The words “child labour” would earn a unanimous vote of “nay” from most of us. Of course, children should spend their time at school or at the playground rather than providing manual labour. Why is it not surprising therefore to still find children living off the street, earning their day’s meal by selling flowers, books, or even cleaning the rubbish to “keep our city clean”? Who is to blame for these tiny hands picking up tools instead of books?
The appalling part of this argument is that to be honest, many of these children choose to pick up tools instead of books. Underprivileged children in a village in Rangpur are given 300 taka every month for their education, yet some of the young boys would still choose to work in the fields instead of spending the morning educating their young minds. Chandni Ganesh, 16, gives us her perspective on the subject, “The reason why some kids choose to work is because of instant needs, rather than long-term benefits.”
The “instant needs” she mentions, however, holds a higher significance for Shagoree, a house maid. Ever since her husband died, leaving her with 6 children, her eldest son (aged 12) lends her his helping hand in earning for the family. Without the added help, it would have been impossible for her to make the ends meet with her minimal income. She adds that while he is busy with work, it leaves fewer opportunities for her son to engage in delinquency. There is a dignity in labour, which is revealed by the pride in her eyes when she talks of her son understanding the value of money and understanding the ways of the world at this early age.
Of course, we could say that she knows no better.
Ibrahim offers us an opinion which empathises with this: “Education now is sure to lead to long-term growth, but when you have an ever increasing population like we do, education is a precious commodity many can’t afford. That’s when people might feel the need to exploit this untapped ‘labour source’, to be perfectly blunt.”
Where then, do we draw the line? We cannot argue with the fact that there are still many families who live in abject poverty, and in these cases, a child earning his/her living through honest work instead of begging for a day’s meal can hardly be considered wrong.
PHOTO: DARSHAN CHAKMA
However, after the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” was released, Andrew Malone, a journalist of the Daily Mail in UK unravelled that there was much truth behind the events shown in the movie, and wrote “Real Slumdog Millionaires: Mafia Gangs Crippling Children For Profit”. Despite the “dignity of labour”, child labour still leaves room for such traumatising crimes. How “honest” therefore is the children’s “honest work”? “It [child labour] just degrades the human existence. I say ban it!” says Sarie, 16.
In addition to that, it’s not just “mafia gangs” who have discovered ways to utilise child labour for harbouring higher profits. Says Ibrahim, “Granted, it’s not the most humane thing to do, but there’s definitely a modicum of double standards here.” Chandni adds, “See, the thing is, the whole supply-demand factor comes into play. If something were to actually be done about illegal child labour, it would mean the downfall of industries all over the world, which would then, through the multiplier effect, mean the downfall of economies all over the world. This would result in lower wages, more exploitation, unemployment, debts… the list goes on. Sometimes the only answer is the immoral one.”
As an answer to that, a charity organisation, Harry Potter Alliance (Potterheads out there, you are not alone!), challenged the chocolate frogs advertised and sold by Warner Bros. and actually discovered that it wasn’t as expensive to make them without the use of child labour to extract the raw cocoa beans, as the companies show them to be. To quote them, “We thought, ‘Why doesn’t Warner Bros. want to make their Chocolate Frogs Fair Trade?‘ The only answer we could come up with was ‘money’.” They proved it by going into the chocolate frog production business in November 2011.
To round it off, yes, at times circumstances do force children to shed their childhood innocence, and work. But the place where we, as a society, should draw a line is where these children are deprived the opportunity to aim for a better future, either by their own myopic visions or through exploitations. It’s like smashing an egg, or waiting for it to crack on its own. Smashing it limits its opportunities to just being an omelette, having lived a meaningless life. Allowing it to crack on its own lets it grow into something more. Who is to say that the child who sells you a flower today does not have what it takes to change the world?
PHOTO: DARSHAN CHAKMA
Source: The Daily Star
