15-year-old Renu was born and raised in a village in the Koderma district of Jharkhand, India. She lives with her mother, a sister and a brother while her father works as a taxi driver in the capital city of New Delhi and sends them remittances every month. Renu’s mother takes up mica processing work to...

15-year-old Nandini would stand at the bus stop in her blue checkered tunic and red tie eagerly waiting to hop on the bus, see her friends and recite poems with them on the way. Every day she looked forward to sitting at the window seat on the bus from where she would see the birds-...

In December, at Bangalore’s Vidhana Sabha, together with the State Ministry of Women & Child Development and Ministry of Social Welfare, we held a consultation with devadasi women, children of devadasi representatives from non-governmental organizations, the Child Rights Commission and the Women Development Corporation to discuss issues pertaining to the Devadasis. The Devadasi system is...

“The worst feeling in the world is being forced into something you don’t want to do”, said a 15-year-old Sneha. In the summer of 2021, Sneha had to drop out of school and work in a Mica processing factory as the family could no longer support her education. Her parents being daily wage earners suffered...

Hidden in the forests of Jharkhand, in the small hamlets of the Koderma and Giridih districts reside communities where children as young as five-year-olds are vulnerable to working in the mica mines instead of attending school. Our Mica Project has taken more than 3000 children out of the mica mines and enrolled them in schools....

17-year-old Bhargavi* is known for her smile which lights up a room.  Bhargavi is the youngest child of her mother, a former Devadasi woman, who later began working day in and out as a porter to raise her 4 children- Bhargavi, her elder brother and her two elder sisters who are now married.  The First...

Devadasi System: An Ancient Practice  Children of Devadasi undergo discrimination, drop out of school early, face violence and abuse. Even the children who do not take the path of sex work still face society’s stigma of being a ‘prostitute’s child’ which holds them back from maximizing their potential. In many cases, it is this ostracizing...

Obstetric fistula, eclampsia, puerperal endometritis, anaemia, urinary tract infection, and maternal and neonatal mortality are not random names but these are some of the common health issues faced by girls who become pregnant in their teenage as a result of child marriage.  According to National Crime Records Bureau*, Karnataka accounts for the highest number of...

There is a misconception among the masses that the Devadasi system only exists in history books today whereas the truth is there are around 80,000 Devadasis* living in the North Karntaka region of India.  The adolescent girls coming from these Devadasi comminutes face a lot of discrimination preventing them from getting access to education, nutrition...

Coming from the small village of Kollegal district in Karntaka, when 14-year-old Bharati* cleared her class 7 exams, she decided not to give up a school like her peers and walked 5 km every day to a nearby village to attend high school. While commuting daily for school Bharati met and fell in love with...