Another Bad Day in Kasur

I returned to Kasur to develop case studies of small businesses there, to be used for training and analysis. From a work perspective, the trip was a success (and I managed to stay out of the noxious leather sector). But as usual, somewhere the trip took a left turn, this time into the murky realities of child labor.

At an embroidery business I visited, among the dozen workers were three young boys, aged 10, 11, and 12, stitching beads and sequins onto silky fabric. They'd been working there for five years, eight hours a day, and earned less than $1/day. None of them had ever gone to school.

The reality is that their families have no choice but to send them out to work. When the choice is between education and eating, eating must win. There is no free education available for them, and when the opportunity cost of lost income is added to the mix, there is just no way the very poor can send there kids to school. It's a colossal state failure, which produces ignorant, illiterate citizens with no hope of meaningfully participating in a democracy (coincidence?), much less rising above their poverty. The situation breeds fundamentalism, ill health, violence, and a host of other social ills with affects which, I believe, reach well outside the nation's borders. Functioning democracies don't tend to go to war with each other. But countries where the majority of citizens are poor and illiterate have little to lose, and are at the mercy of firebrand fundamentalism.

I also knew, short of starting a school that provided free meals and possibly paid the children to attend, there was little I could do for the boys. I could have kicked up a fuss, but even if, by some miracle, the business owner agreed to send the three boys packing, what then? They wouldn't head merrily off to school. They'd either go hungry or find somewhere else to work, possibly a place where the conditions weren't as good as they were at this small business. So the children become a part of my case study, and hopefully will get local organizations thinking about this issue.

Still, even as I told myself this, my distress must have shown on my face, for my Pakistani colleagues kept asking if I was upset. Hell, yes, I was upset! Children shouldn't be faced with the dreadful choice of a full belly or an education.

After the day was done I walked into a shop near my hotel; it turned out to sell luxury fabrics (these things are not always obvious from the store front). "Pakistan is famous for its beautiful fabrics and exquisite gold jewelry!" the salesman enthused, showing me bolt after bolt of $50/yard handmade silks.

Opulence and poverty.