Reality as we know it is filtered, truncated and manufactured for our easy digestion. The superimposing of unreality onto the real world and our indifference of events taking place in front of our eyes is common. Is the real world unjust, unequal and exploitative? The tiny minority revolting against
the real are ignorable and detestable. The vast majority is peacefully ignorant, confused and indifferent of injustice and inequality, not sure if it is here or not here. This indifference and unreality is what Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi addresses in his short story, ‘bachay’. It begins with *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>hunting for the fruit of neem trees beside a river. They are ecstatic in their hunt and those able to catch the fruit find their destinies defined by the act. Qasmi says that in the neem trees birds chirp joyously, laugh at the bustling sun and become a snake, then a chicken, then a camel and then an idea, that is there and is not there. The *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> enter a playground, chase broken pieces of wood and leather, throw soda bottles in the air and dance at the sound of their shattering. As the evening arrives, crows descend onto the trees, smoke from factories and clouds hug each other to suck the sunlight from the day and create the evening sky. A sky that is infinite. A sky that is visible by the naked eye. A sky that is and is not. The *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> wander aimlessly into town, run in all directions and showoff their tricks and games to other well dressed and well mannered boys and girls. Their hands stained, from the neem fruit, lips sealed together and eyes blinking with dust, they are delirious and the world becomes foggy. People passing-by become long and short, inflated and deflated and then become immaterial in nature. Qasmi says that life becomes a painting whose color has been devoured by a torrential rain and only a sketch remains, the painting erased. A sketch that is a painting and is not a painting. It may emerge as a painting and can be called anything and nothing at all. Then the *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> resort to reading fairy tales since they have lost all color, physically and mentally. They can only see withered leaves flowing around them, the world yellowed in the throes of hepatitis and they rub eyes full of crust and mud to read a new story every day. The contents are always concerned with the same events featuring princes, princesses, djinns and witches. A good prince ventures in search of a pure life and a gem of pure humanity but a bad prince brings a fake gem and wins over the princess, while the good prince is encased in stone by an evil witch. However, the good prince does find a gem of pure humanity and defeats the bad prince. Qasmi’s story ends with the *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children>finally going to sleep in caves, on beds of scorpions and insects, owls and wild cats at their bedside, waiting for a good prince to rescue them. But little do the *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> know that princes who bring gems of humanity are ‘Unamerican’ in America, traitors in Britain and cunning spies in France. And in Asia, an old witch has turned these princes into such statues that to revive them will not be the work of *magic* <http://mail.google.com/tag/magic> but rather of a wound caused by the violent blow of a hammer. A wound that is injurious and infuriating but also kind and blissful. And in the hammer blow’s echo, lightning strikes, flowers bloom and it causes a wound and also not a wound. Qasmi stresses on the unreality and the indifference: what is here and not here, what is and is not. The *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>in the story are mindless objects, degenerated into playing and acting, not living. Such *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> are easily recognizable in *Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>, most commonly as child laborers. They are all around us as beggars, ragpickers, and apprentices of tailors, mechanics and shop keepers. They are also present at brick kilns, carpet factories and other hidden informal setups, engaged in life threatening work. Millions of *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>in the age group of 5 to 18 years are currently laboring in *Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>. The public is aware of this injustice but lives in unreality, indifferent of what is here and not here. According to Kevin Bales, the leading expert on contemporary slavery, these *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> living in our unreality are actually slaves. Bales writes in his book, ‘Disposable People’ about the condition of slaves in Thailand, Mauritania, Brazil, *Pakistan*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>and *India* <http://mail.google.com/tag/India>. He says that ‘slavery is a booming business. People get rich using slaves. This is the new slavery, which focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people in the traditional sense of the old slavery, but about controlling them completely… In the new slavery, the slave is a consumable item, added to the production process when needed, but no longer carrying a high capital cost.’ Child laborers, Sex workers, bonded labor and slave-wage factory workers in the third world are all really slaves. They are victims of the general people’s residence in unreality and constant indifference to the real conditions of the world. Bales describes one reason for the emergence of this new slavery is the * population* <http://mail.google.com/tag/population> explosion that has flooded the world’s markets with millions of poor and vulnerable people. Another reason is the *revolution* <http://mail.google.com/tag/revolution>of economic *globalization* <http://mail.google.com/tag/globalization> and modernized agriculture, which has dispossessed poor farmers and made them vulnerable to enslavement. Capital in the new millennium flies where labor is cheapest and financial links of slavery stretch all over the world. The chaos of *greed*<http://mail.google.com/tag/greed>, violence and *corruption* <http://mail.google.com/tag/corruption> brought about by economic change in the third world, destroying social rules and traditional bonds of responsibility is another factor in creating slavery. These three coupled with profitability and violence plus the absence of *law * <http://mail.google.com/tag/law> and order completes the case of the New Slavery. To better understand this unreality and indifference in his own country, this writer participated in a two-day conference in Islamabad for ‘Eradicating Child Labor through Quality *Education*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Education>in *Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>.’ Organized in April by Save the *Children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Children> – UK, participants included the Federal Minister of *Education*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Education>, employees of UN, UNICEF, ILO, HRCP and other concerned organizations and individuals from all over the country. The last survey conducted on child labor was in 1996, by the Federal Bureau of Statistics which estimated 3.3 million Pakistani *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>involved in labor. This excludes *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> working as domestic servants and in small or *family* <http://mail.google.com/tag/family>businesses that are unregistered with the *government* <http://mail.google.com/tag/government>. Considering the *population* <http://mail.google.com/tag/population> growth since then, a wise prediction of 122 million working *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>in *Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan> today can be made. The amazing investment in *Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>since 9/11, the figures of rising productivity and the atmosphere of fervent economic activity in the cities does not affect these disposable kids, as mentioned by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in his book the ‘Upside Down World.’ He writes that, ‘Abandoned *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>on the streets of Bogota used to be called ‘gamines’; now they’re called ‘disposable kids’ and they’re marked to die. In the technological *language*<http://mail.google.com/tag/language>of the moment, the many nobodies are ‘economically inviable.’ How far has the unreality affected Pakistani leaders? What is the extent of the average Pakistanis indifference? There are 5,20,000 illiterate people in the country, this means they cannot read or write their own names. At the same time, there are 23 million *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>who have never been to school in their lives. About 10,000 *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> are involved in garbage picking in Quetta city alone. 900,000 people are involved with the glass bangles industry in Hyderabad, consuming arsenic, cadmium, toxic sulfates and acidic phosphoric oxides in 12 hours shifts, earning Rs.2.25 for each shining packs of bangles they create. To deal with the issue is a paramount task. For example, 37,000 kids were removed from soccer ball production in Sialkot through a program funded by different international donors at a cost of $1.3 million. The number of * children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> who never returned to soccer ball production totaled merely 1.1 % of the total child labor force. According to another research, it costs approximately Rs.100,000 per child to take a boy or girl out of labor and into a school or a rehabilitation program. If 3 million is the number of child labor in the country, then it’s going to cost Rs. 300 billion to resolve the problem, alongside vast amounts of social and political will. The *government* <http://mail.google.com/tag/government> has established 44 National Centres for Rehabilitation of *Child Labour*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Child%20Labour>(NCsRCL) in the country. These centers provide free *education* <http://mail.google.com/tag/education>, clothing, footwear, books and stationery to *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children> and Rs.10 stipend daily as well. Parents of these working *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>receive subsistence allowance of Rs. 300 per month as wage compensation. It has rehabilitated nearly 5000 *children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/children>all over the country. The program is effective but like all other *government* <http://mail.google.com/tag/government> initiatives it remains racked with inefficiency, unconcern and little room for improvement. For 3.3 million *children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/children>, 11 years ago, 44 centers are barely sufficient. We should remember that *Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan> is signatory to international laws such as the Dakar Framework, the Convention on the *Rights* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Rights> of the *Children*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Children>(CRC) and the ILO Convention 182 on the worst forms of *child labour* <http://mail.google.com/tag/child%20labour>. National laws like the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act 1992, The National *Policy*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Policy>& Plan of Action to Combat Child Labor (2000) and the Employment of *Children* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Children> Act (1991), which is to date the only private members bill ever passed by the Parliament of * Pakistan* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>, proposed by Senator Sartaj Aziz. However, not a single arrest has ever been made under the ECA, while the other laws are implemented as rigorously as the environmental laws. The latest fad that the Pakistani *government*<http://mail.google.com/tag/government>has adopted is the ‘project’ approach. Through heavy donor funding, the *government* <http://mail.google.com/tag/government> decides to intervene with kids in the soccer ball industry, helps a few hundred boys enslaved as bonded labor and other such microscopic projects that are already being fulfilled by NGOs and Civil Society activists. Dr. Kaiser Bengali compared this project-by-project approach of the *government*<http://mail.google.com/tag/government>to funding an NGO in Europe for helping German farmers against acid rain. The *government* <http://mail.google.com/tag/government>’s job is to create an effective National *Policy* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Policy> and to mercilessly enforce constitutional laws, until child labor is as detestable as blowing up gas pipes in Balochistan or mobile snatching in *Karachi*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Karachi>or *Lahore* <http://mail.google.com/tag/Lahore>. In order to challenge this one aspect of the unreality and indifference Kevin Bales suggests firstly to create mass awareness of the problem, nationally and internationally, till the public stops asking, ‘What do you mean by slavery [child labor]?’ Secondly, local and global financial institutions benefiting from slavery [child labor] must be pressurized to accept and deal with the problem. The tremendous power of the IMF, WTO, the World Bank, UN, and the International Court of *Justice*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Justice>must be brought to bear on slavery. Finally, massive financial, legal and intellectual support to local groups fighting slavery [child labor] has to be allocated. It is wise to heed Eduardo Galeano’s question, ‘What *fate*<http://mail.google.com/tag/fate>awaits these human leftovers? The world invites them to disappear, saying ‘you don’t exist because you don’t deserve to exist.’ The wonderful Neo-liberal economical model *Pakistan*<http://mail.google.com/tag/Pakistan>is blindly following does not concern itself with *education* <http://mail.google.com/tag/education>, child labor, female empowerment and *poverty* <http://mail.google.com/tag/poverty>. Galeano states, ‘twin totalitarianisms plaque the world: the dictatorships of consumer society and obligatory injustice.’ An urgent need is to adopt a new social philosophy centered on human needs and projects, where the freedom of human beings must have priority over the free market and human *rights* <http://mail.google.com/tag/rights> are protected more than property *rights* <http://mail.google.com/tag/rights>, in fact, a society that is concerned with reality and is not indifferent of the gross crimes that it silently participates in. Maybe what Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi suggested is right. The entire world needs painful blows of a hammer to awake them, to break apart this unreality and to shred their indifference to pieces. by * **Faris Kasim* <http://mail.google.com/writers/1845>* * --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Asalam o Alaikum, You Are Receiving This Message, Because You Are A Member Of FOCUS ON ISLAM, A Google Group [..:: The Best Group For Nice Islamic Mails ::..] \/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<>\/ You can Post Your Comments and Suggestions to Me [Moderator of this Group] on this email address: [email protected] To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/focusonislam/ To post messages/mails to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] Please forward our Mails to Your friends, and convence them to join our Group. 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