Have you heard about United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Children (UNCRC)? Do you know what fundamental rights every child is born with? Have you ever come across a child working in a household, or an eatery or a shop, and you did something to fix that? If you answered ‘No’ to all the three questions above, you fall in the majority of Indians who are vaguely aware of the issue of Child Labor’ but are passive towards it. It’s about time this attitude is changed.
The first step in that direction was on 6
th August, 2014 when the Talent and Organizational Management SIG of IIM Calcutta, in collaboration with Child Rights and You (CRY) brought to the campus, Click Rights ’14, an exhibition of photographs on child labor and harassment by eminent photographers, CRY volunteers and underprivileged children themselves. All the photographs, a total 40 of them, were around the central theme of fighting against child labor. One photograph portrayed a child bride, taken by her friend who is a school dropout and works to provide for her family. Another showed a child who helps out his father, along with his brother, at his cloth shop while his brother shot the picture and shared his dreams of becoming a cricketer when he grows up, with us.
Some of the photographs had captured images and depicted lines so poignant that they made us stop and think about where we are going wrong. Is it okay to punish a parent who is forced to send his children to work because there is no other way they can survive? Why are so many teenage boys seen working in roadside eateries which many of us frequent but never notice? There was also an impromptu competition where one had to answer just two questions, each in only one word. Why do you think child labor exists? What can be done to prevent child labor? Such a simple question, yet it made us ponder and reflect on issues which we see regularly but subconsciously ignore. The whole event brought out the message that if only we stop to think and care to change, truly, only then can we bring about a change in the society. This wonderful initiative from TOM was definitely an eye opener and the first step towards creating a better life for the children.