ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on mainly, though not exclusively, on the childhood experiences of local Chhattisgarhis, and on the way these have changed since the steel plant started. Though a few – mainly boys – attended school, from the age of about ten, children of both sexes then helped in the fields and mostly belonged to the households of marginal subsistence farmers. In the industrial area an able-bodied worker can usually earn enough from casual labour to fill the children’s bellies. Crop yields in the surrounding countryside are three to five times greater than in pre-Bhilai Steel Plant days and children are better nourished and epidemic disease is less threatening. In the industrial area, the marriage of pre-pubescent children is all but extinct. Most ‘labour class’ boys are between 18 and 25 when they marry. The decline in divorce means that children in this stratum are increasingly unlikely to be brought up by a stepparent and with step- and half-siblings.
