Rights Grabbed Away

Krithika Karthikeyan
Monday, December 9, 2019

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of” –Confucius
India got independence on 15th of August, 1947. This was a dream day for every single citizen of the country. The people got something very valuable that day- freedom. Freedom to choose, express, become, the options were limitless. 1947-2019? Things haven’t changed so much. Plants still grow, ozone still depletes, things still happen. And of course, children are still pushed into labor.

We all have dreams in life. Our life, for us children, is a football ground. Our dream is our goal. Our side is our comfort zone. The football is our studies. This is an example of the imaginative life a child goes through during imagining his dream. But, for some of the unfortunate kids, instead of the football ground, they are shown a metal pollution factory with high tears and sweat to lift the loads here and there and to get those pennies for their basic needs. The orphans in the roads, their conditions are the worst. They’re toyed with by the authorities. They’re told to sell this, do that, work here, say this, and never get to live life even once for themselves and what they want to be. In Kuwait, we children never really see this. We don’t know about the sickening reality back in our motherland. Some children never even go to India. They’re like Siddharth before he turned to Buddha. That royal life. But, for children who do go to India, are faced with more child labors than vehicles in traffic lights. We see some kids of our own age, struggling to make ends meet, while we here take everything for granted.

Child labor is a pressing problem in our country. Some parents (hard to believe, I know) also profit off their child’s work. All over the country, we see boards in restaurants and shops saying We don’t employ children below the age of 18 in our restaurant/shop. And yet, you see so many unfortunate children dragging down the street with their sad, miserable life, not having a moment for themselves and investing all they have in laboring.

Do you believe in Gods? Do you pray to him? Well, I’m really sorry to bust your bubble, but all of your prayers should be falling on deaf ears. What’s the point in praying to God if you’re going to sit back in your armchair and do nothing to save his creation?
One side of our country, we have the richest man in all of Asia. We have children who pass out from Harvard when they’re 15. We have everything on our fingertips, and if we want something, we can get it within a snap of our fingers.

The other side, we have misery. We have children working everywhere tirelessly, sometimes more than what the adults do. They’re waiting for that guardian angel who’s going to come and save them from this treacherous life of theirs and take them to a life they love. Alas, these children keep wishing, and they keep working. No guardian angel around to save them and carry them into a haven. How can we, when we’re so obsessed with ourselves?

Children from unfortunate areas should be given a chance to dream. God has gifted each one of us with the same brain and the same features. The only thing that separates us is education and money. Why should we take this as a factor to distinguish between the people who can dream and the people who cannot? Dreams are valid for each and every one of us. Today, 152 million children are pushed into child labor. That’s a 152 million dreams that stay unfulfilled, remain unfulfilled, and die unfulfilled. These children turn left, turn right, look up to the sky. No help. They stay as child labors. Nobody is there to uplift their status and help them achieve their goals.

Fun fact (it’s not so fun, probably Sad Fact is more appropriate): Did you know that out of those 152 million, 1, 26, 66, 377 of them are in India? And then we wonder why no talented people come forward in any field. All those talented people are probably working in some shop or factory, singing “When Will My Life Begin?” (Original song is from the movie Tangled). But then, sad, they keep singing. Their life is over even before it began, just because they kept laboring, never found time for themselves, and slipped into ‘work experience’. According to me, the worst sin you can ever do is to put a halt to somebody’s dreams. And the people who employ children as laborers, are doing just that.

“The single aim of my life is that every child is: free to be a child, free to grow and develop, free to eat, sleep, see daylight, free to laugh and cry, free to play, free to learn, free to go to school, and above all, free to dream” -Kailash Satyarthi.

Perfectly coined quote. And we children who are grateful enough for a good life have this freedom. But those children who have fallen into the trance of child labor? Not so much. All the problems we have right now- poverty, kids being age-inappropriate, everything, can be solved by eradicating this child labor. Ready to do it, people?

Bibliography: https://www.un.org/en/events/childlabourday/background.shtml

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Krithika Karthikeyan
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