India, April 28 -- "He failed in all the exams," the playmates pointed at Pransu.

"How can he pass? He doesn't go to school. He also smokes and drinks," accused a bigger boy about that fifth-grade boy.

Pransu lives a carefree life in our village. His parents have gone away to Hyderabad to labour as migrant workers. They have left their eight-year-old daughter and Pransu in the care of their elderly grandmother. The parents have taken along with them their 14-year-old daughter too to cook their food and care for their two-year-old infant.

"I cook their food and feed them," responded the old woman, when I enquired why she doesn't see that her grandchildren don't go to school regularly and study at home. "They eat and roam around. They do...