Slum tours: an idea taken too far: Delhi’s street children -DAWN - International; May 11, 2006

Slum tours: an idea taken too far: Delhi’s street children -DAWN - International; May 11, 2006

Slum tours: an idea taken too far: Delhi’s street children
By Amelia Gentleman
NEW DELHI: Clearing his throat theatrically as he gets ready to reveal a highlight of the tour, group leader Javed stops halfway up the staircase to platform one and points through the railings to a dark alcove beneath the footbridge over the tracks.“This is where the street children sleep,” he says, smiling at the cluster of tourists who are craning forward to hear his voice above the roar of the trains below. A small boy climbs out from the hole, steps across the corrugated iron roof and balances himself on a ledge on the other side of the bars, staring back at the visitors, perplexed.The tourists pause for a while taking in his malnourished appearance, his filthy clothes and glazed eyes. The boy doesn’t say anything, but Javed briskly explains that this child, like a lot of the homeless children who live in New Delhi railway station, is addicted to a white correction fluid, called Eraz-Ex. Most carry a small square of cloth soaked in the chemical, which they hold to their noses and inhale periodically. “They spend more than half the money they earn from selling rubbish they find on the platform on buying it from the stationary stalls in the market,” he says. “It does make them a bit violent.”He pauses to give the group of visitors from Australia, Russia and England a chance to ask questions, before running through the advantages of sleeping in the gap between the platform roof and the walkway. It’s shady and you have to be small to get to it, which makes it relatively safe from the station police. But there are the overhead electricity wires to look out for. “Several of the children have been electrocuted by that wire,” he adds.For anyone weary of Mughal tombs and Lutyens architecture, a new tourist attraction is on offer for visitors to the Indian capital: a tour of the living conditions endured by the 2,000 or so street children who live in and around Delhi’s main railway stations. For two hours, tour guides, themselves former street children, show visitors what life is like for the city’s most deprived inhabitants.The money raised (200 rupees a ticket — £2.50) goes to a well-respected local charity which tries to rehabilitate these children. The trip is designed as an awareness-raising venture and organisers deny that this is the latest manifestation of ‘poorism’ — voyeuristic tourism, where rich foreigners come and gape at the lives of impoverished inhabitants of developing countries. Bus tours of the shanty towns of Soweto or guided walks through the slums of Rio have attracted curious tourists for many years; the visit to Delhi’s railway underworld has been running for just a few months but has already proved popular with western and Indian visitors.“We’ve come to educate ourselves about these homeless children who live near us. Most of the time people ignore them; I think it’s good to pay them some attention,” an Indian postgraduate student in the group says.PROFOUND MISERYThe tour guide instructs visitors not to take pictures (although he makes an exception for the newspaper photographer). “Sometimes the children don’t like having cameras pointed at them, but mostly they are glad that people are interested in them,” Javed claims, adding that the friendly smiles of the tourists are more welcome than the railway policemen’s wooden sticks and the revulsion of the train travellers. He hopes the trip will get a listing in the Lonely Planet guides. Nevertheless there is something a little uncomfortable about the experience — cheerful visitors in bright holiday T-shirts gazing at profound misery.Next up is the railway medical centre where a queue of half a dozen children is waiting to see a young doctor. Wearily she lists the problems the children face — broken limbs from collision with the trains or from falling off moving carriages as they go about their work gathering discarded plastic water bottles, injuries from the beatings meted out by the station police, malnutrition, tuberculosis.“Do you see a lot of unwanted pregnancies?” one tourist asks. “What kind of accidents do you see?” The questions keep coming. Eventually the doctor points out that she has to give her attention to the boy slumped weakly in front of her desk. “There are a lot of patients waiting,” she says fi