HUMAN HORSES

Did you know that the ‘hand-pulled rickshaw’ was designed in the year 1870.A light wooden cart with large wheels probably for the royal people.It was in 1914 that the hand-pulled rickshaws was launched in Kolkata, most of them are Biharies migrants on the busy city streets.Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya announced a ban on these meaningless and degrading means of livelihood. Will this solve the problem? There are around 25000 'human horses' who runs on the streets of Kolkata.After all, isn’t it time that the human horses experience real freedom…58 years after the British rulers left Indian shores? It is not only the fact that these men carry other human beings for earning a few rupees, in the process they lend their bodies to unnatural forms of exploitation. Kolkata -- most densly populated city of india -- experience enough toxicgas and pollutants to choke the lungs of these rickshaw pullers who compete with buses, trams, cars, and scooters for their placeon the streets. The chief minister plans to bring in cycle-rickshaws or motorized auto-rickshaws in place of the hand-pulled variant. Along with the uneasy inequity of man pulling man, these rickshaws today, deserve a place in the Calcutta Museum, not on the roads.After all, isn’t it time that the human horses experience real freedom…58 years after the British rulers left Indian shores?

In The Chains Of Slavery

"Shame upon such crimes! Shame upon us if we do not raise our voices against them!" Samuel Gompers, U.S. labor activist, 1881

With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families as well. They do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest skills of literacy. Many of them have been working since the age of four or five, and by the time they reach adulthood they will certainly be exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead by fifty.

Most or all of these children are working under some form of compulsion, whether from their parents, from the expectations attached to their caste, or from simple economic necessity. According to latest servey, at least fifteen million of them, however, are working as virtual slaves. These are the bonded child labourers of India. "Bonded child labour" refers to the phenomenon of children working in worst conditions in order to pay off a debt. The debt that binds them to their employer is incurred not by the children themselves, but by their relatives or guardians-usually by a parent. The children who are sold to these bond masters work long hours over many years in an attempt to pay off these debts.

Why does Indian government, the ruling elite, the business interests as a whole-tolerate this slavery in its midst? Bonded labour and child labour in India are inevitable. They are caused by poverty, it is not possible to change them by force.The government of India should demonstrate its commitment to the eradication of bonded child labour by implementing the effective programmes.

Welfare Of The Society

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