The Story of Malleswari

Laying path for her sisters and in the service of child labourers

The Story of Malleswari

Way back in 1999 when her mother passed away she was just an 11 year old young girl without any education. Another 11 years that passed afterwards saw her growing into a graduate and a TV Journalist. Simply this is the journey of Gandla Malleswari who is now working in ‘T’ News a TV Channel. She is the third of 6 children. The last one is the only brother they have. By the time they lost their mother Malleswari was just 11 years old, her eldest sister got married off and their only brother was just a week days old. Their father had abandoned all the children. Their mother’s brother took all these 5 children to his place in Mallikharjunagiri, Marpally Mandal in Ranga Reddy District. Their uncle too didn’t worry about their education. As she and her second elder sister were the only grownup girls among the five to do any work, he engaged them in different works. Thus Malleswari was asked to take care of the cows they have. Six months after reaching Mallikharjunagiri, MV Foundation volunteers motivated these two girls to join the RBC. Though there was resistance from their uncle, he was convinced by the volunteers and both were admitted in the Girls’ camp in Aloor in the year 1999. Both of them studied for one year there and passed 7^th class public examinations. Later they were admitted in 8^th class in Rajendranagar and stayed in Social Welfare Hostel there itself. They were moved to ZP High School in Manchal and there also they stayed in a Hostel and completed 9^th and 10^th classes. While Malleswari passed the 10^th class Public Examinations with 72% of marks, her sister Nagamani got 70% of marks.

While Malleswari came back to Aloor Camp, where she stayed for another 2 years and joined Intermediate course in MPC group in SAP College, Vikarabad, and her sister joined Government Junior College, Budhera in Bi.P. C. Group and pursued Intermediate course. Nagamani got married off after completing the Intermediate Course, while Malleswari joined B. Sc in Prathibha Degree College, Kukatpally, after completing Intermediate. Till Intermediate both the sisters received support from MV Foundation. Malleswari received support from the Municipal Commissioner, Kukatpally also apart from MV Foundation’s support while studying Degree course. She stayed with her eldest sister who is living in Hyderabad. She completed Graduation in the year 2010 and in the same year she was selected as Camerawoman by HMTV, a Hyderabad based Vernacular TV News Channel. She was the first woman to have been selected to do this job in the entire state. Later she moved to ‘T’ News Channel.

She admitted her two young sisters in education. Her first young sister is now studying Intermediate (Bi.P.C. Group) in Nava Chaitanya Residential Junior College, Dilsukh Nagar, the second young sister is studying 9^th class in ZP High School, Manchal staying in the local Government run hostel for girls. She has some designs for her young sisters. She wants to admit the first one in Nursing Course and as the second one is interested in Social Sciences she wants her to become a teacher or lawyer and study the courses required to join either of these two professions. Their sole brother is being taken care of her eldest sister.

As TV journalist she produced many stories on the woes of children. Especially the one on the children affected by the Cancer and getting treated in the M N J Institute of Cancer received praises from the critiques. She is a good singer also. So far 11 albums with the songs she sung on Telangana, Child Labourers and Devotional songs were released. She is also trying her luck in the film industry too. She sang a duet in a Telugu movie. She wants to grow in the field and become the best camerawoman in the media. She facilitated a programme on Child Labour while working in HMTV in which Mr. R. Venkat Reddy participated. After the live debate HMTV and MVF decided start a helpline programme for the children in difficult circumstances, through which large number of children are rescued. Malleswari has provided coverage to all these children and strove to admit most of them in Residential Bridge Course Camps. Sakshi News Paper in its main edition, Eenadu News Paper in its Medak Edition and HMTV covered her story.

Where are they

The Union Cabinet’s approval of banning child labour in all forms up to the age of 14 years and prohibiting entry of children aged 14 to 18 years in hazardous occupations and processes  is indeed a great step forward in the direction of translating the Right to Education into a reality. But, how about the millions of unfortunate children who were not to be found in any records of the Governments? I am straight away coming to the point. This is about the State Government of Andhra Pradesh.

The State of Andhra Pradesh not only has earned the dubious distinction of having 2^nd highest number of child labourers (Census-2001) in the country, it is the first State to equate every out of school child as child labourer. The AP State Legislative Assembly in the year 2001 itself has passed a resolution to this effect. A decade after adoption of this resolution and two and a half years after introducing RTE, is the Government machinery geared up to meet what should not have been a challenge, given the size of the machinery? There are certain very basic questions that need to be answered by the Government.

·         Does the Government have any idea about the number of children in the State?

·         Does the Government know the number of children dropping out of the schools?

·    Is there any impeccable plan/strategy to prevent children from joining the rank and file of labour force, monitoring the schools’ functioning and for tracking every child-importantly children of disadvantaged sections?

For now, I would like to limit to the statistics presented by the Education Department. The Government has two important wings as for school education is concerned. One is led by the Director of School Education called Directorate of School Education and the other one is headed by the State Project Director of Rajiv Vidya Mission (elsewhere in the entire country it is called Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, the latest incarnation of the erstwhile DPEP). Paradoxically, these two wings rather two faces speak two different languages on important issues. For example if you ask any activist working on primary education in the State, about the dropout rates between any two stages as per the government, s/he will ask you which government agency’s figures you want? For RVM the dropout rate between I to V Classes is just 3.89, whereas for DSE it is 17.43 for the same year i.e., 2010-11 academic year. Similarly at upper primary stage it is just 5.65 and 22.34 for RVM and DSE respectively.

As mentioned just before RVM doesn’t speak the DSE language and vice versa. This is clear from their publications (DSE and RVM publish statistics annually, while RVM’s publication is available on net http://rvm.ap.nic.in/Planning/annual_report_2010-11.pdf, DSE publication is not available on web). For example DSE says that the estimated population of children in the age group of 6-15 years 14,747,167, whereas for RVM the estimated population for 6-14 years is 10,687,458. We have to understand that DSE is concerned about children of the age 6-15 years and RVM’s concern is 6-14 years. But the gap for just one year is an amazing 4,059,709.

DSE is only interested in giving the figures but not inferences. Thus we can have estimated figures of the school age population and the exact(?) number of children in schools (medium wise, management wise, social group wise, class wise, etc etc many wises!), but we cannot get the figure of children not in schools!!! We learn that there are 12,907,422 children are enrolled (only enrolled!) in classes between 1^st to 10^th classes. We are not given any clue as to what about the remaining   1,839,745 children. Can we call them children out of schools? No idea. After analyzing with the dropout rates given for various stages it is understood that 1,543,142 children are not there in the system from the cohorts who have joined class-1 in 2001-02, 2004-05, and 2006-07.Whether the unnamed 1.84 million and the 1.5 million dropouts together constitute out of school children in the State? We don’t know. However, the AP’s SSA-RVM proudly proclaims that there were only 1.15 lakh children in the age group of 6-14 years, not in school.

Then the question is where these children are? In schools? In factories? Or trafficked to work on Hybrid Cottonseed farms, brick kilns? Or picking rag on streets in the absence of eagles, or begging on the railway platforms/bus stands? Or do they exist in the gap between the rolls and actual attendance in the schools’ registers?