Mention the hazards of working in the glass bangles industry.
The glass blowing industry of Firozabad employs local families and these families have spent generations working around furnaces, welding glass and making bangles of different colours. Working around the high temperature furnaces is very injurious to our growing bodies. The dark dingy cells without light and air, worsen the working conditions of the children. The dazzling and sparking of welding light and the high temperature render the situation hellish. About 20,000 children slog their day light hours and often lose the brightness of their eyes before they become adults.
The bangle-makers lead their life in utter miseries and grinding poverty. They could never prosper working in this industry. They hardly get a belly full of meal in their lifetime. Thus they are not only underfed but also prone to ailments and education. The dingy cells and stinking smell of garbage choke their bodies. There are flames of flickering oil lamps, the blinding polishing and the welding work put a deep impact on their complete bodies. Those who work in, they lose their eyesight before they become adult.
Although this text speaks of factual events an situation of misery it transforms these situations with an almost poetical prose into a literary experience. How does it do so? Here are some literary devices:
• Hyperbole is a way of speaking or writing that makes something sound better or more exciting than it really is. For example: Garbage to them is gold.
• Metaphor as you may know, compares two things or ideas that are not very similar. A metaphor describes a thing in terms of a single quality or feature of some other things; we can say that a metaphor transfers a quality of one thing to another.
For example: The road was a ribbon of light.
• Simile is a word or phrase that compares one thing with another using the words “like” or “as”. For example: As white as snow.
Carefully read the following phrases and sentences taken from the text and name the figures of speech used.
1. Saheb-e-Alam which means the lord of the universe is directly in contrast to what Saheb is in reality.
2. Drowned in an air on desolation.
3. Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically.
4. For the children it is wrapped in wonder; for the elders it is a means of survival.
5. As her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine, I wonder if she knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make.
6. She still has bangles on her wrist, but not light in her eyes.
7. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.
8. Web of poverty.
9. Scrounging for gold.
10. And survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years, it has acquired the proportions of a fine art.
11. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so lightly over his shoulders.
1. Hyperbole.
2. Metaphor.
3. Metaphor.
4. Contrast.
5. Simile.
6. Metaphor.
7. Contrast.
8. Hyperbole.
9. Hyperbole.
10. Metaphor.
11. Contrast.
The beauty of the glass bangles of Firozabad contrasts with the misery of people who produce them.
This paradox is also found in some other situations, for example those who work in gold and diamond mines, carpet weaving factories and the products of their labour, construction workers and the buildings they build.
• Look around and find examples of such paradoxes.
• Write a paragraph of about 200 to 250 words on any one of them. You can start by making notes.
Here is an example of how one such paragraph may begin:
You never see the poor in this town. By day they toil, working cranes and earthmovers, squirreling deep into the hot sand to lay the foundations of chrome. By night they are banished to bleak labour camps at the outskirts of the city.
The students can make their own surveys and write a paragraph accordingly. However one such paragraph is given for reference.
Generally most of the handicraft and other factories, run on the small scale basis, engage children to work with them because they are cheap and easily available due to poverty. Some of the industries can be named here :
1. Candle making
2. Brick clins
3. Stone crushing
4. Dhabas and restaurants etc.
5. Handlooms
6. Bamboo and cane industry
7. Carpentary and saw mills
Let us study the last i.e. carpentary and saw-mills.
In my neighbourhood there are many saw mills and bamboo factories. In all of them one can see many children helping the workers in doing their work. In the saw mills, there is a work pertaining to the cutting, and sawing of different kinds of woods. During the working they help the skilled people. They remain attached to them. The dust, dirt and the saw ash go on disturbing them. They trouble them and enter in their bodies through nose, mouth and eyes. Some of the boys lose their eye-sight while it is their time to develop and get education.
Cases of asthma, respiratory problems, lung problem, cough and cold are very frequent. In a short span of their life they become a prey to one or the other disease pointed out. Their health deteriorates and the ailments turn chronic. The owners never think of their upkeep but employ them to earn their booty. There are strict laws banning the child labour but none bothers for them. They play with the tender lives of children and do a national waste.
Why should child labour be eliminated and how?
The child labour employed in any form of the hazardous work in an offence. It is banned under law. Yet it goes on unabated, at the industrial towns like Firozabad, Shivakasi, Mirzapur and so on.
The child labour is hazardous in nature. It inflicts physical and mental harm to the boys. The work in the glass bangle industry often ends up them losing their eyesight before they become adults. The mind-numbling toil of bangle-making kills all their initiative, drive and ability to dream in life. They are even deprived of the school education and proper growth.
According to Anees Jung about 20,000 children are working in the glass bangle industry of Firozabad. Some of the industrialists conspire in unison with the Sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen and the politicians and then go on stealing their childhood for some extra coins. The only possible solution lies with the government and the society to punish the wrong-doers very strictly; and keep a careful watch and vigil over them.
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