Child Labor

He was 10 years old. When asked he said that he was 15 years old. He didn’t know why. It was just that his master told him to do so. His name was Raju. When he was born, he was named as Shivkumar, but that name did not suit his master. So his name was changed. His master owned a small juice shop in some big institute, with around 500 people. Most of these students were his customers. They visited him regularly for juice, cold drinks, eatables, cigarettes etc. This was a popular hangout, chiefly because of large credit extended by Sharmaji

Raju had 3 other siblings -Two sisters of age 13 and 11 respectively and a brother of 7 years. The eldest sister worked in a small carpet making unit. She has been employed since 3 years and worked for 12 hours a day without taking and day off. Probably, in a year or two she will be married to someone from a nearby village. Probably her family would get few thousand rupees in bargain! The younger sister was employed full time with a sort of well to do businessman’s family. Their family had a son born around a year and half ago. She had been employed since then. After all they needed someone to help to look after the future scion of the family, so that other family members can enjoy other things in life!

The youngest brother would be employable in about a year. The neighborhood tea stall may probably employ him. Currently he was enjoying playing with similar guys in the street outside the slums where the family stayed. Their parents were laborers, and were at times employed and managed to earn. Else they whiled away time, with mother cooking and cleaning and the father squatting in the slums smoking a bidi or having booze. The family managed enough to get two square meals a day.

The guy with a light beard and long hair was N. He was one of the people often found outside Sharmaji’s shop, and a regular consumer of chips, samosas, soft drinks and cigarettes. He had developed a rapport with the students visiting the shop. Today, a professor mentions in the class about child labor in one of the classes. Things like children below 14 years should not be employed in hazardous industry (although domestic help or the ones like Raju may not be included in this … so technically it is not child labor!). Also, he mentioned that the root problem was that child labor laws were not implemented properly. As a result, these children who were supposed to be studying in some school were working here.

After the class, N and his friends, sitting at Sharmaji’s were now discussing about the issue. Q mentioned that, the problem is about the education system. Even if Raju goes to a school, he may just waste his time and may not be able to learn anything that would make him more employable, and also he loses the money he earns through it. So as the prof mentioned, the benefit of extra hands to earn was more than loss due to having an extra mouth to feed. Hence, the population was huge, and this also led to child labor. T mentioned that it was all because of our feudal mindset. Among many similar points, P mentioned that to a great extent, we often tended to undermine the impact upon the society in long run.

What P mentioned was some management junk, someone remarked. They, still unsure about the root cause and the solution headed for the next class. Probably the phrase mentioned by Prof S – “The more you know, more silent you become” suited them!