Posted:
Already posted my take on the episode at large in Bazinga's thread. But I'm making a new topic for some side notes that I felt needed addressing too.
- I find it curious that the abusers in all the example cases were males. Aamir didn't really mention any states of the gender ration in that category either. In my otherwise knowledge of this issue, female abusers (not going into numbers or comparisons) are not a negligible lot either. Not sure if that fact holds true with respect to the Indian context though...
- I'm sure there's no rule book about this but more on recognizing the pedophiles would have helped. And just perhaps, something on recognizing the victims? Although the key to the latter seems to be the one sentence that lady consultant summed it up in - believe your children. they will NOT lie about such a thing! But before they can cum up the courage to come up and tell you... tell tale signs about them? Withdrawal? Sudden drop in performance at school? Sudden reactionary behavior towards particular adult(s)?... And the likes...
- As Bazinga/Kavya said in her post, I would like to see an episode on just, child abuse as a topic. I've only had the chance to visit India during holidays, all of 5 times in my life, but from the experience of a most recent trip, only last winter, here is another interesting fact I'd like to account for. Child labor, at lots of levels seem to be a very readily accepted phenomenon. At one local dhaba on the highway, I randomly asked a kid who served water if he went to school, and he laughed at me. My cousin gave me "the look" and when the child left, she told me it was important for the child to be independent. For all the possibility, he could be one of the millions of kids on the streets begging. At least he had food and a shelter and some clothes and an earning at this place, possibly a master who took humanly enough to not abuse or overwork him. And I found myself thinking, was it a lifestyle he truly ought to be grateful about? Is this society really so past the point of no return, that they find it even a mild benediction that the child is not in fact in tatters and begging at the mercy of some greater figure (going by my very dramatized knowledge from Slumdog of course).
I understand the premise of how much worse it could be. What I did not understand, and cannot wrap around my head even now, is why it should be ANY more accepted, than child sexual abuse. Isn't the contention in question taking away the innocence? Who says there's only a "physical" way to go about it? Whatever happened to allowing a child this free world and space to learn and grow?
Its likely much easier said than done, all the more with the population pressure as people like to quote at every instance. But in my opinion, root of the problem, at least at some level, evolves from the acceptance of children working for a living at that tender age! Acceptance that borders on endorsing the practice in fact, again, using the premise of the child's choices lying between the devil and the deep sea!
In my opinion, for Indian territory especially, the issue of child labor needs a grave addressing. Perhaps its on Aamir's cards already. I just had to get it out here in a post, because it struck me quite starkly while watching the episode, and even before when reading Kavya's post. And I talk not just of "abusive" child labor. But of child labor the concept itself, even in circumstances that are considered much elevated and even "lucky"!
Cricket
Indian Mythology
