Street Children and the Big City
Karm Marg was born out the of the need for a realistic support system for the street children living around the New Delhi Railway Station. There are about 300,000 such children who roam and work the streets of Delhi. They come from all over the country, mostly from rural India . Some run away from difficult and abusive circumstances at home while some others who are drawn by the glitz of neon lit big cities. There are still others whofind themselves stranded helpless on the meancity strets for no fault of their own.
Living under flyovers and above municipal bins, they live in the shadows of the big city, Survival is a daily struggle from them. More than often, young girls arriving on their own at railway stations and bus terminals are picked up and forced into becoming sex workers. The boys start by finding petty work in exchange of food, working at the bottom of the station's jungle rule hierarchy formed by some of the corrupt police, porters, tea vendors, small time drug peddlers and the assorted group of people - all fixtures in such places. It is common knowledge that all young children living in/around the station get regularly sodomised, in return buying some sort of security, food or possibly just one more day's survival.
While Karm Marg has grown to accept any child in dire cicumstances living on the street or off it, the cause of street children still remains central to it's ideology.
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