Street children beg to fund porn addiction, say NGOs
VULNERABLE LIVES Counsellors at de-addiction centres say 10% kids at shelters addicted, most of them introduced to pornography and drugs by friends
NEW DELHI: Twelve-year-old Raju (name changed) was among the 50 boys Delhi Police picked up from the streets and brought to a de-addiction centre at Delhi Gate to be counselled to lead a normal life. Unlike other boys who are addicted to drugs, Raju is addicted to porn. He is ready to beg or commit crime to watch a short clip, he said.
“My friend first got me into the habit. Initially, he used to show me a clip for `10. As I got addicted, he raised the rate to `20, and then to `30 a clip. So I began to beg and pick pockets to fund my habit,” said the boy.
The Delhi Police often picks up children begging or thieving on the streets and takes them to shelters, mostly run by NGOs. At the 10-12 prominent children’s shelters in the city, 80% are drug addicts and 10% are addicted to porn, say authorities. In addition, children also stay in shelters for the homeless. So, it is hard to estimate the extent of porn addiction among all children from the streets, counsellors at de-addiction centres said.
Most of them are introduced to porn and drugs by their friends, who later abuse them for their gain, say counsellors. “It was one of my friends, who showed me how to do drugs. First, we used to only inhale drugs. Later, we graduated to injections. I had to take three doses a day. To sustain my habit, I used to snatch and steal at railway stations. Now, I am returning to normalcy. I don’t want to do drugs anymore,” said another child at the Delhi Gate shelter.
“There have been a few cases recently where children were addicted to porn. The kind of questions they ask can shock anyone. We believe that there is a gang that makes them addicted and then force them into begging. The children are ready to do anything to watch porn,” said Society for the Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM) executive director, Rajesh Kumar. The group operates de-addiction centres.
“Life is not easy on the streets and children earn to watch porn and buy drugs. There is a need to create awareness among them. It is important to take them off street and educate them. Sex education is also necessary,” said NGO Plan India executive director, Bhagyashri Dengle. The NGO runs four children’s shelters in Delhi.
SPYM’s Rajesh Kumar said it is difficult to convince parents A 12-YEAR-OLD BOY, Delhi Gate shelter RAJESH KUMAR, executive director, Society for the Promotion of Youth and Masses to send their addicted children to shelters because they are a source of income. “In most cases, the parents are drug addicts themselves, and they send their children to begging as a way of earning,” he said. A Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) survey said 80% children are forced into begging by their parents. After a long wait, Delhi is likely to launch a common mobility card in October. This pre-paid smart ticket will enable commuters to pay for their Metro and bus rides before they board the vehicle. If successful, the government will attach more services such as parking and taxi payments to it.
But what good is a common card if your last-mile connectivity options are a mess? Or when the bus stops and Metro stations are not within a walking distance?
Public transport has to be safe, accessible, reliable and comfortable. In Delhi, you can estimate your journey time only if you are riding the Metro. That too between stations. Any journey after that is a commuting risk. The Delhi Transport Corporation that runs the bus service does not even follow a time-table. It is hard to get any information on bus routes and frequency to plan your journey in advance.
Delhi’s public transport management suffers from the same chaos as the rest of the public services. For an administratively fragmented national capital, it is never easy to fix responsibility for any civic mess. Be it policing, blocked drains, diversion of traffic and maintenance of motorways or a traffic snarl — routine administrative issues turn into full-blown blame games.
For years, Delhi’s last-mile connectivity problem hasn’t been resolved because Delhi Metro runs the feeder bus services but the routes are decided by the state transport authority. The bus service is, anyway, patchy and most people use autos, cycle-rickshaws to cover the last leg of their journey.
The transport department performs regulatory functions such as registration of vehicles, issuing driving licences and permits for buses and trucks, fixing fares for autos and taxis. There are different rates for parking vehicles in different municipal
My friend first got me into the habit. Initially, he used to show me a (pornographic) clip for `10. As I got addicted, he raised the rate to `20, and then to `30 a clip. So I began to beg and pick pockets to fund my habit. The kind of questions they (addicted children) ask can shock anyone. We believe that there is a gang that makes them addicted and then force them into begging. The children are ready to do anything to watch porn.
jurisdictions run by five different civic bodies. Multiple agencies are responsible for improving signage, removing encroachments, regulating rickshaws, autos and e-rickshaws.
Delhi’s mobility card is already being compared to London’s iconic Oyster card. But unlike us, the British authorities introduced it after fixing the back-end. Set up in 2000, the Transport for London (TfL) manages all modes of public transport including the buses, the Tube, rail, trams, river services, inter-city coaches, taxis and cycles. It is also responsible for London’s 580-km road network, 6,000 traffic lights and regulating congestion charges and lowemission zone schemes.
The TfL’s Oyster is not just a travel pass. Introduced in 2003, it has now a smart tool to gather information and data to make policies and improve services. According to CityMetric (New Statesman), there are at least 5,000 developers signed up to the TfL website for data sharing and around 360 apps on Apple’s App store using its data.
With the population of self-employed workers growing in London, reported The Economist in May 2015, more than 60% commuters travel during non-peak hours. So the Tube adjusted to these unusual working hours and made occasional commuting cheaper for people who work from home a few days a week. Again, the decision to open two lines through the night on Fridays and Saturdays (which finally took off this week) is partly motivated by TfL’s discovery that nearly half of those travelling on night buses were on their way to or from work.
Delhi needs some operational integration to even attempt such groundwork. The Sheila Dikshit government moved a proposal for setting up of a Unified Transport Authority but it got stuck in administrative tangles. The AAP government put it on its 70-point agenda. But the wait continues.
With statehood remaining a sticky issue, it is difficult to get traffic police, Delhi Development Authority, municipal agencies, the Metro and the Delhi government agencies to report to the same boss or have a common mechanism for funding. But nothing stops the Centre and the state to agree on a working group of officials and experts for coordination among agencies.
Right now, the government doesn’t even have the expertise to evaluate the plans prepared by consultants. Road and transport projects involve more than brick and mortar. But the bulk of planning is still done by the government’s civil engineers who are not trained to appreciate the challenges of urban mobility.
The proposed mobility card will be of little help if it can’t offer a complete commuting solution. While aspiring to be likened to London’s Oyster, the scheme better imbibe TfL’s motto: ‘Every journey matters’.