When Primwark, the fashion house from UK banned a company in Chennai, India from business, because of child labour employed in the making of their products, I was reminded of Ramu.
When Ramu joined the large Verma household in my neighbourhood, he was a chit of boy. He told us he was 13 years old, but he looked more like he was 10 or 11, being rake thin and tiny.
He was abandoned on a platform at New Delhi railway station when he was four and had faint memories of a little mud hovel in a Bihar village where his potter father slogged at the wheel to make mud tumblers he sold at the local market.
But despite Ramu's frailty, he was a powerhouse of energy, spinning on his two feet the whole day.
His day would begin at 5 am. He would cook, get the tiffin boxes for the four Verma kids ready, wake them up, get them dressed, drop them off at the bus stop and return to only get busier than ever.
He would be in and out of the washroom and the kitchen alternating between getting lunch prepared, tiffins packed, and getting the bathwater running for the master and mistress.
During the day he would be ironing clothes, buying groceries, polishing shoes, washing cars... he had no leisure. But he was only too relieved to earn his living and I never saw him glum or depressed. It looked like his work was just a breeze.
Education
But after 7pm, Ramu would return to his home and take out his books and ride his bike to the night school the Vermas had enrolled him in. Although they did not spare him through the day, the Vermas had the foresight to get Ramu a decent education.
In five years, Ramu completed high school, then enrolled into the undergraduate distance education programme and went on to complete his Masters in Information Technology.
He did this while he did all the menial chores at the Verma household where his sincerity won the heart of every family member.
Every Verma child helped Ramu through the difficult academic years and today Ramu is a software engineer, drawing a respectable salary and living in low income group housing that the Verma children gifted him after his post graduation.
Childhood stolen
Ramu's childhood was stolen but he does not regret even a day's work because he feels the Vermas gave him a better chance than his own parents who abandoned him and gave up on him when he was such a tiny tot.
He feels the Vermas taught him the dignity of work and the importance of academics which he learned watching the children in the household study hard.
Child labour is a complicated issue in Third World countries, but only if fashion companies could think of suggesting an alternative livelihood (such as providing some funds for their education and shorter working hours) they would perhaps be more humane.
It may be politically correct to ban a company from future business, but they just stole the only livelihood those children and their family had and literally snatched a morsel from a hungry child's mouth.
There must be a more organised way to tackle issues that have a deep-rooted socio-economic origin than just wishing them away.
To think of this bunch of jobless children getting sucked into the world of crime and prostitution with doors of an honest livelihood being closed to them, terrifies me.
There are thousands of Ramus waiting to be saved in many Third World countries and we need to be a bit more sensitised to the complexity of the problem than just ostracising a company that uses child labour.
