Up until 1993 there was no official Indian government term for a 'street child'. This revealing oversight betrayed a government without clear policies to prevent the marginalization of young people. Back then, India had the largest population of street children in the world - more than 11 million according to conservative estimates in 1994 by UNICEF. Human Rights Watch estimates the numbers of street-working and street-living kids are currently closer to 18 million. The increase in numbers of street children is blamed on high unemployment rates, rapid urbanization, family break-ups, armed conflicts, migration from rural to urban areas, increasing disparities in wealth, poverty, HIV/AIDS, natural and man-made disasters.

There are twice as many boys on the streets than girls.

Imagine over half of the population of Canada being under 18 years in age, and living on the streets in poverty, only then can you have an understanding of the magnitude of the problem.

 

WHY?

There are so many reasons young people in India turn to the streets for their survival.

Some children are orphaned by disease or accident, but, many of the young people who live on the streets have a parent who is still alive.

It is not uncommon for mothers and their children to end up on the streets when their husbands divorce them or die. The mothers, with few means to support their families and no rights to inherit their husbands wealth, have few alternatives to the streets.

Some youth have been abandoned by their parents and forced to fend for themselves. Sometimes there is violence or neglect in their family and the street is a better option than what they endure at home. Some young people work on the streets because their parents are unemployed, sick or their families are impoverished. The lucky ones return to their home to sleep, others join their families who also live on the pavement, or sleep alone or with groups of other street children.

The young people we met on the streets were a mix of all of the above. More seasoned street kids bore deep blue Kanarese or Telegu script tattoos of friends and family who had died on the streets.

Despite their desperate situation, I found many of the kids quick to smile or dissolve into giggles when we played with them. It moved me how gentle and desperate for loving attention each "street child" I met was.

The film, Goonda, evolved out of 22 hours of footage that Mark and I, along with the kids we met, shot. It introduces a whole group of boys we met in Mysore, and tells the story of three very special kids who are living on the streets.

 

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