This is a true story of child rights abuse. The Calcutta based Free The Children-India (FTC-India) works to uncover cases like this and prevent the exploitation of children. To give more strength to its voice on child rights, FTC-India set up its own website last month. FTC-India is an offshoot of the Centre of Communication & Development (CCD).The website, www.ftcindia.org, also aims to rope in all the NGOs working in the field of child rights in the country. It seeks to provide links to all such NGOs' websites.

According to Swapan Mukherkjee, chairman, FTC-India, "If economics is a driving factor of exploitation, information technology rules economic principles. But very few NGOs in the country have left their mark on the Internet to create mass awareness about the ills in our society." Mukherjee concluded that FTC-India's effort was to provide maximum possible information on different issues pertaining to child rights violations in India.

The FTC-India site covers the largest number of issues related to child rights violations in 25 unorganised and five organised service and industrial sectors in the country. "Soon we will provide details of many other major industries and service sectors, where use of child labour is rampant," Mukherjee announced. He added that the site would also publish a web-magazine on child rights violations.

Set up in 1978 and headquartered at Barasat, in Calcutta, CCD started its operations with relief work among the victims of the great flood that affected millions of people in West Bengal. But soon it felt the need to raise mass awareness about child rights violations in the state as well as in the rest of the country. This need led to the birth of FTC-India, which works in the rural areas of 24-Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts in West Bengal.

The NGO found that children, mostly crippled and belonging to poor families in these districts, were taken to Mecca to beg during the Holy Haj. Once the Haj period ended, they were either put to work or thrown into prostitution. CCD busted one such racket and rescued 15 children being sent through the Calcutta airport.

As the dedicated child rights wing of CCD, FTC-India also provides homeless children with education and homes. FTC-India runs its own Children's Rescue Home, which houses 25 children currently. FTC-India today runs 62 primary schools in remote villages in four districts of West Bengal, with 9,245 students (March 2000 figures). It has also proposed the setting up of 100 more primary schools in 2000-2001; 14 of these have already come up. It will also set up two secondary schools, one each in the districts of North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas.

FTC-India has a presence in almost all the states of India. Its latest tryst with technology to provide a common platform to protest the violation of child rights in the country is likely to gain it much more ground.