Exhibition and Child labor

We went to the exhibition last week(11th). Whoever had the idea that having the exhibition on the banks of Cooum would be great idea must be really sick. Probably, Island grounds was a great place 150 years back. But now, it is only an piece of land surrounded by Cooum flowing to its brim in dark black color and a stench to match it. And it is not a great idea to put a blanket on the banks and eat giant appalams anyway. Pollution in Cooum is amazingly uncontrolled and the way everyone walks around taking it for granted is unbelievable. Simple solution: construct a 15 polluted water recycling plants or sewage treatment plants along the baks of cooum in Chennai alone and clean the water and send it into the river again. Simple but difficult to implement. Read here about how NYC treats Hudson and North river sewage using 14 plant. But for a country like US, it took 67 years to proceed from proposal to implementation. So, I dont think I will survive to see the day Cooum will be flowing like a normal river!!

 

Then went to Besant nagar beach this weekend (18th). If the Tamilnadu government is serious enough to implement the child labor laws it should look no further. No, I am not taking about the kids selling sundal or balloons or bajji there. You watch any family with a small kid (1-5 years of age), you will find another kid(always a girl in the 8-14 age range) watching over the kid. This will be true always for families where both the parents are working. Even my neighbor has a small girl to care of their kid. The treatment meted out to these kids vary from bad to worse. And it teaches a kind of class awareness to the kids who also start treating the girls as bosses. These girls always live with the family all the time and are not even allowed to visit their parents or have vacation etc. While the middle class is vociferous about their perks, they don't even have a conscience to treat these girls atleast moderately well. Probably, these people will argue strongly against child labor with these girls around. The lack of compassion and the skewed moral compass of these people is just horrendous. A sound case to describe middle class hypocrisy!!