Children of Destiny

Once a victim of child labour, Neeraj Murmu now leads other disadvantaged kids out of the trap of exploitation and poverty

- Kritika Banerjee

Over the past few months, Neeraj Murmu, the son of a humble farmer, would begin his day early, heading off to the rice fields to help his father at seven in the morning. Once through, he would set off to one of the houses in Duliakaram, his tribal village in the Giridih district of Jharkhand, where a small group of boys and girls anxiously awaited his arrival. Over the next hour and a half, he tutored the children in school subjects in which they needed extra guidance. Through the day, Murmu visited three to four more houses in his village for more group classes.

Many take on extra work of this nature, both to earn and to help neighbourhood kids, but this 22-year-old is anything but ordinary. One of the winners of this year’s Diana Award— instituted in the memory of the Princess of Wales in 1999 to recognize and honour inspiring youngsters—Murmu was, nine years ago, a child labourer forced by poverty and exploitative practices to toil in the area’s mica mines. “I’d been going to the mines with my mother and sister for as long as I could remember. People work there because how else will you feed your family?” Murmu says. The mica he gathered fetched a mere ₹5 per kg.