CHENNAI - The recent murder of 10-year-old
Moin Khan in New Delhi by his employer-uncle once
again highlights the terrible practice of child
labor in India. Incredible as it may sound, child
workforce is strictly banned by law in India. Yet,
there are 60 million very young boys and girls
toiling day and night for a pittance, while
rightfully they ought to be at school.
It
is very common, therefore, to see even
eight-year-old children working all day long, in
some of the most dangerous industries like
firecracker and glass production. Here life is at
peril during every working minute.
Moin
did not work in perilous conditions, but his hours
in a sweat-shop rolling bidis (Indian
cigarettes) were laboriously long and
backbreaking. He was only
seven when he boarded a train from his native
state of Bihar bidding goodbye to his parents. He
never saw them again after being taken away by his
uncle to work in the shop he owned. The uncle,
Kalimullah Khan, probably promised the parents
that the money their son earned in the shop would
be sent back home. One supposes that never
happened.
Kalimullah was arrested on April
21 while two other children who worked for him
were rescued. One was Moin's elder brother, who is
mute. Both claim the accused would regularly beat
them and Moin.
A seven-year-old boy, who
was rescued from the factory after Moin's death,
told rediff.com, "Kalim was a really bad man. He
beat up all of us if we made the smallest of
mistakes. His punishments were severe."
"He would put hot iron rods into our pants
or he would hang us upside down from the fan or
even throw us hard on the floor. We were not
allowed to go out or talk to anyone. In all, we
were five children working in the factory and one
adult always supervised us."
The details
that have emerged from the case read worse than a
Charles Dickens novel, which tell of a Victorian
England when orphanage doubled as workhouses. Moin
lived in modern India, whose governments never
cease to boast how "shining" their land is, while
choosing to shut their eyes to the horrific plight
of future generations, the likes of Moin.
Kalimullah made Moin work 14-hour shifts
at his factory in a single-room rented apartment
in northwest Delhi that is just a few kilometers
from parliament, which has legislated against
child labor. On April 16, Moin was beaten to death
with a blunt weapon by his uncle. What was the
little lad's crime? He was working too slowly.
The crime would never have come to light
had an alert and conscientious caretaker at the
crematorium not noticed bruises on Moin's body and
promptly called the police. One now learns that on
that fateful day, four other boys were also beaten
by Kalimullah, but not as severely as Moin was.
Child laborer Moin was not alone. There
are thousands of boys and girls like him who live
under virtual bondage as child workers. Some try
and escape, while some turn disobedient, fed up
with the hard work and sheer drudgery of it all.
Such truancy angers the employers, some of whom
beat up the young laborers. In Moin's case, the
punishment must have been so violent that he died.
Obviously, the ban on child workers leaves
much to be desired in its enforcement. Factories
merrily employ them by bribing government
officials. There are other ways this law is
circumvented: children are hidden or packed off
home on a day when inspectors arrive.
There are important reasons why a little
boys and girls are employed. They are too young to
even have an inkling of their rights, and so they
tend to be obedient. They make no demands. Also,
they can be hired for ridiculously low wages,
sometimes none at all.
Parents of these
unfortunate children are so impoverished that they
would rather have their sons and daughters
working, even if they earn miserably low wages,
rather than letting them starve. Where then is the
question of asking for and getting one's rights?
It is this scenario that allows India,
with its dubious distinction of having the world's
largest child workforce, to makes millions of
dollars from manufacturing crackers, match-sticks
and exquisite glassware among a host of other
goods. Many of these are exported.
The
southern Indian town of Sivakasi and its bordering
areas produce about 55% of the country's matches,
and of the 60,000 employees there, a good half are
children under 14. Some start working when they
are barely five, and in inhumanly appalling
conditions. They are packed off to their
workplaces at the crack of dawn and made to slog
for often 14 hours a day in rooms that have no
sunlight and with dangerous chemicals used for
manufacturing matches.
This is the same
story with firecracker units, and with India
consuming most of this produce during the few days
of Diwali, these children seldom get around
playing with what they themselves make. In the
industry they say: "We produce for 300 days a
year, we sell for 30 days, we sell in a rush for
three days and the whole thing goes up in flames
in three hours!"
Also going up in smoke
are the dreams of hundreds of boys and girls who
live in most degrading conditions. The child
workers have no hope of a decent education, a
reasonably comfortable life, and by the time they
reach young adulthood, their health could have
suffered irreparably.
Witnesses say Moin
always had a faraway look in his eyes. He was
dreaming, perhaps this was what infuriated
Kalimullah so much that he decided to snuff out
the lad's life.
Gautaman
Bhaskaran is an author, writer, columnist and
film critic based in Chennai.
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