Watching an 11-year-old girl break rocks, in a cloud of dust and 35°C heat, surrounded by reversing trucks and dozens of other children, truly drives home the injustice of child labour. It is a horrendous abuse of child rights. The kids are young, the work is backbreaking and the situation demoralising.
When we first came across Devi earlier this year, it was at one of Rajahmundry's many stone-breaking yards. In conditions, which even fully grown men find exhausting, children break large stone boulders down to the size of small pebbles using sledgehammers.
It takes Devi and two family members three days to complete a lorry-load, for which they share a meagre payment of US$6. Devi's situation, as is almost always the case for child labourers, is a result of poverty. She lives in a Rajahmundry slum and is an orphan, after both her parents died from AIDS in August 2008.
She now lives with her grandmother and younger brother (8) and sister (7). But with her grandmother old and already struggling to provide for others in the family, Devi is responsible for feeding her siblings.
When we met, it had been five months since Devi was forced to drop out of school, say goodbye to her friends, her education and her opportunity to play, to take up a hammer at the stone-breaking yard. She dreams of one day being a school teacher – but she knows that without intervention she may be forced to stay in this situation indefinitely.
I am struck by the reality that the fight for survival among India's poorest children ends up robbing them of the opportunity to truly live. It need not be this way. Through the 40 Hour Famine at Universities we aim that, for 2500 of Rajahmundry's child labourers, it will not be.
Reflections by Olivia
Olivia and Shane work for World Vision. They visited Rajahmundry, India in February 2009.