Srinagar: From a distance she may look like any another girl of her age, lost in her own world, but 12-year-old Roshan Ara is less fortunate.

Her day begins at 8 am when she rushes to a fuel station in Jammu and Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar to earn a living by selling vehicle-cleaning cloth. By 5 pm, she says, she manages to earn Rs 50.

Ara's agony began four years ago when her mason father died in a shootout between Indian troops and separatist militants in frontier village of Lolab in Kupwara, a north Kashmir district, which has suffered most since the beginning of militancy in the state in 1990.

"Life has been hellish since my father's death," she says, grief visible on her chubby face. "I've had to struggle to feed my mother and three younger siblings after we shifted to Srinagar to live in a slum on the city outskirts."

Widespread problem

Ara is among tens of thousands of Kashmiri children who're working as labourers across the length and breadth of the Himalayan state. Though officially banned, the child labour has shown phenomenal increase in recent past.

According to unofficial estimates, there're about 300,000 child labourers in the state. In the 2001 census, the number was pegged at 1,75,000, with 70% of the teenagers belonging to the Valley and most of them orphaned in the conflict. Majority of them were females working in unorganised sectors like handicrafts.

Later in 2003, prominent British NGO, Save the Children carried out a research study revealing that there're about 22,000 child labourers in only two districts of Kashmir.

Titled Adphail Gulab (Unbloomed Roses), the study found that about 19,000 children were working in carpet manufacturing units in central district of Budgam, while 2,000-3,000 children work in automobile workshops of Srinagar.

"But the number of child labourers (in Budgam and Srinagar) is undoubtedly much more as our study did not cover many areas due to some technical difficulties," Hilal Bhat, programme coordinator of Save the Children told OneWorld South Asia.

A wretched life

The children, the report revealed, face a host of problems including lack of basic amenities and wage disparity on the basis of sex.

"Nearly 80% of them suffer from myopia due to the constant eyestrain," it said, "while others faced immediate and long-term implications including accidents, cuts and burns, chronic bronchitis, chest pain, cough and dysphasia."

Most of the children covered under the survey were found to have left schools after the death of their fathers in different militancy-related incidents. "It had become impossible for their families to send them to schools," Bhat said, adding that they finally landed up in carpet weaving looms or in automobile workshops.

Kupwara district tops the list of child labourers. "It's estimated that about 15,000 children (aged 6-13) of the district are working in restaurants, shops, private homes and as bus cleaners in different parts of the Valley," said journalist Arif Shafi Wani who has extensively reported on the subject.

Lost childhood

Filmmaker Bilal A. Jan whose documentary – The Lost Childhood – was recently screened at the Teheran international short film festival, calls child labour an economic problem.

"I think child labour in Kashmir is more of an economic problem than social. Even before the eruption of militancy 19 years ago, we've had a huge number of child labourers," Jan said, referring to the 1981 census, according to which the number of child workers stood at 109,000.

The 32-minute documentary (in Kashmiri) shows the exploitation the children face. "They are forced to work for long hours but paid low wages. Many a time they don't get a penny," said Jan.

He said he shot the documentary in different areas of the Valley for over a year during which he met the children, their parents, landlords for whom children work as labourers and government officials.

"When we went shooting in Batmaloo bus stand, in the heart of Srinagar, where there are scores of children working in automobile workshops, we saw the Labour Commissioner's office right across. I have shown this (in the film). The officials thrashed our cameraman because they didn't want us to shoot them. We had to hide and shoot," he said.

"At the end of the day I found that despite various laws, the practice of child labour continues unabated," Jan said. "I think the authorities seldom implement the laws. "I've highlighted the flaws in these laws" in the documentary, which was also screened at 10th Mumbai film festival early this year.

He said he's been sending his film to international NGOs so that child labour is put to an end.  "Immediate efforts are needed to check the menace, otherwise it will ruin the next generation of Kashmir," he said.

A silver lining

Amid the gloom, there's however a silver lining. Many leading carpet weaving houses of Kashmir have come forward with a strict 'No-child-labour-in-our-work-places' policy.

A spokesman of Srinagar-based Kashmir Oriental Carpet Enterprises said in an email interview: "We've banned engaging child workers in our looms. All our workers are above 21 years."

He said, "We believe that children should be playing soccer in this age and not stitching soccer balls for grown-ups. And we do believe that children should be spinning yarns of magical stories and tales as pastime and not weaving carpets in dimly-lit workshops for others to walk on."