Editorial:
It’s Children’s Day today, a celebration which has become Students’ Day for all practically purposes in our country with the festivities almost exclusively limited to school campuses.
Since most of the children, at least in Sikkim, are enrolled in schools, this focus is perhaps not misplaced, but it would have been welcome if the celebrations at schools were complemented by some genuine attention being invested on the young who are not as privileged and need issues besetting them addressed. In Sikkim’s case, these would be children employed at homes as domestic help or working in commercial establishments across the State. There is a law against employing children under 14 years of age in any kind of work, and while there is no doubt that this law is extensively broken, very little is done to ensure enforcement. On Children’s Day, this disturbing reality of the travails of growing up for the underprivileged should be addressed, the shame accepted and more than tokenism invested on resolving the challenge.
Since Children’s Day, as mentioned, is essentially about students, it is also important that apart from the sweets and cultural performances for the kids, a stronger resolve is also undertaken to ensure that their grooming is not sacrificed to opportunist profiteering. The 18 September earthquake impacted school infrastructure extensively in Sikkim and not all the damage can be blamed exclusively on the intensity of the temblor; a lot of what was lost in schools was more due to poor workmanship and inexcusable disinterest towards ensuring safer campuses for the young. This Children’s Day, a clear commitment needs to be made to ensure that such compromises are neither allowed, nor tolerated in the future. From there, one can start building towards infrastructure creation which prioritises the needs and requirements of the young.
Children’s Day presents an opportunity to also address the confusion the elder generation is imposing on the young nowadays. Generation gap has always been a challenge and has now become even more pronounced in these globalisation and identity obsessed times. An important Children’s Day gift in such times would be a commitment to help the next generation grow up without prejudices. Just look around, the world as we know it is turning into a global village, but even as WTO is fudging international boundaries as far as trade is concerned, people are becoming more and more parochial. Almost every district wants to express itself as a State and every community swears it has a unique identity independent of all others. While it would be improper to deny anyone their right to self-expression, it would be criminal to ignore the fact that self expression in the present-day politically charged times almost always comes at the cost of denying someone else the same right. Our generation has abused, with alacrity, this fundamental right and mindsets are already fixated on ideas which are prejudiced and illogical. There is little that can be done on this front, but if we accept that things need to change, we could try and do so with the generation still untrained in the biases which we have fomented. If Sikkim is to remain free of the communal conflict which has already swept most of the country, it needs to address the issue more scientifically. The best places to start are the schools. It is perhaps time that classes were set aside to educate the younger generation on what makes their culture, their heritage and history. No attempts should be made to bring every community under one umbrella and students should be allowed the chance to celebrate each community’s individuality. Once they know of other cultures and are also aware of their own, they will not feel threatened. Half-baked notions of identity are the most susceptible to exploitation. There is no need to keep the future generation in the dark about differences which exist between different communities here. Perhaps, if they are well informed about the points of attrition, they will also be able to work out the solution that has failed others so far. They might even discard the whole concept of notional contradictions. Can we equip the next generation well enough to do that?
It’s Children’s Day today, a celebration which has become Students’ Day for all practically purposes in our country with the festivities almost exclusively limited to school campuses.
Since most of the children, at least in Sikkim, are enrolled in schools, this focus is perhaps not misplaced, but it would have been welcome if the celebrations at schools were complemented by some genuine attention being invested on the young who are not as privileged and need issues besetting them addressed. In Sikkim’s case, these would be children employed at homes as domestic help or working in commercial establishments across the State. There is a law against employing children under 14 years of age in any kind of work, and while there is no doubt that this law is extensively broken, very little is done to ensure enforcement. On Children’s Day, this disturbing reality of the travails of growing up for the underprivileged should be addressed, the shame accepted and more than tokenism invested on resolving the challenge.
Since Children’s Day, as mentioned, is essentially about students, it is also important that apart from the sweets and cultural performances for the kids, a stronger resolve is also undertaken to ensure that their grooming is not sacrificed to opportunist profiteering. The 18 September earthquake impacted school infrastructure extensively in Sikkim and not all the damage can be blamed exclusively on the intensity of the temblor; a lot of what was lost in schools was more due to poor workmanship and inexcusable disinterest towards ensuring safer campuses for the young. This Children’s Day, a clear commitment needs to be made to ensure that such compromises are neither allowed, nor tolerated in the future. From there, one can start building towards infrastructure creation which prioritises the needs and requirements of the young.
Children’s Day presents an opportunity to also address the confusion the elder generation is imposing on the young nowadays. Generation gap has always been a challenge and has now become even more pronounced in these globalisation and identity obsessed times. An important Children’s Day gift in such times would be a commitment to help the next generation grow up without prejudices. Just look around, the world as we know it is turning into a global village, but even as WTO is fudging international boundaries as far as trade is concerned, people are becoming more and more parochial. Almost every district wants to express itself as a State and every community swears it has a unique identity independent of all others. While it would be improper to deny anyone their right to self-expression, it would be criminal to ignore the fact that self expression in the present-day politically charged times almost always comes at the cost of denying someone else the same right. Our generation has abused, with alacrity, this fundamental right and mindsets are already fixated on ideas which are prejudiced and illogical. There is little that can be done on this front, but if we accept that things need to change, we could try and do so with the generation still untrained in the biases which we have fomented. If Sikkim is to remain free of the communal conflict which has already swept most of the country, it needs to address the issue more scientifically. The best places to start are the schools. It is perhaps time that classes were set aside to educate the younger generation on what makes their culture, their heritage and history. No attempts should be made to bring every community under one umbrella and students should be allowed the chance to celebrate each community’s individuality. Once they know of other cultures and are also aware of their own, they will not feel threatened. Half-baked notions of identity are the most susceptible to exploitation. There is no need to keep the future generation in the dark about differences which exist between different communities here. Perhaps, if they are well informed about the points of attrition, they will also be able to work out the solution that has failed others so far. They might even discard the whole concept of notional contradictions. Can we equip the next generation well enough to do that?
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