When a society allows children to pick up garbage to survive, it is not just the child that is scavenging, it is humanity as a whole that is losing its soul. Two decades ago, after having spent a major part of their lives in abject poverty in Rajasthan, parents of 92 child rag-pickers decided to make the slum area, adjacent to Maan Kaur village, their permanent abode.For years, the parents begged at the railway station and the bus stand. For them, survival was defined by daily resilience, where every meal and shelter was an earned victory. Still, they could barely make both ends meet. The children got trapped in the vicious circle of begging, rag-picking and committing petty crimes for their survival.Now, due to the efforts of philanthropist Romesh Mahajan, the children have discarded their degraded and undignified profession of rag-picking and started studying.All 92 of them now go to the nearby preliminary education centre, an institute meant for the poor, irrespective of age, to study free of cost. Later, they will be admitted to the government primary school at Maan Kaur village. The centre is funded by Mahajan.On Tuesday, so impressed were the officers of Tibri Army Cantonment that they invited these kids to betheir guests.When the children went there, neatly dressed in new attires, they were accorded a guard of honour by the Quarter-Guard, a ceremonial detachment of troops that had stationed themselves at the entrance to the main gate.The kids were perplexed as to what was going around them. But were happy for the honour.