Varsha Bhargavi

This is an article where I touched upon the gender inequality experienced by girls in India. As a Child Rights activist, I travel to the remote corners of my state to interact with my colleagues who work at the grass roots level. It opens up scope to see things and complexities and the injustice girls face at every step they take towards attending school.

This is the first part of the series on child labour used in the Hyderabad bangle industry. Majority of the children were brought from the state of Bihar which is distress driven, by the middlemen. The children were confined to bangle mking factories where they work for 10-14 hrs a day, without having a clue on how much money is being sent to their parents back home. Hyderabad police cracked the case under Operation Smile (Operation Muskaan). I wrote a series of stories on the rescue operation, temporary rehabilitation of children, transferring them to their home state and 20 of the case studies of the children.

This is a research paper I presented on Child Rights at National Human Rights Seminar organised by Osmania University. It is a volunteer's perspective on how the government and the society conveniently overlooks children and violates their rights on all counts.

This is an article I wrote on children working in cotton fields in poverty ridden Mahabubnagar districts. Incidentally this is the district which has the maximum number of farmers' suicides in the state of Telangana and also an alarming number of girl child trafficking. I wrote this story after visiting a some hostels where the drop out children are housed and trained under bridge course to bring them up to speed for attending full time school. Incredibly this is also the district where over 1600 children sent postcards to High Court Chief Justice demanding teachers for their schools.