Something similar happened a few days back when I got my internet connection after what seemed like ages. Numerous attention-craving feeds, I thought, and then I noticed a similarity in many of them. A certain ‘Joseph Kony’ or ‘Kony 2012’ reappeared multiple times in many places. People seem to be talking about one ‘Kony’ and there, it seemed, is a video about him, in the video sharing portal, Youtube. Intrigued, I thought of having a glimpse. After watching the video and a few Google searches later, I was enlightened. Joseph Kony, who is a guerilla army leader in Uganda, is known for his brutalities and is hunted by the International Criminal Court. So far, not so good… But not a real pain for the rest of the world either. The 27 minute documentary, Kony 2012, made by the US based NGO, Invisible Children, Inc., in an attempt to draw the world’s attention towards the atrocities of Joseph Kony, went viral over the internet primarily because the main sufferers of the hideous acts are innocent children, some recruited, others kidnapped, by Joseph Kony, to act as soldiers in his guerilla army and small girls to be used as sex-slaves. His men are also amputating and hacking those who fail to ‘perform’ satisfactorily in their role. The video gained widespread attention, and their makers earned both applause for the effort and criticism for the delay in making the film; enough damage has already been done.
 
Feeling slightly nauseated, as images of limbless, hapless African kids popped up in my mind (an after effect), I left my room and decided to go for a cup of tea at the nearest tea stall. I ordered my brew and sat on a stool, reminiscing, when one of the ‘chotus’ at the stall placed a steaming glass of tea on the table. The impact of the film on me made me notice the young lad, something I never did before when I visited the stall. A young boy of 11-12, I thought, should have been in school now had he been born into a privileged family. His misfortune, however, is making him work for his living, tolerate abuses and rebukes at such a tender age. On my way back home, with amazement, I noticed an astonishing number of underprivileged children and felt immense pity for them; the video sure had it’s effect on me. Small girls, overburdened with starving siblings and the task of begging for food. Kids working in roadside food joints, looking disheveled and dressed in rags. An 8 year old selling garlands outside a temple. All I could see around me were kids. And somehow, childhood no longer seemed to be a carefree, happy period, not unless you are born for expensive diapers and soft towels to keep you warm. I recalled a publicity poster of an upcoming kindergarten near my office, which claimed that it has an ‘Olympiad-oriented’ syllabi, to nurture young minds into developing as the sharpest brainiacs of the nation. Pondering over the supposed future of these children I saw, I thought of their possible ‘career options’. The term itself seemed sarcastic. For those who could not afford two proper meals a day without sacrificing everything they have, career is perhaps a sadistic joke to even think of. Somehow, their Ugandan counterparts, victims of Joseph Kony, did not seem too worse off. True, most of them still had their limbs intact. But till when, is surely a question. And while the young guerilla trainees had provisions of food in return for loyalty to their leader, they hardly had any. And if tomorrow failed to assure to satiate their bare-minimums, perhaps many of them would turn to the use of firearms as well. To survive, to barely exist. Period.

All I could see around me were kids. And somehow, childhood no longer seemed to be a carefree, happy period, not unless you are born for expensive diapers and soft towels to keep you warm.

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his legendary book, ‘The Black Swan’, reckons that human beings have a tendency of learning the specifics from an event, not the generic lesson. It seemed distinctly applicable to the case of Kony 2012. Human Right activists from all over the world cried aloud, demanding stoppage of his rampages, captures and punishments. Donations flowed in and the filmmakers raked in ‘moolah’. But somehow, the more serious lesson went amiss. The lesson that children, being easily influenced and manipulated, are vulnerable to becoming tools of someone’s dirty work and who can be sacrificed rather comfortably in the pursuit of a goal. And somehow, even though armed forces are moving around in hot pursuit of Joseph Kony, unknowingly, it’s all of us around the globe, the sympathizers of the thousands of children victims in Uganda, who are no less responsible as well for carrying out crimes, similar, if not in magnitude, then surely in terms of effects in the long run. How? By following the logic of the great physicist Albert Einstein, according to whom, a person who does nothing about an offense being carried out is equally responsible as the person who is carrying it out. As we remain mute every day about the atrocities carried out on children everywhere, by using them as low-paid laborers, not making provisions for them to at least get a minimal education, thrusting them towards a life of disappointment and frustration, we are invariably ushering them towards desperation; desperation of such that they won’t hesitate to take up guns and turn them on the society that never cared about them. And it’s not exactly altruism that demands our moral participation as educated and privileged individuals of the society; it’s more of securing our very own futures and that of our own children. It is the compulsory duty of every state to ensure that all its citizens get sufficient education to earn their livelihood, and by extension, the mandatory responsibility of every citizen of a democracy to see that the same is carried out. Empowering every underprivileged child with education will only enable them to understand state laws and abide by them. Never to have a necessity of turning against them or see them as unfair arbitrators.

Or is it as it seems? Fair play certainly isn’t a trait of human nature. Census statistics reveal that around 40% of all Indian school children drop out of secondary school, more of the number being female due to socio-economic factors. Other statistics put the figure of child laborers in India at around 15-17 million, in the organized sector. The actual figure, however, stands close to 60 million if hidden child workforce, unorganized child labor (the tea stall chhotus, balloonwala kids) are included. Co-relate the two figures, and the revelation will stand out. It is somehow beneficial for a certain section of the elite to keep the underprivileged so - A section of the workforce, not requiring an HR department for management, unaware of workers’ rights, incapable of forming labor unions and maneuverable by occasional spanks and expletives. Nobody to think or care about them, demand basic rights or stand up for them; many don’t have parents and some of those who do, have parents who are dependants on their children, sadly. Another sector where children are heavily abused is surely the sex-trade. Anti-human trafficking activists and NGOs working with sex workers say that the dominant number of ‘newcomers’ in this trade are children in the age group of 11-16 years. Which indicates even more how our civilized society is even more similar to the Ugandan guerilla leader. Sadly though, there are hardly any filmmakers to document the same in films, a fact wherein lies our ignorant relief. We are capable of excusing ourselves until some of them turn out to be gangsters, murderers and rapists. We tend to notice them when our relief is put in jeopardy, but then again, we view the problems in another light, finding specific symptoms again, rather than looking for generic causes. We fight them with guns, kill them, try to sabotage them as a whole; never realizing why the need for such arose in the first place. Period. Again.

Photo courtesy Wall Street Journal