Voices From the Street: An Ethnography of India’s Street Children, A Case Study of Delhi, by Lori McFadyen, Hope India Publications, 2004. Chapter 3

Voices From the Street: An Ethnography of India’s Street Children, A Case Study of Delhi, by Lori McFadyen, Hope India Publications, 2004.

Chapter 3: A Typical Day in the Neighborhood

This is probably the most interesting reading I have done so far. I was outraged at many points and just genuinely interested in many of the facts that McFadyen brought out. In this chapter, McFayden spent time in two “check points” with street children, one in a railway station, and one at a temple. She did a very interesting comparison of the lives of these two groups of street children. She said that the children in the rail station tended to be more independent and detached from personal interaction. They did not display nearly the amount of personal affection as the children in the temple. McFayden gave several reasons why this may be the case including that the rail children have had harder lives and more abuse in their background causing them to be more to themselves. Also, the temple children often have ties to their families in nearby slums, so that family interaction allows these children to develop more personal relationships which thus translate into more affection in interaction with others. Finally, McFayden also says that rail children live in an area with many people coming and going all the time, which means that they do not often spend great amounts of time with the same people. On the other hand, temple children live in a slower environment, so they get to know the people around them personally, which results in better and more healthy social skills.

Another thing I found interesting about this chapter was how conscious the children seemed to be about their cleanliness. It described the children as looking in car mirrors and rubbing their teeth with their fingers to try and get them clean, trying to slick down their hair with oil, and trying to keep their clothes presentable. This is something that I did not expect and something that I find very interesting. Is this because the kids want to be more presentable so that they can get more charity money from people? Do they see the older generation of who used to be “street children” with their teeth falling out and tattered clothes and realize that they do not want to be like that? I do not know, but I found it very interesting.

It was also interesting to see the competition between the children. This was more prevalent in the rail station children who would often tell on their peers to get ahead. For instance, drugs are a big problem for the street children, and if one of the kids knew another child had been using drugs, he would tell the attendant of the check point and say that the drug using child did not deserve help and that they should get it instead. And just a side note, in what I have read in this chapter so far, all the street children described are male. This is strange to me considering that typically the male children are more valued by Indian families. I will be interested to see what else McFayden describes about this.