Child Labour Solution - A helping hand or social hypocracy

As goes the old chinese saying , "Feed a child a fish and u will feed him for a day, teach him to fish and u have fed him for life".

With child workers being saved from industries that make them work like animals all day long in inhuman conditions, child labor is definitely a concern of the modern society.

With workforce requirements increasing rapidly, and children being the most "lucrative" option for filling that requirements, they are being targeted by small and mid scale industries, to make them work.

Child labour gives them the so called advantage of bullying them to work more and pay less primarily. Optionally, they can also appraise them very easily so that they do not run away, or better they can bully them to stay.


Although this seems to be a genuine concern on what needs to be done about the issue, but seldom do we think as to why we are facing this problem.

The great Indian legacy of finding a solution to a symptom, and not identifying the root cause, carries here as well. With most talking about the industries that tend to hire them, we seldom talk about why these kids agree or are forced get into this, though unwillingly.

With so many people living below the poverty line and the exploding population, it seems to be an obvious answer. We are a growing country, with our standard of living getting better every annum. However we are not yet successful in closing the gap between the rich and the poor, rather we have fueled it up to an extent where it will soon be at a point of no return.

With every such under privileged household, kids agree to work to help them run their house, and we are not necessarily talking about very small kids but teens. Working for whom is a matter of having their dinner or not. It is but logical that these teens surrender themselves to work for feeding themselves and their family.

Even though how pitiful people sound about banning teens from working, no one helps them feed their family or give them other better options to help them do so. It is an irony that of all the voices that are raised to ban these kids from working do not come forward to help them financially or prepare these kids for the world.


Lets have a better picture.
Imagine a child, who comes from a unprivileged background, capable of working, in his late teens. Decides to work at a tea stall. He works for a person who looks after him and takes good care of the kid.

On the other hand, we have a kid, 8 years of age, who also happens to act for an advertising agency. He has a busy schedule, right from jumping to school, to coaching, to acting and other activies.

Who do you think is more burdened?
Why do we only think about the kid working in the tea stall and want him to stop working there? Is it only because he is under privileged, more unassuming, more susceptible to being influenced?
He does not have a family that is financially stable?
Is the Other kid not being exploited, even though it gets overshadowed in the glamour?

We have 2 different perspectives of looking at the same problem. It is high time that the ones against it realize that the fight is not against child labour primarily but against the atmosphere and the social evils that surround this devil.

So what do we do?
The solution may lie in identifying these kids most importantly. They can be educated so that they can stand on their feet.

Additionally to aid their financial issues, they could be hired in a safe work place where they can be trained in a skill and also are paid for it. Organizations that come up in helping the cause are given financial support to pay such kids, and these should be registered and inspected from time to time, to see if they are being exploited.

With every solution come new problems but we need to move on for the better.