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THE relatively muted and ambivalent reaction to the announcement that Kailash Satyarthi, child rights activist and founder of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for 2014 is more than intriguing; it is disturbing. True, it is not uncommon for Indian social activists to win international plaudits and awards. Dozens earlier have won the Magsaysay Award or the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the alternative Nobel. But never before has an Indian national, unless of course we appropriate the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa as our own, been the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

International recognition to a fellow national, and it rarely matters for what, usually gives rise to immense pride, often bordering on hysteria. Just recollect the hoopla when Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai were crowned at the Miss World and Universe pageants. Or when the Indian cricket team won the World Cup. Even Amartya Sen on winning the Nobel Prize for Economics generated greater pride and media coverage, though it is likely that few outside his profession actually understood the significance of his contributions. Nor did anyone carp over the fact that for over four decades he had been working in western institutions. Why, we even claimed Vidia Naipaul as our own when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, conveniently equating PIO (people of Indian origin) with Indian, disregarding the fact that his forefathers were forced to emigrate as indentured labour to the Caribbean.

So why the cold shoulder to Satyarthi? Is it that in contemporary India, individuals like Satyarthi, whose work foregrounds the seamy underside of our society and culture, are an uncomfortable reminder of all that is wrong with us, of the persistence of a past that we would like to believe is no longer our present. Worse, their mode of campaigning is ‘too in the face’, forcing us to confront both our inadequacies and complicity in the continuation of the malaise. In other circumstances, they could have been ignored as well meaning do-gooders, episodically praised for their altruism and then happily forgotten. But now, as recipients of prestigious international awards, the pressure to engage with and respond to their concerns may become more difficult to resist.

Issues related to child labour have long generated ambivalent responses in India. Both policy makers and thought leaders are loath to look at and treat child labour as unacceptable. The argument advanced invariably foregrounds the contingent – we are a poor country; children’s earnings help the family to survive; the situation will improve as we develop and become richer, and so on. In the poverty-child labour equation, the stress is always on poverty as the cause, rarely acknowledging that children forced to work for a pittance can never escape poverty. The employment of children at home is explained as charity; in artisanal families as inter-generational transfer of skills. Over the three decades plus since Myron Weiner wrote The Child and State in India, the arguments have not changed; nor, unfortunately, the laws or their implementation.

The rubbishing of child labour activists gains intensity when the issue is sought to be internationalized. It is claimed that these activists are not just ‘harming’ the survival prospects of children and their families, or placing child labour-intense industries/enterprises like carpet making or brassware, under undue pressure and thereby adding to unemployment, but also besmirching the image of the country. Evidently opening up and exposing what is sought to be classified as ‘internal matters’ is more easily branded as anti-national. We are reminded of the role of Kailash Satyarthi in the ‘Rugmark’ initiative, which soon acquired the status of necessary certification if a product was to be classified as child labour free. Unsurprisingly, this negatively impacted many Indian industries. Unfortunately, instead of being welcomed as a worthwhile effort against a social evil, one forcing our industry to explore alternative routes to competitiveness, such initiatives are seen as part of a larger conspiracy by the western countries to alter international norms so as to damage the competitive advantage of developing nations.

There is no gainsaying that the Peace Prize is inherently political, reflective of the contingent concerns and ideological make up of the Norwegian Parliament. But to read into their current choice a ‘conspiracy’ to shame and ‘put us in place’ as a country still beset with problems that the ‘advanced world’ has put behind it, is only to expose our collective insecurities. For ‘achche din’ to be truly with us, we should instead use this opportunity to strengthen the fledgling effort of child right activists and eliminate this scourge. Surely an elite which can embrace a Swatch Bharat campaign can also take up the cause of our neglected and exploited children.

Harsh Sethi

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