Some days back a whistle was blown on violation of child labour Act. I have lots of thought on it, which I voice here before my gentle readers.
Financial desperation of starving parents compels them to sell their children so that their progeny survives. Some parents give them to strangers who they believe, are better able to look after them. Many feel that foreigners are better equipped to take care of their children and so they hand over their children to ‘firengies’ (foreigners). Many of these innocent children end up as labourers in factories, hotels and homes. The demand for child labour has immensely increased because they are cheap labour for odd jobs in factories; as dishwashers in hotels and second line helpers in homes.
The reason for increase in demand as helpers in homes is because the end of one thing causes the beginning of something else. Take for example the ‘Joint family system’, which is ebbing like the low tide of the Arabian Sea is due to mushrooming of ‘Nuclear families’. The need for child labour on the domestic front is due to absence of grandparents in nuclear homes or as secondary family support in houses. The supply for such domestic help is met by middlemen.
Although child labour, whether domestic or bonded, is abolished in India by Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, it still exists.
All ministries should probe to know the ground realities and rehabilitate the child workers by infusing warmth in their life and defusing their burden of labour. There are millions of children who are forced by economic circumstances into conditions of slavery and sexual abuse, this problem should be solved.
Today, we need to feel the whole world is our family. Religion of the heart must be spontaneous response to people in need. We should have empathy – the ability to understand victim’s pain in our heart.
Activists say that there has been little progress in curbing child labour since its ban. This is because the official attitude towards the social evil of child labour is turning a blind eye. It’s taken as part of life. So, the state remains powerless to help millions of children who are under the yoke of ‘child labour’.
Therefore, many ask, should the starving and unwanted children be allowed to starve to death without employment, without adoption and giving them to strangers for safekeeping, until the government is fully equipped to accommodate them till they attain the age required for employment, or till the government acts as the genuine middleman – a good Samaritan, to eliminate these corrupt practices of child labour? Until then, to whom should the unwanted and starving children, be given? Should they work to live or die of starvation?
