Set the young free
Shaadaab S. Bakht
Shaadaab S. Bakht, who worked for famous Indian dailies The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Sentinel and wrote political commentaries for Tehelka.com, is Gulf Today’s Executive Editor.
- Last updated: August 7, 2025 | 15:21
In height, he was impressive. In terms of possessions, he was a dwarf. And he looked hideously mauled not by the stinking animal that lives in the jungle, but by stinking humans who don’t bother that they are turning our world into a jungle. Some of us are directly and some of us are indirectly responsible for the growing jungle.
The boy I am talking about got me a ringside view of abuse of boys at work. Unfortunately, he did that at his own cost.
He was serving glasses of water in a restaurant when two men, fully drunk, barged into the restaurant and mercilessly beat up the boy. No clear reason was available for the wrath of the men, which bordered on the bestial.
The restaurant, located in a famous Indian city, was packed to the gills, but nobody came to the rescue of the boy. He understandably slid into a corner and continued to sob. The restaurant’s manager told the boy to get back to work. In other words, he wasn’t even given the time to cry.
When some of us tried to convince the manager that we shouldn’t let the incident pass and inform the police because it would embolden the culprits, he said, such incidents were common because hooligans enjoyed political patronage, a support that makes unwanted bullies immensely powerful. The common people are scared of acting against them.
The scare has to go. Otherwise, reports stating that over 45.8 million people are currently enslaved across the globe will keep mounting.
They were published by a human rights group. After conducting 42,000 interviews in 53 languages, the group found out that some forms of slavery still exist in 167 countries.
These forms include child labour, bondage from indebtedness, forced or servile marriage.
Four out of five kids got only food for work, not money and they all worked for over nine hours a day, the reports observed.
And we can’t only blame the authorities for the horrible figures. The crisis involves us all.
The problem is that had the deprived been in chains of iron we could have used fire to free them. They are in chains of oppression. And oppression is discrimination and discrimination doesn’t respond to heat, but human concern, which tends to skip the helpless.
Also, the helpless’ cries find it difficult to reach the people, who display concern or control it, because such people sit in houses whose walls are very high.