Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi is launching a global initiative with the highest moral authorities of the world — 25 Nobel laureates and world leaders — for the cause of children. It is for the first time that such revered personalities will assemble together on one platform on December 10 to give a clarion call for prioritising the issues of children in global political and social discourse. He shares his ‘child-friendly India’ campaign with RINKU GHOSH
How has the Nobel changed you from the days of the Bachpan Bachao AndolanIJ
Now we have a better office (laughs). But jokes apart, we have much more to do than just field work. We have hired specialised researchers and analysts to process and interpret our findings and statistics and help set the template for the future course of action. Undoubtedly, our grassroots activists and on-ground workers fighting for the dignity and health of each underprivileged child are the real power. But our desk foot soldiers are no less, collating and analysing data in such a manner that we can influence policies, not only nationally but internationally too. What are the loopholes in international policyIJ What could be done not only in India but across the worldIJ For that we needed differently skilled people and hence we extended our office. You will still find me though at my old offices in Kalkaji.
I have not forgotten my moorings. (Introducing Om Prakash, retired GM, NTPC) He was the only friend who trusted me when I gave up my engineering career in 1980 to campaign for child rights. Others laughed at me because those days India did not have engineers by the dozen and it was the decade of the brain drain. After the announcement of the Nobel prize, those same people who had joked about me and had never called me in 30 years, told me “Oh Kailash, do you remember, I was in civil and you were in electrical.” (laughs). But then such is life, you have to be very focussed on and have faith in your chosen path.
Are you going to bring out a vision document, a road map or a charter of solutions with the Nobel laureate and leaders for Children SummitIJ
Well, people are fed up with theoretical discussion, papers and academic knowledge. There is a plethora of rhetoric so there is no use reinventing the wheel. I even have action-based solution models but they are still awaiting practical implementation.
Despite laws and conventions, international treaties and institutions, inter-governmental organisations as well as national institutions, children are still suffering badly. This has never happened before. The world has never been so wealthy as it is today but the world has never given such pain to children ever. In terms of magnitude, there are new ways of exploiting and abusing children and denying them their rights. For example, hundreds and thousands of children are forced to lose their limbs, families and homelands and become refugees. The world’s greatest humanitarian crisis is of refugee children, who are victims of multiple vulnerabilities. Few months ago there was a shocking report that 9,000 unaccompanied minors in Germany went missing. Most of them were Syrian, some of them were from Iraq and others from North Africa. So they entered European soil, traversed Austria, entered Germany and suddenly went missing. Similarly, about 6,000 children from Italy went missing. Interpol suspects that these children must have been trafficked by some organised crime network for slavery, prostitution or raising terrorist militia. Over the last few years, the largest number of young people have been brainwashed and many of them have become terrorists or suicide bombers. The average age is 16; boys and girls are killing themselves to kill others.
Also, children are the worst sufferers of natural disasters, which are becoming more frequent due to global warming and climate change. Many young girls, who were victims of the Nepal earthquake, were not only trafficked to Indian but European brothels as well. We found that some of these girls had been trafficked to as far as England. That’s why I say children are the worst sufferers despite all this progress that we have made as a civilisation.
So where are we lackingIJ In my experience, it is moral power. Right from individual rights to political, social and economic ones, collective morality is missing. That’s what propelled me to think of a universal platform where moral leaders from the world could speak in one strong language that enough is enough, our children need to be protected now from violence, prejudice and exploitative systems.
Then the Nobel Peace prize boosted my efforts for it was the first time the Peace prize recognised the right of the child to a healthy society. Over the last two years, I got several occasions to interact with laureates of different disciplines and was able to coalesce a common dream of creating a sustainable future for our children.
How did you manage to get them together for a common causeIJ
I was lucky enough to meet them for different occasions, be it global warming, disaster management and so on. I used every encounter to prioritise child issues. Wherever I went, whatever the subject of discussion, I spoke only about children. It was then that I realised that many of the science laureates, economists and litterateurs did not even know that child slavery existed in the modern world. They were shocked by figures that 168 million children were working as child labour. Out of them, five and a half million, according to UN statistics, are literally slaves or bonded labour in the agricultural sector, mining, quarrying and small-scale industries. Domestic child labour is a serious problem in most fast-growing economies, including India, Brazil and South Africa. The fishing industry is another exploitative mechanism. Though South Asia and West Africa are the hub of these practices, I came across bonded child labourers in USA whom we are helping free themselves. There are children who are trafficked from latin American countries. Cambodia, Thailand and Philippines are known for child prostitution.
Presented with facts, most Nobel laureates expressed their willingness to take up the issues of child rights in their own way, maybe use the knowledge of their discipline too. In all our meetings, I told them that while their intellectual power had bettered human lives, from polio eradication to technology, they had eventually benefitted corporations. Their moral authority, power and outreach had not been properly harnessed for the cause of the most vulnerable section of the society — children. That was a trigger.
Similarly, I realised that a large number of world leaders like former Presidents, Prime Ministers and their wives as well as royalty were doing a lot of work, charity mostly, but nothing in the direction which could bring about systemic change in the society and in the world. I tapped into their compassion for children.
Some big economists, those who have drafted millennial and sustainable development goals, engaged in child-specific discussions and debated coordinated actionable plans, like what we can do together. It was then that I proposed this idea of a laureate and leaders’ summit for children. About 34 laureates showed interest, 14 of whom are visiting India. The first edition will be in India and keep on rolling across countries along with ongoing activities born out of putting heads together.
I call it a movement, a movement for globalisation of compassion. A globalised economy is a powerful tide that has pulled everybody along. But when we talk about India, it has its own set of deep-rooted values and systems. So let us just dig out one value and that value or virtue could be transformed into a social movement that is compassion. Gandhiji took up seemingly simple issues like ahimsa (non-violence) and satya (truth). People then thought these were ideals best taught in temples and not tangible or workable in the real world. But he was able to build a social movement out of it. Similarly, we also have to create a worldwide social movement around compassion because it is a wealth which everybody in the world has. We are born with that. So all we’ve got to do is break the shells of ego and selfishness in order to unlock our compassion and see what kind of world we make for our children.
To what extent will demonetisation in India have an impact on child traffickingIJ
It is a lesser known fact that human trafficking and child labour are among the largest sources of black money. I have come across innumerable incidents where the agent or middleman earned at least Rs 5,000 for the placement of young boys as bonded labour and in cases of girls sold for prostitution and child marriages, this amount was around Rs 2 lakh.
Every single rupee earned by the traffickers and slave masters is black money. This move will break their backbone. According to a study conducted by Global March against Child labour, Rs 21 lakh crore is generated by enslaving young girls in brothels. Another study conducted by Bachpan Bachao Andolan reveals huge sums of money which are blatantly stolen in the name of wages paid to child labourers. Take, for instance, the government estimate of child labour in India — 43 lakh children, who are to be paid around Rs 250 each every day. In reality though, these children will receive around Rs 50 only. That is Rs 200 stolen per child, per day, every day. And these are just the government figures. Non-government studies claim the black market to be much stronger.
Anything specific to India that you have worked on which can be a solution-based model for the government, private citizens or civil societyIJ
There is no dearth of solutions or solution-based models across the world. In some cases, the government took it up, like in Brazil some years ago, where it introduced a conditional cash transfer programme for mothers. It entailed transferring $80 to their bank accounts provided they sent their children to school. This led to empowerment of the mothers on the condition that their children attend school on a regular basis. Similarly, in India the mid-day meal programme, despite its corruption-driven faulty implementation in parts, has been largely successful. Social protection programmes like MNREGA have helped a lot.
I have proposed that all these programmes be coordinated in such a manner that parents can be given work only when they send their children to schools. So children can attend schools and be weaned off from workplaces while compliant parents would be preferred for MNREGA schemes.
My own experiments relate to creating child-friendly villages, which we began in India and have replicated in Nepal, Uganda and Peru. We have about 500 child-friendly villages in India now. I started with villages because that is where children are exploited in the farm sector and allied activities and trafficked to big cities as cheap labour and helps. A child-friendly village is one where children are free from exploitation or abuses, be it child labour, child marriages, trafficking and child sexual abuse. Second, all the children must be attending schools, irrespective of caste or community. Third, all village children must form their own representative body or bal panchayat, a bottom-up structure to build a culture of democracy rather than a top-down approach. This instills democratic values right from their childhood. And democracy is not a system of government, it’s a culture. So children must learn that. Fourth, village panchayats have to recognise and work with bal panchayats to make policies that enable a healthy generation next.
This is such an innovative model that children not only learn, they speak and interact directly with the powers that be and argue cogently for diverting resources in their direction in a need-based manner. It was only through this experiment that we found out that 90 per cent school dropouts in villages was because of the absence of a separate toilet for girls and safe drinking water. This was much before the toilet-building revolution or the Swachh Bharat mission. So we had already constructed more than 400 toilets in these villages. And for a country that is often blasted for being gender-insensitive, it was the boys who made toilets for girls a key plank of their election manifesto before they were elected to the bal panchayat. The other demands were for a library and ensuring the mid-day meal that did not compromise on quality and quantity. When the children themselves became their own leaders, it was impossible for policy-makers to overlook their concerns.
Do you think that our national child policies need any upgrade, amendment or recastIJ What needs to be done in India’s contextIJ
I have asked the Prime Minister to launch a campaign for a child-friendly India in much the same manner as the other campaigns. I would want it to be linked with the Swachh Bharat and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao drives. It should even be linked to Make In India, making it mandatory for investors to adhere to some of the fundamental values of protecting child rights as well as ensure ethical labour practices.
Coming back to your point, the most important aspect is to prioritise children in budgetary allocations. We are all proud of being one of the youngest nations. And what is our demographic dividendIJ Forty per cent of our population is below the age of 14. But it is shocking that we spend only four per cent of the GDP for their education, health and protection. What else could be more inappropriateIJ Our education and health spends show that children are not our priority.
let us begin with investing in our future generation. And this is not about the government but about our social will. Sure there is lack of political will but equally alarming is our social will to deal with our children impartially. We can do everything and anything for those born to us but when it comes to the mistreatment of other children, we just choose to look the other way. We don’t raise a bogey, we don’t stop hiring teenager maids, thinking they must be capable considering they have attained puberty. Yet they are the most vulnerable physically.
I have also been talking to faith leaders across borders to propagate child rights as part of their core teachings. Each of our faith leaders has a huge following, is heard with seriousness and earns huge money from donations. But you will hardly find them uttering a single sentence for children. I have never heard any faith leader of merit saying that anybody who violates the dignity of a girl or child would not be considered a part of his said religion. They talk for hours but never talk about child rights or ostracising their abusers. A social worker or NGO organising an awareness camp in a village would not have as much impact as when a religious leader posits himself/herself as the protector of children. It would seem like a moral duty rather than moral bankruptcy.
let’s face it, a lot of activism in India is also under the scanner for being motivated or being funded for a specific objective. How does this affect your operationsIJ
I think activists, NGO and civil society organisations represent the same society as politicians and business houses do. So there are bound to be manipulative errants. In the end, it is a matter of national character. Some of the small, unacknowledged organisations working at the grassroots are so genuine and hard-working. Husbands and wives have given up lucrative jobs and are even raising their children in remote pockets in an attempt to mainstream India’s future generations. People are working ceaselessly to change society and it would be unfair to generalise their efforts. In fact, genuine efforts may get swamped but are the reason that I go on.
looking at the larger picture, I would say that both in India and the world, the state was largely looked up to as the protector of human rights and development about 20 years ago. The state was expected to execute and implement schemes and allocate funds for them. We, the civil society, were fighting for a space at UN meetings to deliberate on child rights, poverty alleviation, ecological issues and global warming.That discourse has changed. The change is evident when you compare the charters for millennium development and sustainable development goals. In the first, civil society was sitting on the fringes, giving inputs to government and inter-governmental agencies. It deepened and broadened in the latter. Then the corporates came in, not directly but indirectly through the World Economic Forum. The Director-General of WEF was part of a high-level group on education.
Today, for any institutional mechanism and flagship programme, we have strong representation of the civil society and corporates beside the state and inter-governmental organisations. Human rights were supposed to be a very exclusive portfolio of the government because they had to deal with the laws and constitution and so on. But now the corporates and civil societies are being counted in. Hence, a tussle of perception ensues.
Don’t you think too much of corporate involvement could cause tweaking of priorities from the development perspectiveIJ
The meaning of corporate social responsibility or CSR has been so narrowed down that it’s normally perceived as some philanthropic activity and utilising two per cent of your budget. Some countries have no CSR mandate at all. CSR cannot be seen as a transference of guilt. You cannot exploit resources, water and people in the geographical area of your operation and set up schools and charitable projects elsewhere. True CSR is when you respect the people and planet where your operations are.
Have more corporates come to you after your Nobel winIJ
As a matter of fact, there are fewer corporates for our initiatives. Most of them invest their money in flagship programmes run by the Government. Some of them even put a large amount of money in some of the very conventional efforts for children’s education.
Finally, what are the challenges that need urgent redress in the context of children in IndiaIJ
First of all, we should listen to our children, really listen to them. There should be a whole paradigm shift in our mindset. We keep imposing our ambitions, thinking and goals on them. Instead we should acknowledge their purity, simplicity and transparency. We should establish a different kind of relationship with our children which is beyond adoring and simply loving them. It should be a bond of friendship. Second, we should educate them not for the sake of material sustenance but to strengthen human values and culture. Third, we have to create institutions, mechanisms and a culture of accountability. Fourth, we need an independent body for child welfare. The existing institutions come under various ministries. So they don’t have the moral authority because they themselves are accountable for their work to the ministers or bureaucrats and not to the children. The fourth challenge is budget re-allocation. We have to prioritise our children’s education, healthcare and protection.
lastly, we should have a more holistic approach. There is so much fragmentation between and among departments dealing with one child issue. We should have more coordinated inter-departmental or inter ministerial segments on the policy level as well as practice modules.
The most imminent danger is from cyber space, which is being manipulated and misused to a large extent. School- going kids fall into mischief-makers’ trap very easily. Girls are exploited to an extent where they even contemplate suicide. And the social taboo is so deep-rooted that the children don’t even share these things at their home with their elders. These are some of the very serious problems which children have never faced before. And the less privileged ones have a greater chance of being victimised. So this is why we are going to come out with a strong moral call.
Photo: Pankaj Kumar