Click to play videoBaghwanala (Uttar Pradesh): Over 75 million children in India don't go to school, partly because most of them are at work.
Among this sizeable chunk is 11-year-old Arvind, who weaves dreams in silk with his tiny hands.
He is just one of the many child weavers in Baghwanala village of Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi district who is manning the warps and woofs of his trade.
After getting the silk from middlemen, children spin and weave it into shape and return the finished product - all of this - for a meagre wage. " I earn Rs 700 a month," says Arvind.
In the last decade or so, the number of child weavers in Varanasi has ironically gone down. But that's not because of any state intervention.
The entire weaving sector is in tremendous distress and the child weavers have moved on to do other things like making agarbattis or incense sticks.
However, the tale is much the same here as well - the raw materials come from the traders, who reap in the profits. "I get Rs 5 for every 1 kg of agarbattis I make" says Anita, an Agarbatti maker.
Fourteen-year-old Anita was a weaver, but dipping profits in the saree trade means there is less work. Her family's loom has been silent the last two years and she now helps her sisters and mother make agarbattis. "We don't weave sarees anymore, we make agarbattis" says Anita.
"Social change happens with political action, legal change as well as change in societal attitude and if all of these are not worked on together, it won't work," says Child Rights Activist, Enakshi Ganguly.
As the Government pushes for the ban of child labour, without adequate rehabilitation, many children will continue to work trying to mould a better future for themselves.
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