Childhood lost in the murky waters

Santanu Saraswati

Twelve-year-old Rupai Kisku lost her childhood even before she could string together her first sentence. Sold as ‘semi-bonded’ labour at the tender age of four, this Santhal girl has been trampling the muddy waters of a prawn farm in Sandeshkhali in Diamond Harbour since then.
Rupai’s parents hailing from Kharsawa district in Jharkhand were forced to sell her for a pittance. All these years the child, along with few other children, has been shifting through the weeds and fishing nets, knee-deep in River Vidyadhari, hunting for “min” or tiger prawn larvae to earn a measly sum. Most of the children are from Jharkhand and Orissa.
Rupai’s day begin at 4 am when darkness still hangs heavy over the dense under growth along the riverbank near Najrat village. She waffled into the icy waters and scoops up fistful of mud and weeds scanning for cluster of larvae that nestles between the brushwood and sludge.
“It is very difficult us to spot the tiger prawn larvae in the darkness as they are minute, even smaller than tad poles. The only things visible about them are a pair of black droplet like eyes and two long tentacles,” said Rupai. Come summer, winter or rain, her routine remains unchanged. After searching the river for a couple of hours, she sifts through stacks of shrimps as fishing boats unload their catch. By 7 am she had to hand over at least 1000 tiger prawn larvae to mahajan (lender), who sells those to prawn traders from Kolkata for sweet water breeding. Each min sells for Rs 4 in the market.
But for Rupai and hundred other tribal children, who dot the banks of River Vidyadhari since day break, often go without food and their stipulated daily allowance of Rs 20. “It depends on the mood of the mahajan. The day he makes a good profit, we are paid and on the days we fail to deliver our quota of 1000, there is nothing,” says 15-year-old Bhiku Oroan. Bhiku, who joined the trade a year before Rupai, is a physically challenged child. He lost his left leg from knee down to a “maggar machhli” (crocodile) a year before. Two of his friends—Bhodan and Suresh—have also been crippled that way. “The mahajan has thrown them out,” rues Bhiku.
Most of these children suffer from impaired vision. Bhiku, too, cannot stand “bright sunlight” because of pupil dilation brought about by straining his eyes in semi-darkness. His eyes hang out from their sockets and “the soles of his right foot and palms are covered with sores” because of constant exposure to saline waters. The tips of eight-year-old Rumi Oroan’s fingers and toenails have been corroded and she suffers from goiter.
According to Shyamacharan De Sarkar, a local social worker, children are more in demand as only they can identify the tiger prawn larvae because of their sharp vision and sieve them with their nimble fingers. De Sarkar observed that just before the last parliamentary elections, the CPI (M) candidate and present Member of Parliament from Diamond Harbour, Shamik Lahiri, promised to take this issue with the parliament for rendering justice to these children. But gone are the days, nothing has come out in this regard yet for these hundreds of fate-less children who sift through mounds of shrimps round the year for a very measly sum of money.

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