When I turn around in my seat I see a construction site in the distance where around 40% of the workers look like children to me. Playful, adventurous and having fun. And I am not talking only about toddlers playing with mud and stones in the scorching sun but also about the teenagers who are lugging around heavy stones,displacing mud, watering the newly built cement walls while carrying heavy pails of water.
Its a shame. This area is supposed to be the information industry belt. And people who work here are supposedly well educated. Yet when it comes to construction and hard labour matters they seem to turn the other way as these young adults strive hard. Even though it is against the law in India.
But if you see the other side of this coin, these kids are striving to improve their living by sacrificing their childhood and education. They are constantly trying to help run their household. There is nothing that will force them to go attend schools while their parents scrape a livelihood all day. Not even free food works in most of the blue plastic cover wrapped on-the-move communities. Some of them have circumstance beyond their control due to which they have to work in order to be able to eat. Some live alone. Who will look after them if they dont? Wouldnt they resort to begging? Or get lured into doing acts against society which dint care about them in the first place?
Five years back I sent a mail of objection to the CFO of my previous company regarding one of the cleaning staff being a kid who definitely did not look 18. Although he assured me that the administrative staff check the age records before hiring he did start another check. I felt good about my community spirit till the evening when I started despairing for the kid's family. What if he was the only breadwinner for them? I felt extremely miserable and guilty for the next few days. The next week however I ran into the kid again near the stairs and I was so happy to see him back that I gave him a huge smile to his astonishment. He might never know that I could have been the villain in his life. But I still dont know whether he used a fake age record.
Should we allow the children to choose to work while we think that they should be going to school?
5 comments:
Hello Siri,
I am from Bangalore Mirror, I wanted to know if I could use this post for blog talk section.. pls do let me know if you are okay with it my email id is nt.balnarayan@gmail.com
Hello Balu, Yes you can use it. My mail to you is bouncing back.
Thanks, Siri
I don't mind kids working in offices. Yes, in an ideal world, there would be no child labor. But the reality is, if the kid is not working here, he would be working in a dangerous construction site, or making fireworks, or whatever. So if all he has to do is bring files, or lukewarm chai, maybe it's not so bad.
I think I know who you are referring to and I happened to have made small talk with this kid. He was not only working but I guess he was attending evening school at some place. So the office in a way helped him fund his own studies. Its a very nice and thought provoking post. Thanks Siri.
Hi siri
First, its a sweet act you did when you ensured he wasn't fired.
Its a dilemma we find ourselves in this sudden rise of wealth in India.
For me whereever I see such kids, be in petrol stations, I ask "where u from, don't u want to go to school" and i don't act further and it kills me for a while but then we go on with our lives.
Many cases such kids have run away from home and caught in the swirl of money and food.
what i would think is those parents who depend on the kids income need to sacrifice more, they gotta put in extra hours to earn same money or NGO has to pay the parents (its a tricky situation where NGO's can be taken for a ride).
No matter what these kids should be off the street,whether they work in cement factory or BPO offices, they gotta be doing study and play.
How to do it in our complex society is a troubling question.We need money for it , money to parents to compensate the loss of income or ask parents to suffer more( thats wat every parent does, earn primarily to kids welfare right)
We need a network of study centres where
such kids can be taught , as you said even if their parents move around cities those kids can go to the network centres and continue the studies..
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