Children of migrants get parting gift from railway officials

To cheer up the children of 5,000 migrant workers boarding trains every day, railway officials have turned to the famous Channapatna toys.

The Bengaluru division of the South Western Railway (SWR) gifted more than 700 wooden toys to the children boarding the 11 trains that left on Tuesday.

The gesture not only brightened the children’s faces, but also left an imprint on the minds of officials. “Every day we are busy and stressed out over making arrangements for migrant workers, sometimes at short notice. Today, I was so happy to see the children smile from the windows and feel proud of their new possessions,” said divisional railway manager Ashok Kumar Verma.

Verma said he hit upon the idea after seeing the photographs of Shramik trains sent by his public relations team. “In almost all these photos, the children had a blank or worried look,” he said.

“They have a 60-hour journey ahead. Adults understand the exigency of our times, but children cannot. I had an informal discussion with officials on a WhatsApp group about arranging the toys and that’s how things happened,” he said.

While a company sponsored some of the toys, officials, worried about giving them plastic, decided to look for things that would last beyond a day in a child’s hands. When one of the officials suggested the Channapatna toys, others nodded in approval.

The wooden toys, which have got GI-tag, will create waves in the interiors of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, Tripura and many other states. “We hope their (toys) market widens,” Verma said.

The Container Corporation (Concor) of India, which sponsored the toys, has decided to continue it in all the other trains.

Concor Group general manager Anup Dayanand Sadhu said: “We will continue to support the programme under our corporate social responsibility scheme. It seems to be a good programme in times of uncertainties,” Sadhu told DH.