Ah, Just to Get Some Attention..!

Looking around our so-called Zogam (rather rough, isn’t it), it is simply evident that we caught ourselves in an isolated island where the theory of evolution fit us to the hilt. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is the war cry, and naturally, while the poor risked their head and tooth in digging out wild roots, fruits and leaves for their daily survival, the richer and fitter class come, straight facedly cheated and shamelessly snatched them away.

Even though every square metre of our land is infested with Churches, the absence of morality and ethics seems to make them nothing but a fraud, and indeed, they are. It seems like we have a chronic diseases that will never heal again. The people, who needed the prescription didn’t realize that they really are sick, and even those who realize their sickness, are helpless without any help insight. On the other hand, those who are capable of making a prescription are too busy chasing scholarship money, or prefer to live outside, lest they will be infected as well.

So, hey how about a blind man leading another blind man? The only thing is, we just have to trust each other, hold our hands and be ready to fall down the drain, in case we fall down the drain. Here are a few suggestions from a blind man for the blind men on how to overcome the vicious circle of trouble that we caught ourselves in.

• Insurgency is often cited by the government as an alibi for not doing any developmental work, but isn’t it rather the outcome of it. Well, till now we flocked towards the government since it pay us more than the insurgent groups, why don’t we threaten the government that we will flock towards and give full moral and physical support to the insurgents, don’t you think that will at least force them to take a little notice provided we beat the drums loud enough to reach the mainland media?

• Give a toy gun to everyone, from grandmother to granddaughter and take picture of ourselves and put them up in youtube, blogspot, wordpress, facebook, orkut, myspace, flickr, etc like it is the actual ground situation and try to get some international attention.

• Apparently the butch of women protesting naked in front of the Kangla Fort had stirred worldwide attention, why don’t we think more on that front to get some ‘official attention’ (of course, to our situation, Idiot!). (The men can also do, there are quite a number of influential gay men especially in the west).

• Some of us in Delhi can get arrested while plotting to kidnap the Prime Minister (or better still, Sonia Gandhi) and said desperation forced us to do this, i.e. to get national media attention.

• Why don’t we all go back to the jungle, i.e. to the wild with lion cloths and no sign of settlement? We will at least catch the attention of some anthropologist and well, environment conservators as well as social activist.

• Talking of conservators, why don’t we all become green i.e. vegetarian and environmentally friendly, etc., and write to all the major newspaper of the world crusading as if we were Chief Seathl’s children, and we can ask the PETA and the Green Peace to adopt us.

• In the other extreme, we can shout to the world that we eat Dog’s Meat –at least we will get the attention of the PETA and Bridgette Bardot.

• The most practical one, and seriously, is to join the Marxist. Marxist have the best grass-root level organization, and gosh, since we won’t be able to climb to the leadership level or as they said, the politburo level, it might just suit us fine. And with the excuse of capitalism, we can lynch all those corrupt officials getting damned rich with bribe money, and the best part, we will have the like of the Karats and Yechurys standing up on our behalf in the Parliament and justifying all our actions.

• Talking of bribe, why don’t we do more of what we have been doing all this year to get us into the World's Most Corrupt State? After facing so many hardships because of this, it’s disappointing to still not make it to the list! Come on guys, this is our speciality!

• Let’s do ’97 again… Oh! No-no-no not again! Sorry I started this… My Sincere Apologies… (Even thought the attentions Darfur get and the Celebrities involved in are something… Blah! Never Again. Sorry, my Sincere Apologies –once again…).

Okay, now I said ‘blind man leading another blind man’, so if you are offended by what I wrote, which is not intended at all, I want you to know that you’re not blind –and that you are reading something that isn’t for you. Anyway, thanks for reading…

No Pun Intended!
No Harm Intended!
No Offence Intended!

A Thought on Anti-Child Labour Day

Today (June 12th) is World Day against Child Labour (as recognized by the UN), but for most of the child labourers around the world, it’s just another working day while the social activists continued debating on the definition of Child Labour. The definition of child Labour vary from country to country, but generally speaking, Child Labour means any work that harms or exploits the child in some way (physically, mentally, morally, or by blocking access to education).

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimation in 2000, around ‘246 million child workers aged 5 and 17 were involved in child labour, of which 171 million were involved in work that by its nature is hazardous to their safety, physical or mental health, and moral development. Moreover, some 8.4 million children were engaged in so-called 'unconditional' worst forms of child labour, which include forced and bonded labour, the use of children in armed conflict, trafficking in children and commercial sexual exploitation’.

The ILO has estimated that 218 million children between the ages of five and seventeen work in developing countries. Of these, 122.3 million children work in the Asia-Pacific region, 49.3 million work in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 5.7 million work in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In India the Government banned the employment of children below the age of fourteen years in factories, mines and hazardous sector, and regulates the working conditions of children in other employment. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 seeks to achieve its basic objective. But the act does nothing to protect children who perform domestic or unreported labor, which is very common in India. In almost all Indian industries, girls are unrecognized laborers because they are seen as helpers and not workers.

Child labour should definitely be condemned but somehow, there should also be room enough for the child to make his/her own choices. In my opinion, prohibiting people under a certain age limits not only discriminate, but also violates his/her human rights, it reduced the child’s options and leave him/her at the mercy of those with money.

One of the inherent causes of child labour is parental poverty. And more often than not, the child is happy to contribute his/her share at the dinning table. When I was young, every Saturday, my mother would drag me to the paddy field. I hardly was capable of doing anything except fetch water, but looking back now, I am glad she did that. Those few things that I learned at that time were the few things I knew about farming. I am glad that I contributed my share instead of whiling the time away in the village.

I once read about a butch of inspired youths rescuing some child labourer and leave them at the police station, leaving the police totally helpless not knowing what to do with the children. Yesterday, British clothing retailer Primark axed three Indian suppliers for sub-contracting works to child labourer. And last year, fashion house Gaps banned a certain export house because of employing underage worker. Such actions and/or boycott may make senses but also have long-term consequences and actually harm rather than help the children.

For instances, a UNICEF study found that 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the United States banned that country's carpet exports in the 1990s. Also, after the US introduced the Child Labour Deterrence Act, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh, leaving many to resort to much more dangerous and exploitative job.

Child labour is present universally. But it is mainly rampant in the developing countries because of widespread poverty. The quickest solutions is for the government to enforce the anti-child labour laws along with compulsory education laws together, while making the education system more widespread, affordable and relevant while increasing the income level of the parents enough to compensate the child’s earning potential.

It is the dream of every child to go to a good school and have no work to do, but any thoughtful child is equally happy to contribute his share to the family meagre income, so the government must take the child labourers on-board to construct a solution for the problem. Ensuring that all children go to school and that their education is of good quality are keys to preventing child labour.

Behiang Bus Accident: Who to blame..?

Yesterday afternoon, as I sat down to write a post for my blog I get a phone call telling me there’s yet another road mishap near Behiang. This is the fourth time, and the second most fatal accident that happened in this stretch of 25 km road between Behiang and Singngat since December 2006, when I happened to be one of the victims.

Yesterday’s accident take place not more than half a kilometre from Behiang while the bus was on its way to the border village, allegedly when its tyre punctured and the driver lost control. 4 people died and 36 were injured, some of them are in a very critical condition. The injured were taken to District Hospital by the Indian Army posted in Behiang.

It may be recalled that in January 17 this year altogether 23 passengers died and 32 were injured in an accident not very far from Behiang after the over loaded truck in which they travelled fell into the Ngasuan Creek while attempting to cross a wooden bridge. That accident is still very much fresh in the mind of the villagers around the area since they had never seen such magnitude of tragedy, and not only that, because some of the victims are crippled for life and some yet to recuperate even to this day.

This accident is a double insult to the victims of the truck accident, the people of Behiang and its area, and to the Zo Tribals living in the area. After the January accident, we expected the Authorities to learn their lessons and swing into action, but instead, nothing was learned, nothing was done, and above all, they did the most insulting things by pocketing a certain percentage of the Compensation meant for the Death Victims!

I’m speechless even when I think about it. How ruthless, how horrible and how disgusting we have become! And after the second accident of this year causing the life of 27 people and the livelihood of hundreds, I’m furious…

Are we allowed to point fingers? Yes, indeedy, I shall-

• First, the MLA should resign for neglecting his constituency and not learning his lessons even after the worst road mishap in the history of Churachandpur district happened right under his nose just 4 months ago.
• The Transport Minister, the Social Welfare Minister and the Tribal Development Minister should also take equal blame for not doing their part and thus making such accidents a normal situation.
• The Chief Minister and the whole of the Congress led government for allowing millions of money being drained away for a road project that only fattened some contractors.
• And yes, the alcoholic Chief of Behiang should also take responsibility. As a chief who collected taxes, she is responsible for the welfare of her people. She could have done something.
• The Contractor who take large amount of money to build the road, and the PWD workers who took salary to maintain the road but are living somewhere in Lamka, they all should be publicly lynched.
• The driver and owner of the Bus should be held for Homicide for intentionally putting their bus first and not the safety of their passengers.

The CJM of Churachandpur should take a suo moto cognizance of the issue, because, if the problem was not taken care of immediately, an accident a day will become a daily issue. And, for a change, why doesn’t any one of us file an FIR with the police, or a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) on behalf of the public? Hopefully some sort of rationality must still exist with our judiciary system.

This is the rudest wake-up call for the Authorities, hopefully they wake up… hopefully they will do something to make up for failing us all, time and again.

India - Cricket - Racism

The Gentlemen Sports of Cricket is at it once again. After the whole of mainland Indian vehemently defended Harbhajan Singh in the ‘that-could-never-happened’ incident in Australia, two coloured cheer-leaders hired by an IPL team’s event management group alleged that they had been told to leave the ground because they had the ‘wrong skin colour’.

If that shocking attitude was not ranked as racism, what does? Mainland Indians, who want to think themselves as pariah during the British rule, often mistake themselves to be in the forefront of war against racism. Not only that, people often think of India as a multi-religious, multi-cultural, racially tolerant country. That is not so true.

Mainland Indians’ anti-racist gestures come out of the woodwork only when they perceived themselves as the target, or if it happened in the west. Just take a look at the Shilpa Shetty’s or the Lakshmi Mittal’s issues.

They stereotyped themselves only as possible victim that they forget to look home and notice that they are ruthless perpetrator themselves. If you don’t understand what I meant, you don’t have to look further than the 10 pages of matrimonial advertisements coming with your newspaper every morning.

Mainland Indian should know that what they often ‘pass-off’ as casteism, regionalism, class-ism, etc, are prejudicial and discriminatory by nature. Around the world, people think India is coming off age, but it won’t unless it learned to take discrimination, casteism and racism as a threat and not minor issues to be conveniently swept under the carpet.