The Other Railway Children - 'My Last Visit to India?'

Chapter 17 Last Visit to India?

I visited the Indian Railway Children programme from 29th January to 21st February 2011 in company with Haydn Abbott, my successor as Chairman and Henry Clarke, trustee, and his wife, Verena Clarke. Haydn accompanied us in our visits to Mumbai, Lucknow and Delhi and Henry and Verena continued with me to Itarsi. Afterwards I continued alone - although accompanied by Railway Children Programme Officers - to Calcutta, and to significant programmes in the State of Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada, Tirupati and the joint cities of Hyderabad/Secunderabad.

The most noticeable change since my previous visits was the obvious progress of the Railway Children India strategy of a closer engagement with the government systems, in particular with the Integrated Child Protection System being developed and implemented through the Ministry of Women & Child Development at National and State level and the Ministry of Railways through the RPF and GRP.

In nearly all the places I visited, Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) and Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs) had been established and there had been new selections to CWCs in the last few weeks replacing many of the former political appointees with social workers and NGO senior personnel with more appropriate knowledge and experience. There was now general acceptance that children found ‘in need of care and protection’ should be presented before a CWC and that children would be placed in government approved homes (a government children’s home or NGO home with a ‘fit institution’ certificate) or placed in care of an NGO for home placement or alternative care. This had replaced the practice of NGOs taking a child into their own care without presentation to a CWC in spite of the legal requirement (on the statute book since 2000) as the government infrastructure had been weak or non existent.

All the NGOs I visited were now meeting the law in this respect, although there were still some legitimate doubts and worries about the quality of some of the government homes to which children were usually sent and the tendency for some CWCs to be unaware of their powers to allocate children to the care of approved NGOs. The Railway Children policy and that of its partners was seen to be that of striving to improve the government system, engage with the CWCs and government homes and monitor the effects. This engagement, after identifying children in need of ‘care and protection’, consisted of accompanying children to CWCs, chaperoning them to hospitals or to their family homes, offering alternative care after CWC presentation, suggesting CWC appointees, training CWC personnel and involvement at government homes in education, counselling provision and family reintegration methods.

The close co-operation with government personnel was also seen consistently at the railway stations visited. All NGO, Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) staff appeared to work closely together in helping to contact children found on railway stations, especially newly arrived children and were also engaging with station management and staff - coolies and vendors. This was especially apparent at Lucknow, Vijayawada and Tirupati where all stakeholders were being involved to make ‘Child Friendly’ stations - a designation to be officially embraced shortly at Lucknow station and which should be incorporated within the criteria being established by the Ministry of Railways for the development of 50 nominated ‘World Class’ stations. One result of this increased effectiveness of early intervention at stations was a marked decrease in the number of children being found on stations compared with 3-4 years ago. This was not believed to be the result of fewer children leaving home, but more due to the effectiveness of picking up children from stations as soon as they arrived, so the long term population of street youth and children active on stations was much reduced.

However, a downside was the fact that the likelihood of being picked up by police or NGOs at the larger stations was well understood by many street children, some of whom deliberately now frequented smaller stations where NGO or police presence was less. This was mirroring UK experience of 15-20 years ago when barrier controls, CCTV and police presence meant that few children were seen now on UK stations, especially in London, but were dispersed into many UK cities and towns and lost in the communities and therefore much harder to find and help. One implication of this trend was that NGOs including Railway Children now needed to widen their scope of early intervention, including mapping where children ran from; working to contact children whilst still in the main source areas; helping children when picked up by the CWC and JJB systems - another sign of distress and need before the child in most cases became lost to society.

There are clear signs that government senior personnel are seeking the support of NGOs not only to help contact children in need of ‘care and protection’ and support the implementation of the child protection policies, but were encouraging NGOs to monitor the processes and draw attention of the authorities when those systems failed or were absent or inadequate. The NGO role of monitoring the systems was highlighted in several meetings with government personnel. The State of Andhra Pradesh was one where the senior civil service in both Women & Child Development and Police was actively progressing the implementation of the National Child Protection Policy and specifically asked Railway Children to work with them and UNICEF in helping to plan the intervention and strategies on the State’s key railway stations, co-ordinating the knowledge held by all NGOs working at stations. The opportunities for Railway Children in taking a lead nationally at India’s railway stations in consultation with other key NGO donors and partners are great - this underscores a recommendation from a conference of Railway Children partners at Calcutta (Monobitan) that Railway Children should be the “Platform for Platform Children”.

The two day conference was organised for four local NGO partners (CINI Asha and Don Bosco at Sealdah and Howrah respectively in Calcutta, Conc’rn at New Jalpaiguri and Praajak at a number of stations in West Bengal including Malda and Asansol) to make presentations about their work and on the second day, to review the Railway Children training programmes. At the end of the first day I was asked to summarise the key points that had emerged, which I presented as follows:
1. The need for all NGO partners to facilitate and monitor government schemes under the Juvenile Justice Act and Integrated Child Protection System.
2. The concern about the quality of government homes and the need for Railway Children and partners to get involved to improve these.
3. Because of the reducing number of children seen at stations, the need to extend early intervention to source community mapping and child protection.
4. The need to work with older street youth on platforms to convince them to be a positive force for child protection (peer groups, the Kenyan Undugu model).
5. The need for realistic child participation through Youth Groups, Children’s Banks, and feedback.
6. The need to share experiences about family reunification and identification of what works best in the longer term. The need to identify NGOs that can help co-ordinate follow up in the source areas.
7. The need to gather information about the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among children in the North East of India.
8. Drug de-addiction - prevention, facilities for children, avoidance of returning to station environment, motivation through sport, adventure, music etc.
9. The desperate need for government schemes for physically and mentally challenged children.
10. The need to develop performance indicators to measure our impact and demonstrate our effectiveness in an increasingly competitive culture in India - especially with possible new initiatives forcing large corporates to give 2% of their profits to the voluntary sector.
11. The need to record evidence on children affected by violence as input to the UN General Assembly study on children and violence (through Railway Children UK and the UN special representative, Marta Santos Pais).
Some specific recommendations were made by the conference members to Railway Children:
1. To become the agency that is the “Platform for Platform Children” co-ordinating all NGOs in India that work on railway stations.
2. To use the children mainstreamed back into society to act as advocates for Railway Children.
3. To get school children to become aware of street children and talk about the issue to their parents and peers to reduce stigma and pressure government to realise its Child Protection System in a sustainable and sensitive way.

I found enthusiastic partners at all locations I visited and a willingness to engage with the government systems, with existing children in NGO residences being happy and well cared for. One overriding impression, however, is of the excellence of key people - usually the NGO founder - in each NGO and conversely, the absence of an obvious deputy or successor in some which is a worry. This seems to be a characteristic of many Indian organisations and may reflect either a paucity of people of substance prepared to work for the voluntary sector when salaries in the burgeoning private sector are several times higher, or - in a few cases - a reluctance to delegate and let go of personal power and influence. One of the rocks on which Railway Children bases its success is the excellence of its people and in the competitive environment in India - a fast growing economy, the establishment of many global corporate organisations there and the continuing salary escalation of the large international NGOs, it is difficult to recruit and hold the very best staff at salaries we can afford. We owe a great debt to those in our Mumbai Office and at the helm of our partners whose motivation has been maintained despite all obstacles and who have enabled us to make so much progress.

On this last tour I had a number of internal flights (such as Bhopal to Calcutta via Mumbai which seems strange geography but was 14 hours faster than a direct train!) and a number of rail journeys including two incredible 15 hour runs by expresses that never left the State they started in - Tirupati to Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Dhamangaon (near Nagpur) to Mumbai in Maharastra. I managed to read eight new books on my travels and - on the trains - actually appreciate some of India’s scenery - especially the Western Ghats which for the first time I saw through ‘clean’ windows in India Railways’ air conditioned 2nd class bogies. Indian Railways is changing too. In fact during my visit to Jeevodaya at Itarsi I squeezed in a visit to the A/C Electric locomotive maintenance depot and was astonished to see its scrupulously clean and tidy heavy maintenance area - a situation I struggled to achieve when I instigated staff safety initiatives in British Rail’s depots back in 1991-2.

At the end of the three week visit I was the guest of Gopal and Asha Dutia in their home near Mumbai CST (old Victoria Teriminus) station where we spent a leisurely three days reflecting on the visit and I developed my ‘street cred’ with countless Indian street boys by joining Gopal’s dinner party which included Sachin Tendulkar’s mother-in-law! In fact, throughout my visit, the one subject that was bound to stir the children into animated questions and response was the imminent Cricket World Cup. I could always get a strong reaction by opining that England would beat India in the final - little was I to know that their first encounter would result in a thrilling and nail-biting tie! The only group I felt sorry for were the boys at an Observation Home in the small town of Yavatmal in Maharastra where their only TV was broken. I trust it was repaired in time for the cricket or I sensed a rebellion could ensue.

Finally, I rounded off my Indian experience with a couple of personal visits - meetings which reflected the events which brought me to India for the first time back in 1989. My family still sponsors a few children through the Theosophical Order of Service in Colaba, in the south of Bombay near the naval dockyard, and I visit the couple, Rusi and Freny Toddywalla, who used to manage the programme under the aegis of Save the Children and who continued the programme for Bombay children when Save the Children discontinued sponsorship (they still manage a sponsorship programme for nearly 500 children from Bombay’s slums). When I visit, they arrange for the children we sponsor and their families to join us for a small party. This time, as well as meeting our current families, I was delighted to see Rekha and her young son, for a girl we started sponsoring as a 9 year old is now happily married and came specially to meet me to show off her child, supported by her mother and two of her sisters.

Then, on my last day in India, I met up with the girl I visited on that very first trip to India. It was on my way to meet her and her brothers in the Colaba agency that I encountered the young streetgirl on Churchgate station who was the catalyst for the founding of the Railway Children. She is now a 35 year old woman working as Administrator for a firm installing and maintaining coffee and tea vending machines in India’s offices. I was delighted that my visit to her aunt’s house coincided with her cousin’s birthday, so not only was she there, but there was a reunion with her brothers and other family members whom I’d first met over twenty years ago. I’d come full circle.