no age bar & she can continue her education now as well, her mother stopped me & said "Ab Kya Karegi Padkar ab to Shadi ho he rahi hai". I asked about her age so her mother repled "shadi ki umar ho gaye hai" then i asked what exactly the age is? She suddenly said 18 years. I had no words to speak as they were already aware of the ages of marriage of a girl. My next question was on their marriage. Her would-be husband was present there so i spoke to him as well & asked about their family planning as well but he said," abhi malum nahi, dekhenge!". i told him dont only see, plan first ,otherwise you will also give some child labours to the country. Geeta on the other hand was quite firm and interrupted in between and said, "jo mere sath hua mai apne bachhe ke sath nahi hone dungi".
After all the conversation, i made with this family, i moved towards Ratna & she told me about Anil as she has mentioned in her mail. Anil left his education because of the death of his mother. He wants to continue his studies but he had no knowledge how to start the further education?
We tried to find out the other locations as well but because of the sunny hot day we couldnot move further, 7 finally we decided to move.
There were two things which came in my mind was both of them the girl & the boy wanted to study but Geeta was forced towards marriage & Anil who was eager to go to the school for the completion of his 10th & 12th, had no idea where to go & how to get admission in the school.
Pictures i'll display very soon.