How free are our children in independent India

Every day, as the dawn breaks at the small village of Shivnagar, a small hamlet in Bihar, Nutan has to get up from bed with reddened, puffy eyes still half-closed with sleep. Within half an hour she has to get ready and trot along with her parents to the brick kiln near their village. Nutan can’t think of going to school even in her remotest dreams, as no one from her family had ever made it to. Hailing from the extremely poor Mahato community at the furthest corner of the district of Munger, this 12 year old girl has to work at the brick kiln 12 hours a day, while most of her friends go to school every day. As the evening comes, back home she finds herself doing the dishes and helping her mother in every day family chores, till her wobbly legs ache in pain and eyes are swollen with deep slumber.