ArpitGarg's Weblog

Tea boys are a common figure in India. Young boys working at a road side hotel and distributing tea to shops and businesses nearby. This phenomenon is so ingrained in the society that no one even cares about the illegality of it. They are under the legal work age.

There are a few reasonings I have heard in support of the tea boy’s being employed. First is that it is a reasonable safe job for the poor kids which at least provide them two square meals. In a society devoid of foster home culture and without working orphanages, these young boys have to provide food for themselves. Most of them are abandoned kids or runaway kids. Instead of working in factories under slave conditions, its better to work out in open.

Another reasoning is for the kids who have to support their families from the very childhood. Either a drunk father or dead parents and number of kid brother and sister. What else will they do but to work. Given the lack of qualification and young age, where else will they get employment?

As I am writing about this topic, I feel miserable as I don’t see any path for them. I remember having a conversation with Mahesh (name changed), a kid in city of Agra, who was a tea-boy. He had no parents and lived on the street. Income from serving tea was keeping him alive.

Unless we get rid of poverty and expand the welfare, more and more children would be deprived of the childhood and forced to be a tea boy. A silver lining is that our PM himself used to be a tea boy in his childhood. The hope is there.