The Other Railway Children - Chapter 5 (extract) "First India Project"

A Consortium for Street Children colleague returned from a conference in India and drew my attention to a project called ‘Sarjan’, which was part of the overall programme of the Ahmedabad Study Action Group (ASAG) in Gujarat. The founder was a very gentle man called Fulchand Purwar, who believed that vulnerable children could be stimulated and empowered through creative activities. The local charity had been working with the slum communities in Ahmedabad since the catastrophic floods of the Sabarmati River in the early 1970s, and now had intentions of working for street children, having identified six key places in the city where street children congregated.

I was told that one of those six locations was at Kalupur, Ahmedabad’s main railway station, where, apparently, anything up to 50 or 60 children could be found on the station at any one time. Sarjan wished to run a platform school for the children supplemented by food and health care and were quoting the need of only £1,650 per annum to fund two part time teachers to go daily to the station to run the school for about four hours, providing the necessary simple materials and a midday meal. Some 20-40 children would appear at 10 o’clock each morning for lessons, sitting cross-legged on the station booking hall floor adjacent to platform 1, and would learn to read and write, do role play and drawing through which the teachers would discover the stories and background of the children. They would begin to size up the children’s options whilst gaining their trust and confidence.

When I visited the project, I learned that one of the problems the teachers had to cope with was the abrupt disappearance of the children whenever a mainline train arrived, as the youngsters would scavenge through the train during its extended halt, searching for left-over food or empty water bottles they could fill and sell. Lessons would resume after twenty minutes or so upon departure of the train - luckily middle of the day expresses were not frequent! The teachers had also taught some of the children first aid, and every week they appointed one of the station children to be ‘doctor’ for the week to hold the first aid box and render appropriate aid until adults visited for school the next day.

In later years two doctors from a local private hospital volunteered to come to the station every week and hold a clinic. A carpet on the concourse floor was the waiting room and each child in turn came forward to be examined and medication prescribed and provided - chest infections and skin diseases were rife, more serious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis could be diagnosed early and treated in hospital - a situation uncommon for street children who often found themselves rejected by hospital staff unless accompanied by an adult willing to guarantee payment of the charges for drugs and food. In fact, the absence of access to proper health care is one of the major problems street children face.

On my first visit I was shaken by a number of things, not least the story of a young eight year old boy called Razi, who shyly offered me a calendar that he had made as a present. He was unable to speak and one of the Sarjan staff told me that he had run away from home as a result of severe violence he had suffered at the hands of his father. His mother was dead and his father was an alcoholic who removed Razi from school and forced him to beg every day until he had enough money for the man to buy the drink he craved. If he came home at the end of the day with what the man deemed insufficient, as often as not the boy would be beaten. One day he knew he was in trouble and decided to argue with his father. The man, in a drunken rage, snatched up a kitchen knife and cut out the boy’s tongue for daring to remonstrate with him. The boy fled and a Sarjan worker found him in a pitiful state on Ahmedabad station and got him to hospital where he was physically patched up, although he lost the power of speech.

He was eventually able to describe what had happened through a mixture of role play and drawing. It had been some three months since that brutal incident and when the boy handed me the calendar, he smiled - according to the staff member present, it was the first time they’d seen him smile since he’d been found on the station. I’d like to think that it was at least the beginning of a happier time for Razi, but I was upset to hear a few weeks later that Razi had been unable to cope with his trauma and had run away from the project. Although this was an extreme case of abuse, staff told me that many of the children they came across had heartbreaking stories of violence and abuse they’d suffered before escaping as a last resort.

It was in Ahmedabad that I first tried to use my position as a senior railway manager to influence the railway authorities in India. The Sarjan staff were desperate to have a room on the station that they could use as a drop-in centre during the day and as a safe emergency shelter at night. The station inspector was sympathetic, but advised me to speak to the Area Manager, which I did. He also expressed support but said that he could not allocate any space without authority from senior management. When later in the same visit I had a meeting with the Indian Railways Board Member for Staff (which post had also responsibility for the Railway Protection Force - RPF) I was told that such permission could be given by local staff. This became typical of many of my early encounters with Indian railway managers - support given verbally but an aversion to commit themselves in writing, and, at local level, a reluctance to act without the requisite piece of paper from someone in higher authority.

During my time as BR’s Head of Safety Policy in the early 1990s, I had each year spent a day at the BR Staff College at ‘The Grove’, Watford, training around twenty senior Indian railway managers in safety management. I remember one particular discussion vividly when I explained the UK railway management’s concern at the number of passengers who fell to their death from moving trains - around twenty a year in the early 1990s. This statement was met with some incredulity by one of the managers present who apparently was responsible for the Bombay suburban service from Churchgate and VT stations - he alleged that they killed twenty a day (!) which I assumed was an exaggeration until I experienced the crush on virtually every suburban train, with passengers hanging out of the never-closed doors and even clinging to the roof under the overhead live power lines.

As a result of contacts made at the Grove, I found I was able to gain admission to some of the most senior managers at the Indian Railways Headquarters at the Rail Bhavan in New Delhi and I began to lobby them on behalf of the street children living on stations and the organisations trying to help them. In some cases I found that the local NGO staff had been able to develop a good relationship with the area station manager, Divisional Railway Manager or RPF Divisional Superintendent and get some practical support. However, this was very much on a personal basis and often this co-operation did not survive the regular change of personnel as railway officers seemed to be promoted or retire every two years.

(Fifteen years later prolonged advocacy work by Railway Children’s partners and new child protection legislation in India resulted in much more positive attitudes and co-operation from India’s railway staff and police. One station is even being declared as ‘Child Friendly’ - Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh - and others in Mumbai, Kolkata and in the State of Andhra Pradesh are good examples of co-operation between police, railway staff and NGOs.)