The shared Nobel Peace Prize 2014 for an Indian, Kailash Satyarthi, a crusader against child labour, is both a feather in India’s cap, as well as a grim reminder of the scourge that persists, largely due to poverty in vast tracts of the country’s hinterland. Satyarthi, 60, shares the prestigious Swedish prize with Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who braved the fundamentalist Taliban’s guns to pursue her education and has become an icon for the crusade for educating girls.
Satyarthi has won various awards since the 1980s, when he founded his organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, and is said to have freed, rehabilitated and educated about 80,000 children from the bondage of child labour in India. He also heads the Global March Against Child Labor, a conglomeration of 2,000 social-purpose organisations and trade unions in 140 countries. A trained engineer, Satyarthi was born in Madhya Pradesh and now lives in Delhi with his family.
In India, use of child labour is rampant even in hazardous factories making bricks, carpets, glass bangles, fireworks, as well as in rice mills, cotton fields and mining in the North East, among others. Satyarthi also founded Rugmark, a labelling organisation that guarantees fair practices and no child labour. He was also active in the widespread movement to make education a Constitutional right for all children, paving the way for an enabling legislation in 2009.
Not just child labour, Satyarthi has also been involved in the crusade against child trafficking and prostitution in India as well as in global forums. A Nobel prize, hopefully, will help re-enforce the global fight against such exploitative practices against children.
In India, as per Census 2011, the number of working children in the age group of 5-14 years has reduced to 43.53 lakh from 1.26 crore in Census 2001, according to Labour Ministry figures. A big chunk of these children are used as cheap labour and have been found to suffer from malnutrition, impaired vision, deformities from sitting long hours in cramped over-crowded work places.