Sunday, August 28, 2011

When we don't ask the right questions...

So this article in HT the other day, ‘Upset’ house help hurls 1-year-old from terrace', really bothered me. Check out the way it begins, ‘Byculla-based builder, Akhil Khakre, 47, brought home a girl to save her from a life on the streets. But he didn’t know that the girl would repay his kindness by trying to kill his one-year-old son.’ It goes on to say that the girl, all of 13, allegedly flung Khakre’s son from the terrace flat of a four story building because she was upset at being scolded for having broken a plate while washing utensils, an incident that had happened three days before.
So here it is then- a 13 year old picked up from the street and brought home, to be ‘educated’ and ‘assisting in domestic chores.’ While the incident is alarming in itself- people can just pick children up off the streets these days? Oh wait, who am I kidding, it happens all the time, doesn’t it?- what was equally shocking for me was the reportage. This stupid correspondent actually begins by attempting to paint a favourable picture of Khakre?!
The incident is distressing, I understand. And my heart does go out to the family, but that does not absolve Khakre in any way of having employed child labour. My heart goes out equally to the little girl, who may well have been abused, physically and mentally, for her to have taken such an extreme step. HT followed it up with another story that said ‘Byculla maid didn’t realise she would hurt the child: Cops.’ Huh? Which 13 year old does not understand that you can hurt a baby by throwing him around, let alone from the fourth floor?
This is seriously faulty reporting for all the questions that it fails to ask.

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