I have written a lot of posts in this blog of mine, 60 in fact (I just checked). Some of them were related to my personal life, some related to current affairs & some plain stupidity. But this time, I wanted to write something for a cause. For the right cause.
The main reason for writing this post, is a piece of news I read the other day. The news article was about a DIG in West Bengal who employed an 8Year old girl as a domestic help & later tortured her. According to the write up, this was not the first incident of physical torture inflicted on the kid, but there were many prior incidents. The child mustered the courage to contact the local police, but they denied taking up a case until an MP had personally gotten involved, later on. How can someone do this to a kid?
I had read about a law being passed, couple of years back (2007), making employment of children a punishable offense. The person who breaks this law was supposed to pay a hefty fine & can be imprisoned for the same. But when we look around we see that children are still being employed at a very early age onwards. Looking around in Bangalore, you wouldn’t find a single road side eating joints which do not have a child as a cleaner or a waiter. Only the other day, a boy who would be no older than 10years was frying chips in hot oil at one of those bakeries which is located right at the street junction. How can the authorities be so blind to allow such practices to continue? How can we let children, who we say are the future of the country, lose out on education? How can we be so selfish to profit from the low wages given to children who are forced to do a normal man's work? How can we let this happen?
I wasn't entirely sure about the law which I remember reading in the paper, sometime in October of 2007. So I decided to check out in the internet, as to what "our country" & "our constitution’s" stand on Child Labor is. A search on "child labor in India" will point you to a law named "The Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986". Now, I am no expert in law & neither will I try to act like one. But in plain English, the law prohibits a child from being employed in "certain" employments and to regulate the conditions of work of children in "certain other employments". Ok now the "certain" list which they mentioned about has 52 items in it. Now I really fail to understand 2 things-
1) Why should be a list of "certain" employment? Why cant we abolish child labor as a whole? Why are we not focusing on compulsory primary education & instead giving loopholes by providing these lists with "certain" employments?
2) Are we at least enforcing this law for these "certain" employments? A quick glance through the list & I can see in my mind images of children whom I had seen employed in these very same "certain employments".
So we failed to give a solid proper law & we are unable to enforce the faulty one as well !
But above all this, more than the child labor, the lack of education or financial injustice, nothing is more sinister than the cruelty towards children. Has time made us so cold & selfish, that we would even hurt an innocent child? I keep seeing in the visual & printed media about the deaths of children in various part of the country. If somewhere it is due to medical negligence, then somewhere else a schoolteacher issues death penalty to a student. All these incidents become an issue of a huge controversy & discussion, but get easily forgotten once another controversy comes up. Do we always need a controversy or a death to identify what we are doing wrong? Should a 11year old die each time to make us realize that a teacher should be well trained for the job? Should half a dozen newborns die to remind us to check we manufacture & distribute the right medicine?
As children, we looked upon & trusted our elders around us to show us the right direction, to keep us safe, to teach us. But what are we doing to our country's future? A person who holds a senior office in the police force, the upholders of justice, is actually committing a crime towards a child. If this is the actions towards a child, by a person who should be protecting us, are we safe? Is our country's future safe? How many innocent kids should die to rethink our path? How many tears should be shed to melt our heart which is hardened by our greed? How can we make a difference...
