BHUBANESWAR : Even as the sight of children begging or selling knick-knacks at busy junctions has become commonplace in urban areas of Odisha, only around 300 children living in streets have been identified in the state, after the Supreme Court asked the government in 2022 to trace such kids and rehabilitate them.
As per Baal Swaraj dashboard on Child in Street Situations (CISS) under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, 320 such children were identified in Odisha in 2023. They have been segregated into three categories. While 226 children are living on the streets with their families, 23 stay on the streets in the day and are back home at night with their families who reside in nearby slums or huts. Besides, the state has 71 children living on the streets alone (without parents or any family support).
Khurda has the highest number of such children at 188, followed by Sundargarh 42, Jajpur 20, Ganjam 17, Gajapati 15, Subarnapur 14 and Malkangiri 13. Interestingly, no such children have been identified in Bhadrak, Boudh, Deogarh, Dhenkanal, Jagatsinghpur, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Kendrapara, Keonjhar, Koraput, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Nuapada, Puri, Rayagada and Sambalpur.
Child rights activists, however, said the CISS data on the Baal Swaraj portal doesn’t reflect the actual number of children living in street situations in the state. Besides, there is a mismatch in the data submitted by the state government to the ministry and presented in the Odisha Assembly in 2022. In July that year, the Women and Child Development (WCD) minister Basanti Hembram had informed the Assembly that 393 children in the state are homeless and living on the streets. The numbers, she said, were derived only from two districts - Khurda and Jajpur. While Khurda district had 305 such children, the remaining were from Jajpur district. In 2021, the OSCPCR had conducted a sample survey and found out 972 such children during the Covid-19 in the cities of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Rourkela, Berhampur and Puri to understand the living condition of the children.
“If we consider the situation in Bhubaneswar alone, apart from different parts of the state, we see a lot of children coming to the city from Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal now. There has been no proper survey to find them. Unless that is done, they would remain outside the education and social security net,” said activist Benudhar Senapati. Chairperson of OSCPCR Mandakini Kar said the state commission is finalising modalities to begin a new survey to identify children living on the streets this year.
LIFE ON THE ROAD
Children living on streets begging, working: 320
71 children living on the
streets alone without parents or any other support
16 districts have reported
zero children living in streets situations