KARACHI: Fair cheeks blackened with dirt, large blue eyes heavy with sleep, a runny nose red with frequent rubbing and feet standing bare on the cold concrete road, a four-year-old stands with his face pressed against the car window insistently trying to sell a rose from among a handful of half-withered collection. It is nearing midnight but the streets are empty and cold, though inside the fast food Pizza joint near the pavement there is much activity as eaters belch while kilos of half-eaten pizzas are trashed in the bin. The boy patiently awaits his well-fed clients to sell his ware and earn a few bucks to take home. It is definitely no time for a four-year-old to be standing on a cold night and doing the job which is not his to be done. I am inevitably reminded of my own toddler at home, tucked cozily in his comforter, at his designated bed-time, following a nice hot meal and give an involuntary shudder.
Elsewhere, amid the rush of Eid shoppers flocking an elite mall late at night, is another 10-year-old diligently rearranging socks, vests and other such items on his wooden table, also hoping to earn the extra few to make Eid a better time for his family of God alone knows how many members.
The sights are pathetic, but so are we, who take it in our stride, seeing children doing things we’d die before letting our own kids do it.
In our huge metropolis where even beggars converge from other provinces, the sight of little children — anything from three years old and more — roaming the streets to earn a living is a common sight. These tots are obviously high earners for their wretched parents and flock almost every secluded as well as populous spot near restaurants and malls. The inmates around the areas where these urchins romp, have either accepted them as part of the neighbourhood or abuse their existence — sometimes verbally, sometimes physically.
Eid time is the worst as the stark social disparity in our metropolis is accentuated. But for the urchins, Eid festivities are the perfect time for extorting the maximum from their potential clients as there is a lot of moral ground to cover since the wretches know just what to do and say to tap one’s most vulnerable side — especially if there are kids with you.
With normal tolerance levels otherwise always running out of control, in the face of such social maladies, adults adopt a conveniently tolerant attitude. With issues such as exploited street urchins or beggar children, it is easier to turn the other cheek rather than attempt a reform, an attitude also adopted by ruling authorities and concerned departments. When has a concrete poverty alleviation plan ever been launched and been successful in our country? And now, after four years of dappling with the country’s economics the Federal Finance Minister stutters that poverty levels could not be reduced because some (more?) time is needed after achieving macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline. And in the meantime, till the ‘talented’ (and favoured) minister’s macroeconomics work to alleviate poverty, it will go on rising at the micro level!
Issues like the rise in poverty levels and increase in child beggary — thriving in Karachi — is a matter no law maker, Parliamentarian or Senator has taken up as a priority at their respective forums. At the Provincial level the contenders for the meagre amount of funds that Sindh has at its disposal for rehabilitating projects is so pitiable that many other pending civic issues have a higher priority claim on that meagre available amount.
It must be reiterated here that only 139.667 billion rupees, i.e. 14 per cent of the revenue, was received by Sindh out of the 993.470 billion rupees generated by the province in the past six years and sent to the centre as opposed to the 346.570 billion rupees, i.e 94 per cent, that Punjab received out of the 365.508 billion it generated [the statistics were quoted by the Finance and Cooperation Minister, Sindh].
So even if reasonably conscientious city officials attempt corrective measures, they are fairly helpless (and fundless) to take on a mass rehabilitation work as it involves much more than just logistics of relocating the beggar children or getting them off the street forcibly, which is NOT the solution. A change of ideology and infrastructure combined with extensive social programming for the children’s parents is required and that is no small feat and needs substantial financing.
And while everyone gives reasons for why things cannot be changed for the little children forced into abandoning their childhood, they will go on being exploited by adults of every kind — their own parents, the sharks who work in the same neighbourhood and by us, the ‘tolerant’ onlookers.
As for tolerance, it is a strangely incoherent term. We will kill and die for, on the road, if a passing car injures our ‘driving’ sentiment but will read with total banality a news item stating; “an unidentified four year-old boy died in a road accident in SITE when he was hit by a minibus crossing the road...” and pass on to the ‘World News’ pages.
Tolerance totally evades us when we are stuck in a traffic jam and are ready for blue murder if made to wait for longer than a minute but will not initiate an uprising against the mentally sick faculty of an educational institute in Peshawar molesting schoolchildren regularly.
If economics is what is needed to fulfil our responsibility to the bulk of the nation’s future generation than why isn’t it happening despite the Foreign Minister’s and the State bank’s declaration that the year 2002-03 was a good fiscal year for Pakistan despite a recorded rise in poverty level and crimes against children this year. How is the good and prosperity being measured — by evaluating the riches of the rich or by the income level fall of the common man?
These condemned children of a lesser god have many, many miles to go before they sleep easy, and it is unpardonable for any of the economic policy and lawmaker to sleep cozily in the warm comfort of their ‘state funded’ homes till it happens.
