The nation’s capital can boast of many things — condoning child labour should not be one of them. Not so far from the seat of power, children are treated brutally and made to work 14-hour shifts with barely a break or two in between.

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They are not paid anything but a token amount which goes back to the parents in whichever village they hail from. These children are malnourished and abused for years and all for a few hundred rupees a month.

They cannot go back to the parents who sent them here and they cannot go on. Its easier to just die sometimes.

The tragic fate of 10-year- old Moin has been in all the papers lately. He came from Bihar to work at his maternal uncle’s one-room factory in New Delhi. His parents sent him with hopes of earning some money and were given the princely sum of five hundred rupees as an advance.

The uncle was a modern day version of Kamsa but little Moin was no Lord Krishna — he was just a small boy who could never quite roll bidis fast enough. He was beaten repeatedly for being slow. He died when the uncle tied up his hands and feet, lifted him up high and threw him on to the ground. What is the worth of one 10-year- old in the scheme of things anyway?

I have a 10-year-old son and that may be why this piece of news has been eating away at me. My son likes riding cycles and playing cricket. He loves ice-cream and as many chips as he can eat. Moin didn’t get the chance to do many of those things — he just worked non-stop with little or no pay and plenty of abuse till the day he was killed.

How did this happen? Why did his parents send him to work when he was supposed to be in school? Abject poverty must be the only reason but the poor child was not the cause of it and yet he was the one who paid with his very life.

Moin is only one such child. There are thousands of others working adult shifts and not getting even three meals a day. There are lavish weddings in Bangalore where the bride or groom happens to be the son or daughter of a minister.

Go behind the posh facades and the ones who are scrubbing enormous dishes and cleaning up are little children. It is beyond ironic that the very people who are supposed to deliver these children from slavery are the ones that close their eyes to it.

The only reason these children are victimised is because they have nowhere to go and no means at all to fight back. I doubt if Moin’s uncle would’ve abused his workforce if they were hulking men — of course men tend to ask for wages. It is truly heartbreaking that so many children have to give up their carefree existence to live lives of terrible desperation.