Children of a lesser god?

We're sitting in the plush International Labour Organisation (ILO) office in Delhi's India Habitat Centre. While an interaction with veteran director Shyam Benegal is on the cards, we're in the process of talking to children who have also gathered in the office and have been beneficiaries, as ILO officials explain, of the Indus (Indo-US) Child Labour project, jointly funded by Government of India and US Department of Labour, and started three years ago.

The project has so far touched the lives of 80,000 children and continues to provide education and vocational training to them. There's Sonu, a sprightly 18-year-old who earlier worked in a leather factory ("I used to work for 16 hours every day") in excruciating conditions. For the past three months, Sonu has been a beneficiary of the project and is hoping to significantly alter the course of his life.

Sonu, along with some other children and youngsters from his community, is here to watch a documentary, Lost Childhood, slated to be screened the same evening. A 22-minute documentary directed by Benegal and produced by ILO, it focuses on child labour; the camera lens zooms in on small children, their frail shoulders burdened with the responsibility of a) carrying on the family tradition and b) bringing money into their respective homes.

What the documentary doesn't address (according to some experts from the NGO sector who were present in the evening at the screening) are numbers, considered crucial in such documentaries. How many children suffer from child labour, has there been a significant rise in the number of children who work laboriously from a young age, have NGOs helped in curbing the number, what are the significant steps taken in the direction of curtailing child labour?

And while these questions haven't been addressed in the film, what Lost Childhood depicts are real-life stories of child labour. It's the other side of India, dressed in rags, very far away from the country that is experiencing the benefits of a booming economy.

In cities and towns like Mumbai, Agra, Kanpur, Firozabad and Moradabad, to name just a few, where one face of Indian youth is flourishing in the multiplex-mall culture, there is another side where children in the same age group are probably working 18 hours in factories which fail to provide even basic comfort levels.

And it's here, in this environment, that children start compromising on their health (a child brick worker featured in the film has a permanent hunch from constantly bending and dragging heavy cement blocks from one place to another). Then there are children who become physically challenged (the film showcased a child in Sivakasi who got burnt and lost his limbs due to an explosion in a cracker-making factory) or develop asthma problems and can also get affected by harmful dusts, gases and fumes causing respiratory diseases that can develop into silicosis, pulmonary fibrosis, asbestosis and emphysema.

The film also takes into view the attitude of parents, those who emotionally blackmail their children into labour at an early age. "It's tradition and who else but my child will carry the legacy forward?" asks a father whose child is a zardozi maker. "The fingers are delicate and soft and the needle work can be done better at that age," he adds.

A mother whose child is working in the high-temperature furnace as a bangle-maker, wonders, "We are poor and we need money, what other option do we have?" Another parent adds, "The caste system is still prevalent in India and our children still have no other choice but to start working at an early age."

And this pretty much is the real story "" parents forcing their children in some or the other manner and getting them involved in labour at an early age, without bothering about the final consequences and the conditions in which they work.

And therein lies the success of Lost Childhood: it makes you cringe in your seat, it forces you to think about your big-buck lunch at a fancy restaurant, it makes you aware of the neighbourhood grocery store where a 15-year-old is running in the rain to get you bread and eggs, it shows you're lucky to have parents who've always wanted the best for you, it makes you appreciate the warmth of your own home.

More importantly, the film makes you thank your destiny (if you believe in one). And just as I begin to light an incense stick as a gesture to thank my stars, I think of a segment in Lost Childhood where a little girl painstakingly made matchsticks in a dingy factory in Sivakasi.

Even my prayers have indirectly promoted child labour.

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Q&A with Shyam Benegal

How did you come to make the film?

I was approached by ILO a year ago for a film on this subject. I would've liked a younger filmmaker to make it but eventually I ended up making it myself.

Lost Childhood tackles an important issue, but doesn't it need to reach the masses and not just remain relegated to special screenings?

We're hoping to promote it on current-affairs channels and might take it to different cities and show it in areas housing parents whose children start working at an early age. Child labour is a huge problem and since you can't get rid of tradition and poverty (which are major factors contributing to child labour in the country) and the government still needs to be sensitised, we have a huge task ahead.

Also, banning child labour is futile unless meaningful alternatives are made available.

What was the budget of this film and how difficult was it to make?

We have the film dubbed in Hindi, English, Tamil and Marathi and it cost us Rs 40 lakh. Child labour was not a foreign subject for me, especially as one sees child labour thriving in different spheres almost everyday.

You've dealt with social issues in both the documentary format and the feature-film format. Do you prefer one to the other?

They complement each other. A well-made fiction film can be more motivating for the average viewer, and can also reach larger audiences. But documentaries provide a greater sense of reality and immediacy. However, when you choose to make a documentary, you have to deal with the idea of making very little money "" which is why it's become a genre for younger people rather than for people like me!