The children from underprivileged households remain engaged in collecting materials discarded by the final users on the public space. We assume that the children working as waste pickers in the city of Allahabad are self-employed, in absence of any identified employer, to earn income to sustain the livelihood of their households. The paper, based on a primary survey of children engaged in waste picking in the city of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, concluded that the out-of-school children engaged in waste picking reflected their adverse inclusion at the bottom of the labour market. Notwithstanding the fact that the state intervention through Acts so far could hardly protect the childhood of these children, this paper argues for protection of the waste picking children through state intervention.