Imlisanen Jamir
It’s early morning in Nagaland, and in a tucked-away workshop on a back street, a child’s hands are dirtied with labor instead of crayons. The smell of rubber, of engine grease, of chemicals – that’s the fragrance of these stolen lives, not the scent of new books or the playground grass. Over 11,000 children, according to the outdated 2011 Census, have been torn away from their childhoods and thrust into labor.
They’re in street corner shops, lugging sacks in rice mills, or slaving over frying pans in local eateries. But the darker reality lies behind closed doors. In Dimapur, a recent survey of 1,112 households in a single colony revealed that 264 children were employed as domestic workers. That’s nearly a quarter of households, each harboring young lives forced into servitude in their formative years, laboring out of sight and out of mind.
These children aren’t in factories where raids might rescue them or workshops where their plight is visible. Instead, they’re hidden away in private homes, toiling in a place where their labor is quietly accepted and often overlooked. What happens in one neighborhood may only hint at the full scale of exploitation happening across the state. It’s not just an issue of children missing out on education but of childhood itself being stolen, one chore at a time.
Our laws are supposed to protect children, but enforcement remains as invisible as these young workers. There is talk of “crackdowns” on child labor, but where are the outcomes? For every child freed from a restaurant kitchen, hundreds more are locked away in domestic servitude. It’s a failure on every level: by families trying to survive, by a government that offers limited support, and by a society that quietly accepts these injustices as a sad but inevitable reality.
If Nagaland is to lift its next generation out of this cycle, it will take far more than superficial “awareness programs.” These children don’t need slogans and empty promises. They need real solutions, like targeted poverty relief, accessible education, and a commitment to enforcing child protection laws where they’re needed most.
For these invisible kids, hidden in homes, waiting for a way out, the future can’t wait.
Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com
