A children-the pure form of love, truth, honesty, and innocence, these are the same characteristics that a child has. We love the impeccable soul of the child and fan of their adorability. In India, people call out small children as the subform of God because they are as pure as the soul of god.
But if we came into reality and have a view around ourselves, those impeccable and adorable kids are facing the harsh period of their life. Means they have started their beautiful journey of life just some years back and now after a few years they are actually going through the worst period of their life, they are working in hotels, chemical factories, explosive factories, small cafes or restaurants, polish shoes and like so many works in the society. This is such a horrible view to look around those little hands are actually washing plates, carry heavy luggage, polish dirty shoes, washing a big car with their tiny arms. This scene is so horrible and none of our parents wants their child to live this kind of life. From here a question arises in mind that Is child labor an offense or compulsion?
Who defines child labor better -illiteracy or poverty? If we think over this doesn’t seem hard to find out that everything has overpowered or dominated under poverty. Poverty is the main reason that aftermaths the uneducated, child labor, begging, and sometimes thievery also.
I know that child labor is an offense and no one is allowed to hire a child for the work but instead of legal actions for child labor, you can easily see that children are working outside for just a small amount of money. Legal authorities not taking worthy actions for removing it from society and I want to mention here that it is also not possible to remove child labor from society because some children are not working in the hotels to earn some money but they are compelled to do this. Let me elaborate on this point through a small example.
Suppose there is a family of three members -Mother, Father, and son. They belong to a poor family and the father works in an acid factory and the mother works as daily basis labor on construction work. The child loves to study and their parents work hard to fulfill the dreams of their son but one day an accident happened with the mother and she results from a fractured leg and recommended staying in the bed for the next 3 months this results in stress between the father and son. The stress overcome into a big hunk and father lost his eyes during an acid explosion accident. Now only one is left in good condition and that is the son. Here a small child has to survive and he also has to take care of their sick parents now in this case they left up with two options either all they commit suicide or struggle to survive.
The child chooses to survive and take care of their parents, where he is compelled to do anything which can fulfill their basic needs. The work whatever he is doing now to survive is actually come under child labor but is this a crime to do work as he’s not left with any other option.
Therefore there is a big difference between “Baal mazdoori or Baal majboori“(child labor or child compulsion). For passing the test of life sometimes you have to struggle with our own fate. Every term has its two perspectives not only negative one should be highlighted each time.