Every morning at 8 o' clock a girl named Pooja accompanies her mother when she goes to work. Maya, her mother, works as a domestic helper in several households in a posh area of the city. While Maya does the dishes, Pooja cleans the entire house; She sweeps the floors, mops the tiles, changes the garbage bag on the dustbin and takes the garbage out. Pooja is eight years old.

A lot of us will probably not find anything wrong with the above paragraph because for a lot of us this isn't something outrageous or criminal. For a lot of us this isn't something that strikes some deep chord of morality, ethics and stolen innocence. For a lot of us this isn't as much of a social evil as dowry and rape and feticide, because for a lot of us this is Normal.

How many times have we savored delicacies whilst sitting in our favorite air conditioned restaurants or open dhaabaas served by waiters barely ten or eleven years old, using the euphemistic 'chotu'? How many of us have hired little girls to do our domestic work in our homes without batting an eyelid? Why does it not trouble us that we are actively participating in destroying something so beautiful, innocent and fragile? Imagine for one moment that the boy laboring in the sun, carrying loads that far exceed his own weight was your own flesh and blood? For one moment imagine your precious little princess sweeping people's homes morning to noonday after day. Kills you, doesn't it, to see your own dear little child working like this. So why is it okay for the other children?

Stand up! Open your and see how millions of lives are being destroyed. How at such a tender age there are children who thrown into an endless loop of exploitation and hard work.

They do not deserve this. What they deserve is childhood. They have a right to education and a right to live. They have a right to play and be innocent. This is not the age to be cleaning people's waste and bargaining for pay. This is the age to just be. Help educate these children. Help give them an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty and let them make their own destinies. Education changes lives. It makes them independent and free.

Stand against child labor. Make them Saksham, Make India Saksham!

- Insha Arif
(Guest blogger for Saksham India Trust)

For more of her work please visit www.inshaarif.wordpress.com

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