Saturday, March 27, 2010

Child labour (Slumdog Millionaire)

Slumdog Millionaire- Child labour
The show, Slumdog Millionaire, is set in India and the story is told through a teenage boy, Jamal Malik’s childhood. Through his various encounters as he lived his younger days on the run, the show tells us some of the happenings in India, a lot of which focuses on child labour. (Of course, in a site quoting Danny Boyle, the director said that “Slumdog Millionaire is not a documentary”; thus, we should take what we see on the show with a pinch of salt.)
The villain of the show is Maman, a gangster who tricks children into being beggars on the pretense of providing for them and teaching them to sing before blinding them to beg on the streets of Bombay. The boys are subject to a cruel fate as this, but Latika, with fairly good looks, is made to be an entertainer, as Maman says that she would fetch a high price. The children have no choice, particularly because they do not have anywhere else to turn to for food except Maman. Jamal, however, escapes this fate because Salim, Jamal’s brother, had seen the ultimate motives of Maman and thus escaped with Jamal to prevent themselves from being blind.
Child labour is still rampant nowadays because firstly, it is cheap in the sense that the children are forced into compliance to accept low pay and appalling conditions. Nike has been exploiting child labour. From the UNICEF website*, it says that “An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.” This is unfair on the children’s part, because they are resigned to this life not of their own accord, but of their poverty and inability to get a decent education. As such, since there is so much poverty in the world, this is reality.
In the slums, as they call it, the boy Jamal chances upon an old friend he knew when he was still under Maman’s clutches when he was in search of Latika. Up till years later, the child who was unfortunately blinded by Maman was still begging on the streets. Children who are forced to be labourers must work all day, and the pay is infinitesimal. However, since education is the only way out of poverty, and these children do not have the rights to it, they can only turn to these exploiters.
Though many see it as a violation of fundamental rights, these people who practice it believe that they are not only giving these children a life, they are merely using them for work only. There is no abuse. However, in the show we already see examples where Salim gangs up against the children to give them fear so that they obey. Life without freedom is worse than death. Child labour can only stop through efforts to give children schooling.
Thus, through a simple movie we see that child labour is prevalent in India. We must understand that the children do not have a choice. It is the vicious cycle of poverty that forces these children to give in to torture.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

B.B

Not sure if you have read the story, but B.B is about a strange infidel father who hardly stays at home. It is a little vague if B.B is male or female, but I am guessing that it is a female. A part in the story which says the urgent tone of a girl and the common indirect expression of feelings in the story shows that she might be a girl.