Kailash Satyarthi: India has hundreds of problems, but millions of solutions! NEW DELHI: Noisy OB vans and an unending caravan of cars: on Friday afternoon, Kalkaji, a middle-class locality in south Delhi, was suddenly abuzz with activity and animation. Its barely an hour since the news flashed on TV screens. But everybody knows that L-6, a slim, unremarkable two-storey building, has become a very famous address. For word has gone around that it is the workstation of child rights crusader Kailash Satyarthi, who has been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Pakistans Malala Yousafzai, the spitfire teenage activist who defied the Taliban. At a time when the chronically sparring neighbours are again trading gunfire on the northern side of the border, leading to over a dozen deaths and causing thousands to flee home, the symbolism and larger meaning of sharing the worlds most coveted prize between the two is not lost on anybody, least of all Satyarthi himself. I know Malala personally and will definitely call to congratulate her. I will tell her that besides our fight for child rights, especially for girls, we must also work for peace in the sub-continent. It is very important that our children are born and live in peace, says the 60-year-old activist, dressed in a sober sand-coloured kurta and standing bare feet, even as frenzied reporters jostle for his attention. Satyarthis association with child rights goes back to his first day in school in Vidisha, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, when as a five-year-old, he witnessed discrimination: a child sitting outside his school working with his cobbler father. I asked my teachers and my headmaster and they said they are poor children but it was not very convincing. One day I went to the boys father and I asked, since all of us were going to school, why didnt he send his son to school? He replied: We are born to work. I could not understand why some people were born to work and some others were born to enjoy life, he says. The incident became a permanent marker in his mind even though he went on to become an engineer. The activist says that even as a student, he wanted to work against child labour but didnt know how. There was no study or legislation against the social evil. Even the agencies of United Nations never took up the cause till the 1980s. The notion of child rights came only in 1989 when the UN convention on the rights of the child was adopted, he says. Later Satyarthi quit his job and started Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO dedicated to rescuing children from bondage and working for their rehab across over 140 countries in the world. His first rescue happened in 1981 at a brick kiln in Sarhind, Punjab. The father of a girl came to us. We were publishing a magazine, Sangharsh Jaari Rahega, and he somehow came to know about it. He had come to publicise his plight but I realised it was not just a matter of writing something. I had to act because it was a matter involving a 13-14 year old girl who was about to be sold to a brothel. When I help a child and look into his eyes, I feel as if he or she is freeing me, he says. It has been an eventful three decades since. Satyarthi was beaten up on several occasions, two of his colleagues killed. But a card-carrying optimist, he has kept the faith. The award might have surprised some but it appears that the Nobel Committee had him on the radar for some time. Reacting to the award, he says, I was born after the death of Mahatma Gandhi. If the prize had gone to Mahatma Gandhi before me I would have been more honoured. This award is for all the citizens of the country. We are happy that the issue of child rights has been recognised globally now. I will continue my work. This is an honour for all my fellow Indians, as well as an honour for all those children in the world whose voices were never heard before properly. Then he adds: India has hundreds of problems, but millions of solutions. Watan ki ret mujhe aediyan ragadne de, mujhe yakeen hai ki paani yahin se niklega. (Let me rub my feet on the sands of my motherland / I know the spring lies somewhere beneath.) How does he intend to celebrate the prize? Not with champagne, he quips. I am a teetotaller. I am waiting for the children to arrive. Congratulations to Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, a true champion in the fight to end child labour. pic.twitter/gP1bG EUwhV— ILO (@ilo) October 10, 2014
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 07:26:23 +0000
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