Sunday, February 4, 2001		Article

THE boy who brought our newspaper was late that day. I had got up later than usual and was racing against time to finish my work and rush off to catch the 9 am bus to work. Annoyed at not being able to even glance at the headlines, I scolded him for being late. He just smiled and ran off with his sheaf of papers.

It was then that I noticed that he was not wearing his uniform. He delivered a round of papers every morning before going to school. Did he have a holiday? Or was he ill? I wished heartily that I had not yelled at him, especially when I looked my own sons still sleeping. It was a second Saturday and most schools were closed that day. Didn’t he have the right to sleep a little longer on a holiday? Was it the boy’s fault that I had got up late and had to go to work?

What is it about us that we forget that children who work are not mini adults but children like our own? Why do we lose all perspective while ordering a child worker about? There is little sense of proportion in the expectations we have of them. Does being poor mean that they are invested with some extra strength? Most of all, what gives us the right to treat them as we do?

We have working children everywhere — on farms and fields, in restaurants and homes, in factories and on streets. India has the largest number of child workers in the world, possibly because it is the second most populous country. According to the 1991 census, of the 200 million children, some 11.28 million children are child labourers. Unofficial estimates by other sources put the figure between 40 to 100 million.

While it is true that we cannot eradicate this scourge because poverty is an ugly reality in our country, we can at least don a human face while dealing with them. The plight of children working in hazardous industries is unimaginable, but even that of children in other fields is quite pathetic.

Take the case of the least offensive of all fields — that of domestic labour. Is it really the least offensive or do we fool ourselves into thinking that it is? For it is in the homes that these children face the discrimination of being poor and helpless. They face psychological disfigurement and violence. Many of these children are brought to the cities by wealthy families to do housework and look after their children.

The irony of the matter is that these boys and girls, often no older than the children they are employed to look after, are treated most shabbily. I have often seen them being beaten, kicked and spat on, by the spoilt brats of the house, in full view of their parents. Would these very parents keep quiet if their children were to treat some other child in such a disgraceful manner? Worse, the child workers can’t retaliate for fear of losing their job or getting beaten by the master or mistress. They have nowhere to go, having been at times even ‘given away’ by their parents for a fixed sum to his/her masters. Doesn’t it make one wonder if we have at all come out of the era of slaves? Can money kill kindness and make one so insensitive?

Well-heeled people think nothing of making a small child carry huge baskets of vegetables and fruits, most of which he might not even get eat? This is not to say that all masters are unkind, but does it excuse them from employing a child to do an adult’s work?

"We provide food and clothes for this chokhri. Her parents were literally begging me to take her away so that at least one of their children would have enough to eat," says Mrs B. So what if she take some work out of her in return for her largess? Never mind that the girl is kept on her feet from 5 a.m. in the morning till late in the night. People like Mrs B actually believe that the exploitation is a noble way of helping a poor child! Talk of twisting things to suit themselves!

If the employer’s children are younger to the servant child, he or she is not allowed to play with the toys of their little masters/mistresses. I have heard women remark with shocked disbelief at the ‘audacity’ of these boys and girls to touch the expensive and other imported toys and games.

Raghu, a 11-year-old boy is kept busy from morning till night doing all the household chores, while the lady’s own son of the same age has nothing more to do than play, watch TV and to go school. Incidentally, Raghu was attending the village school in Karnataka, from where he hails, but his studies had been cut short because his family needed the money he would earn in a far off city.

Physical abuse of these children is also not unheard of. The children, traumatised as they are, having to stay away from their families, have to suffer the added trauma of regular beatings and scolding. Often the beatings follow as very trivial mistake. One boy had been beaten mercilessly for being ‘bold’ enough to sleep on his master’s bed. What did he or she do to deserve this — just the fact of being born poor?

As I mentioned earlier, it may not be possible to eliminate child labour from the face of the earth, but at least we can do something to mitigate their plight. We could start by treating them as unlucky human beings, who could do with some kindness and opportunity to better themselves.

Why not make the child of the house spend sometime to teach him/her the three Rs? This would not only make the child proud of himself for making another literate, but also imbue a sense of social responsibility in him. While we are about it, we might as well tell our children that, "There, but for the grace of God, go you." For it is just that — a child doesn’t choose to be born in a particular environment. It is just a twist of fortune that while our own child was born into a loving and well providing home, these are born into want and penury.

It would do well for us to teach our children to be compassionate and affectionate towards these children. An awareness about the plight of working children and their rights can make a big difference to the way our own children feel towards their less fortunate brethren.

Some years ago, much before the activists and NGOs had started their awareness campaign to make children give up bursting of crackers, my eight-year-old son had decided to give them up after tearfully watching a documentary of child workers in the cracker industry. I remember how frustrated he was when he was laughed at and ridiculed when he tried to make his friends give it up too. Today, I am glad to see that thousands of children are saying no to crackers. They would do even better if they stopped ordering the mundus in the house about, to do their personal work. They could tell their parents that they are perfectly capable of carrying their own schoolbags and don’t need another child, who is more often than not, younger than them, to do it.

Let us become human. Better still, let us teach the younger generation to be socially more responsible and compassionate. Things will surely change, if not tomorrow, then in the not too distant future.