VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
At Madison
Square , Prime Minister Narendra Modi narrated how
he went abroad when he was a BJP functionary and was assigned an interpreter.
After a few days, the interpreter hesitantly asked him if India
was a country of snake charmers. Modi simply answered that our ancestors played
with snakes but Indians now play with mouse.
The stereotype in a section of
the western world about India
being a country of snake charmers, extreme poverty, sadhus levitating in the
air and tigers roaming the streets still exist and are rather quite strong.
Some western countries still want to reinforce it as perhaps they cannot accept
that the country had moved much beyond that long time ago. Indians may have
moved the world with their mouse but Norway ,
the custodian of the Nobel Prize, still perceives India
as a country of child and bonded labour, snake charmers and poverty where the
people force their children to work.
Frankly Nobel peace prize to
Kailash Satyarthi was a big surprise to me. Though I cannot comment on those
who have got the prize in subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Economics etc, as I
am practically an illiterate in those fields, but surely if an Indian gets it
for peace, my journalistic exposure over a period of time would force me to
have a look into all its aspects.
I remember an episode from my
early days of Reporting in the late 1990s. I was working with the Hindustan Times
in New Delhi then when my boss Pankaj Vohra, now the Managing Editor of Sunday
Guardian, asked me to cover a press conference of Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao
Andolan at Press Club of India in New Delhi. Mr Vohra’s instructions had always
been quite simple. “Never take anything on its face value. Go beyond the
obvious”. So there I was at the first floor conference hall of PCI. Two
“rescued” child labourers were sitting at the venue with T-Shirts of Bachpan
Bachao Andolan and slogans against child labour. Apart from Satyarthi and
others, a White Man and a Woman, both foreigners, too were sitting on the
dais.
Without looking for solutions to
problems specific to India
in the country itself, Satyarthi always reveled in internationalizing the issue
as this gave him mileage in western press, something which he always craved
for. As a nationalist, I was incensed at watching two foreigners telling us on
the face: “You Indians indulge in child labour.”
I questioned the two “Rescued”
children as a curious journalist and found that they were tutored. They did not
know much beyond their brief. Others, including the two foreigners and
Satyarthi, spoke on their behalf. The two children, at that time, around 14-15
years of age, had toured the world, spoke in various forums along with
Satyarthi and told the west how cruel India
was towards its children and how the country wanted to keep its children in
child labour. Then I asked the members of Bachpan Bachao Andolan what was the
need to parade the two in the entire world when the problem was a local one and
needed local solutions and not international intervention.
The organizers were flummoxed and
feared a bad press the next day. I wrote a four-column report factually
depicting what I saw, interaction with the children, questioning the need to
globalise such an issue and a critical evaluation of internationalizing child
issue when carpet exports from the country were being badly affected on this
very ground.
Next day, the Bachpan Bachao
Andolan Team was in Hindustan Times office at Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New
Delhi to complain about the “shoddy, one-sided and
biased” reporting to Pankaj Vohra. I defended my reporting saying I was not a
stenographer who would write what is dictated and told. I told them how bad it
was to internationalise the issue and paint the country and the countrymen in
such a bad light. They fumed, threatening to lodge complaint at other forums.
My boss, Mr Vohra merely smiled as he had seen such threats frequently in his
long career and he supported what I wrote to the last column and word.
Soon after the Nobel for
Satyarthi was announced, I was on Google chat with my friend Syed Liaquat Ali,
now based in Indianapolis in United
States as a successful legal consultant. He
was a Reporter with the Indian Express in Allahabad
in the year 1995 when he wrote how the same children were rescued by Satyarthi
and his team two to three times.
He told me about his report which
stated how rescued children are left to their fate by Bachpan Bachao Andolan
forcing them to go back to the same industry where they were working earlier.
This helps Satyarthi rescue them again and again and increase the figures of
rescued children in his curriculum vitae which helped him get Nobel. Perhaps,
only a few “showpieces” were adopted, provided appropriate education so that
they could tour the world and inform the western countries about child labour
to reinforce the stereotype of India .
I am sure; Satyarthi might have
done a lot more work that I know. I did not really follow his work after my
report on that press conference except reading in newspapers that so many
children have been rescued from a zari unit in Shahdara or Uttam Nagar. But I
do remember getting calls from Bachpan Bachao Andolan Office quite frequently
about the raids they are going to conduct and request for a photographer and a
Reporter to cover the rescue work. After all, if you don’t get publicity for
the work, there was no point doing them. Also, if the report is not carried in
newspapers, you cannot collect the clippings and send it abroad for
international prizes. Of course, they would not have sent the clipping of my
news report anywhere.
After the Nobel was announced, I
just wondered why the “evil of child labour” hasn’t been eradicated even from Delhi
from where Satyarthi has been operating for three decades. The reason is not
far to seek. In almost all cases, the poor parents themselves send their
children to learn the intricate skills of handicraft when they are “rescued” by
Satyarthi and his team. The parents, living in poverty in the states of Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar , Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan then again
send the children back after a fortnight or so, in the same industry and unit
from where they were “rescued” in the first place. Often the parents themselves
or their close relatives leave the children in these factories where children
are involved in zari work or related handicrafts.
After the Nobel to Satyarthi,
there is a sense of national pride throughout India
and questioning his achievements and methodology may not make me popular. My
intention is not to go against the national mood of euphoria. But at the same
time, I thought this was the right time to make the issue relevant and go
beyond what Satyarthi and his team has been doing all these years.
Child labour cannot be eradicated
through “cosmetic” efforts. You have to go deep into the roots of the problem,
economic background of the parents of the children, their meager source of
livelihood, their pitiable economic condition and ground realities of the
country in the rural areas to find a solution. Also, child labour has to be
delinked completely from child trafficking. Those indulging in child
trafficking must get the highest punishment of the land. But we have to see
child labour from a different perspective than that of Satyarthi and the
international community which wants to put the country in the dock for such
practices. Eradication of child labour is a gradual, multi pronged process and
cannot be eliminated overnight by giving Nobel to someone. (October 13, 2014 )
A serious thought provoking article.
ReplyDelete