Sitamani at work in a Bero stone quarry. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Bero (Ranchi), March 1: India may be shining, but there’s too much dust and grime around 10-year-old Sitamani Kumari for her to feel good about it.

While other children her age play, Sitamani spends all her free time in a stone quarry, hammer in hand, crushing blocks of stone.

Poverty forced this Class IV student of the government primary school at Hutar village — whose name she can’t even spell — to join her father at the quarry every evening after school.

As the little girl and her elder sister, Tushamani, crush stones at the quarry site on the outskirts of their village, Bertoli, their father Gopal Singh sits nearby smoking ganja with stone mine contractors.

Sitamani’s day begins with washing utensils. This is followed by cooking the day’s meal. Only after assisting their mother in household chores, Sitamani is free to go to school. Immediately after she returns she joins her father at the quarry.

With her help, he and 15-year old Tushamani complete one pharma (a measure used for payment) of crushed stones, which fetches the family Rs 60 each day.

Does she like hammering at stones all evening? The little girl hesitates to speak up. After much persuasion she admits that she will prefer to play on the ground in front of her house with other girls. But then her father will not be able to earn Rs 60 every day, she adds softly.

Gopal Singh, high on ganja, says he does not force Sitamani to work at the quarry. “She comes here on her own and assists me when I am tired in the evening,” he says.

Tushamani has never been to school. “My father didn’t allow me to join school. But when it came to Sitamani, I insisted that she goes,” the girl says.

These girls are only the tip of the iceberg. Child labour is rampant in several parts of the country.

Bero block development officer Dilip Tirkey has only sympathy to offer. There is nothing in the government coffers for child labourers. “With no proper list of people in the Below Poverty Line category and no supply of foodgrain, I am helpless,” Tirkey admits.

The chief minister never misses out a single opportunity to talk about the “abundance of foodgrain” in the state. Will he care to say anything to this?