When I first met Badaik in 2017, she was around 17 years old. I was on a reporting trip in Assam, following a lead on child trafficking from the tea gardens. Day one had yielded very little information and day two did not look too promising either when I was introduced to Badaik. I was informed that she had been sold to work in a home when she was just knee-high and had recently found her way back, an unusual occurrence in a region where girls simply went missing.

Badaik did not want to talk to me initially. She just nodded in response to all the chatter around her, listening intently as village elders and activists explained the modus operandi of child traffickers in the area. But in a moment of silence, as everyone sipped tea, she took me aside and said she had decided to tell me her story. She did not explain her decision, but said she wanted her voice to be heard, and hoped her younger sister, who had also been trafficked for work, would be found. She began hesitantly, but over the next hour or so recounted every minute detail of her years working as a domestic help in a home where children her age went to school.

It was a rare occasion to hear a first-hand account of what happens when a child arrives in an unfamiliar home and becomes a maid. Badaik had a vivid memory of being trained as a house help – from being asked to peel garlic and sweeping the house in the early days to doing the dishes and laundry by the time she was eight years old. 

My distinct memory of that conversation is of great discomfort, of wanting to get up and leave. Badaik’s matter-of-fact voice, the enormity of what she was describing and the soft sobs of her mother sitting nearby travelled back with me and stayed with me as I wrote the article.

What I wrote barely did justice to what I had heard, given the constraints of word limit and structure. Badaik’s voice did travel with that article, but it always bothered me that it did not capture everything that I had heard and felt that afternoon in the courtyard of her home. A lot of that conversation remained in my notebook.

Then, in 2020, Jamlo died. She was 12 and walking home during the COVID-19 lockdown. She had migrated to chilli fields for seasonal work with others from her village. Unlike Badaik, Jamlo could not tell her story and instead, there were government officials, relatives and activists who spoke on her behalf about the laws to prevent child labour, the push factors for such migration and the difficult time the family was going through.

In 2021, author Samina Mishra wrote Jamlo Walks, a children’s book that told the same story from the viewpoint of the young girl. What the book captured, none of the news reports could. The author was able to imagine what Jamlo’s last few hours could have been like. It was a devastating narrative.

Construed and constructed

The narrative around child labour is largely constructed by adults. 

In my early days of interviewing children who had been rescued from work sites, the interaction was always limited. The first thing as we would settle down for the conversation, which the child would often be told was an interview, would be an effort by the accompanying adult to almost make it seem like just another day. The child would be told that it was a ​“safe space” where they could ​“speak without fear”. What would follow would be a discussion largely prompted by adults, hesitant responses from the child, with the adult feeling compelled to fill in the silences.

These bits and pieces of conversation helped build the narrative, but it was never complete.

In shelter homes, groups of children often find solace in a collective narrative, one that unifies them in their experience of back-breaking work in dimly-lit rooms making bangles or toiling in non-descript sweet shops. In these instances, the response to questions is more generic, often given after a quiet nod from the group. Not everyone speaks but whoever chooses to, speaks on behalf of everyone.

Then there were instances when the only available evidence of child labour being practiced were official documents – an official complaint, a police report, anti-child labour campaigner statements or anecdotal accounts of raids and rescue. In all instances, the voice of the child was summarised, often with terminology that was academic or legal in nature.

Accordingly, the stories around child labour in the media are largely uni-dimensional, capturing one aspect of a complex issue – the illegality of the act. These stories amp up the element of pathos (appealing to emotions) using selective quotes, images and videos.

Owning the narrative

The conversation with Badaik was different because it went beyond what the media usually wrote about. She was also hesitant but had more agency and the ability to revisit her past in a matter-of-fact way. Maybe it was her age or her concern for her younger sister whom she lost to one of the homes where she was employed. Either way, the conversation triggered the larger debate on trauma-informed interviewing techniques, the need for more granular testimonials and the possibility of enabling child labour survivors to decide how and when they would want their narratives told. And most importantly, to whom, given that trust is a key issue for survivors.

Recently, young girls working in brick kilns in Uttar Pradesh were taught to use mobile phones to record their life at work. Encouraged to think of what aspect of their lives they would like to highlight, the girls came up with unexpected responses. While the punishing workplace, bonded labour, child labour and lack of wages are issues that dominate the discourse around workers, one of the girls chose to make a short film on her challenge to access clean sanitary products during her periods at the kiln. Like Badaik, she chose to tell the story she wanted, and it was not about the work she was doing or why she was doing it.

In New Delhi, a newspaper run by street children called Balaknama has created that opportunity, doing away with the gatekeeping role of adults when it comes to stories about children and the issues that impact them.

In Gorakhpur, radio channel Loudspeaker was started by a non-profit to give children rescued from work an opportunity to express themselves and educate the town on child labour laws.

Could this be the way forward? Can voice notes, videos and podcasts become tools of expression for children who have toiled despite bans and outrage? As a chronicler of many of these cases, I believe they can. And in the process, it might just capture something that is not so obvious – a dream, a thought or just an anecdote that nobody asked about.

About the author

Anuradha Nagaraj is a faculty member at Azim Premji University. She writes on migration and labour rights. She is the founder of The Migration Story, a newsroom dedicated to telling stories of India’s vast informal, migrant workforce.

Featured image: Migrant families with their children came from Lakhhisarai district of Indian state Bihar working at a brick kiln in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.

credit: Tanmoy Bhaduri