Bollywood star Anil Kapoor launches child labour campaign in India
Child labour
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Actor Anil Kapoor with children from the slums of Mumbaiʾٳܰ:
Bollywood star Anil Kapoor has kick-started a campaign to highlight the plight of millions of children in India who are forced into work, adding that he hoped his celebrity status would influence and inspire others to stamp out the practice.
The campaign run by the children’s charity aimsto use Kapoor – a veteran Hindi film actor with a careerspanning three decades – to raise awareness and encourage thepublic to shake off apathy linked to decades of socialacceptance of child labour.
Kapoor, best known internationally for his role in DannyBoyle’s Oscar-winning 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, saidmillions of children in the country were being exploited,largely due to poverty, and as a result not going to school.
“Our economic progress loses a lot of meaning if hundreds of thousands of children have no hopes of a future,” Kapoor told a news conference launching the campaign in Mumbai.
Anil Kapoor, right, in a scene from Slumdog Millionaire
“Child labour and exploitation must end. We are allresponsible for coming generations and the world we leave tothem. It is time our movement became everybody’s movement.”
Census data shows there were 4.35 million labourers agedbetween five and 14 in 2011 against 12.66 million a decade ago –although activists say the figures are under-reported.
A February 2015 report by the puts the number of child workers in India agedbetween five and 17 at 5.7 million, out of 168 million globally.
More than half are in agriculture, toiling in cotton, sugarcane and rice paddy fields where they are often exposed to pesticides and risk injury from sharp tools and heavy equipment.
Over a quarter work in manufacturing – confined to poorly lit, barely ventilated rooms in slums, embroidering clothes, weaving carpets, making matchsticks or rolling beedi cigarettes.
Rescued child labourers take part in a protest in Siliguri
Children also work in restaurants and hotels, washing dishesand chopping vegetables, or in middle-class homes, cleaning andscrubbing floors.
Kapoor said he joined the campaign as he wanted to be apositive role model and hoped his actions would inspire othersto see how child labour was an abusive practice which wasrobbing children of their future.
He said that parents should also realise that while theyneeded the income earned by their children, it was important tofocus on their education.
“It is mainly because these kids are so easily exploitable.Plus the problem is compounded by poverty,” he told the ThomsonReuters Foundation on the sidelines of the event.
“So many times household help will bring their kids towork but the focus should be on educating these children, noton getting them to work too.”
The , the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change.
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