SPORTS GAMBLING AND CRICKET
An old adage says it all “cricket is a gentleman’s game”, but my question to you all is, is it so? The reply would definitely vary in proportion to our perception. These days there exists a of hullabaloo over the hosting of a cricket match especially in the case of one-day international matches. And why not, apart from tourism and other sources of revenue accruals, it lets the evil of gambling in sports flourish as well. The work is delegated through different channels and sub-channels known as bookies.
The bookies play their bet on the cricketing stars. The leave no stone unturned to amass wealth and property from the once restricted game of the nobles. Cricket has now turned in to a commercialized sport where lots of money is pumped in for the sake of the game and not for its spirit. The movie JANNAT explains it all, that right from the Panwallah of the roadside joint to the to-notch manager of MNCs everybody is frantic about not the game but the huge opportunity of earning money through betting and other forms of gambling in sports. It has become a cricket frenzy society wherein the game, the players, the bookies all have become puppets controlled by the huge amount of money.
Match fixing is however a common practice being followed: our neighbours have left no stone unturned.
CHILD LABOUR IN INDIA
“Children are the future of the country,” says Dr Kalam, our President .should the future of India be allowed to come to harm? Harm, Experts say, is any damage occurring to a child’s Physical or mental state from working in factories or industries that are not fit for their tiny torsos and little strengths.
There are various factories where the pernicious work conditions adversely affect the employees, especially the little children, Carpet making, bidi making, lock industry, glassware industry, brassware and leather industries are some such industries. They not only require children to remain seated in a particular posture for long hours which harm them physically , but also discharge such harmful substance which are capable of causing diseases like tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma, breathlessness and pneumonia.
Apart from these physical dangers, there are also some mental and cognitive detriments occurring to them. When a child gets engaged into routine monotonousness, his creativity suffers and the mind fails to bloom to its full potential. The thinking capacities then limit themselves to determinable bounds. Also the daily hard work leaves them with inadequate time to educate themselves. The importance of education cannot be undermined.
The situation of child laborers in India is desperate. Children work for eight hours at a stretch with only a small break for meals. The meals are also frugal and the children are ill nourished. Most of the migrant children, who cannot go home, sleep at their work place, which is very bad for their health and development. Seventy five percent of Indian population still resides in rural areas and are very poor. Children in rural families who are ailing with poverty perceive their children as an income generating resource to supplement the family income. Parents sacrifice their children’s education to the growing needs of their younger siblings in such families and view them as wage earners for the entire clan.
Worse still are the abuses, corporal and sexual. “Children are manhandled and beaten up violently by their employers for their slightest flaws,” says a report by the human rights watch. The report further talk of the sexual abuses that the children suffer from their employers. Such forms of exploitation are very prevalent in the domestic and hospitality sectors (example, children working as domestic help). And it is because of this, that there have been some amendments in the law to prohibit the employment of children below fourteen years of age as domestic help.
The Government of India, since 1986 has been trying to prohibit child labour and it is to this end that the child Labour (prohibition) Act has been passed. The act mentions those sectors where the employment of child labourers (that is, children below fifteen years of age) has been made illegal.
Such sectors are termed as hazardous. Here child labour is banned. Even so it needs to be mentioned that the Act rather than prohibiting child labour, aims more at its regulation in various sectors, banning it only in sectors termed by the Law as “hazardous”. However, the implementation of the law lingers. The laws are made and they are there, but they suffer the want of implementation.
“Too much of analysis,” they say “leads to paralysis.’ And these laws making committees analyse, and analyse so much that the goal of such analysis, that is, eradicating child labour, never gets fulfilled. The means of achievement are considered as ends in themselves.
Of late UNICEF and Human Rights watch have been keeping a close watch on child labour in India. These have been pressurizing India to adopt strict measures for the implementation of the Act.
They also suggest the minimum age to be made to fifteen years instead of fourteen years as it now is.
Indian Government has now awakened to these facts and is looking towards strict imposition of rules, in order to regulate child Labour in India.
All stake holders should jointly resist any form of child labour using what ever means available. A networking of international NGOs working in this field has to be created for advocacy with various departments to ban child labour. International funding organisations have to identify a contact organisation in each country to help NGOs who are working in this field undertaking activities for the banning of child labour and identify national projects to be implemented in a transparent manner with good stewardship.
To conclude, I will say
Employees shall employ the little Children
For it is their job to cut costs
Children shall keep working
For it is their right to earn a living.
And the Government will keep making un-enforced laws
For it is its job, its right to legislate.
So the responsibility rests n me
I am the people-the mob-the crowd-the mass
Do you know I have in me the power?
The power to change absolutely anything in this world
All I need is more and more of you,
Just be with me and we will change even this…..
