Emaciated and brutalised Aduri-once a domestic help at a house in Mirpur of Dhaka city, who was abandoned in a heap of garbage at Pallabi, has long recovered from the starvation-related ill health and physical wound inflicted on her. But the laceration of her psyche is likely to haunt her as long as she lives. Nothing can make up for the ordeal she was made to go through at the hands of her employer Nourin Jahan Nodi. Yet the verdict announced by the judge of the Dhaka Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-3 will at least come as a solace for her because her torturer has been sentenced to imprisonment for life.
The judgment has been dubbed an exemplary one by the media because, as the general expectation is, it may work as a deterrent to violence against domestic helps. Will it? Society's mindlessness and insensitivity are growing at an accelerated rate. Maltreatment of child employee was not alien to the nature of employers in this part of the world in the past. But who could think of inserting a gas nozzle into the rectum of a poor boy of 10 to 12 years old? This is monstrous not much different in terms of deriving sadistic pleasure Hitler's infamous Gestapo is credited with.
As a woman Nourin Jahan Nodi has revealed unfathomable darkness in her heart. It is simply unbelievable that a person -man or woman -can inflict such horrendous brutality on a helpless girl and without provocation. What wrong can a teenage domestic help commit? Either her work may not satisfy her employer or she may at times accidentally break a glass or a plate. No, stealing by Aduri was not reported. Instead, she was denied food day after day and physically brutalised so ruthlessly that the very thought of it produces physical nausea in a soft-hearted person.
Nodi has been uncharacteristically repressive when she should have let the girl go to her parents. There was no obligation on her part to keep her. When she found the maid was unable to deliver according to her order, she could immediately contact her parents to take her away. Instead, she did to the helpless soul what no human being in his or her right senses can do to another fellow being.
If Nodi was just an aberration, at least society could draw some solace thinking that there would be no such recurrence. Unfortunately, incidents of similar brutalities are reported from time to time. What is so nauseating is that such incidents take place in residences of so-called educated and suave men and women. That they are taking advantage of poor people's helplessness is none of their concern. They cannot deny that without domestic helps who do the dirty jobs, their lifestyle full of comfort and relaxation would be seriously disrupted. Yet when it comes to treating the poor souls, they become the lords and masters of servants.
It is this lordly mentality that is to blame. A country's per capita income alone is a poor reflection of social progress. Even without being a socialist state, a country can be progressive enough if it respects the dignity of labour. Here physical labour is looked down upon and all the problems have their origin there. This country is still habituated to practices like bonded labour. But this is a dangerous mentality. The need is to come out of this psychic trap and look forward to meting out economic justice to all.
Clearly, the paltry wages paid to domestic helps are the number one denial of economic justice to them. Others are the derivatives of this mental inadequacy. In extreme forms, people like Nodi jump on girls like Aduri. This is convenient also. Women and children are more vulnerable than others in society. The girls in particular are the worst sufferers because they are weak and helpless.
Under the Child Labour Act, employment of underage children is punishable. But the obtaining socio-economic realities are hardly congenial for full enforcement of this provision. It is a fact that poor families have to depend to some extent on the income of their underage children. Such children work alongside their parents in crop fields or elsewhere in villages and in factories, on public transports or in employers' homes. Because such employments are unrecognised, their employers take full advantage of their lack of bargaining power.
So the inhuman practice goes on under the very nose of law enforcers and others members of society. In a situation like this, exploitation of child working hands has become endemic. Why not recognise child labour when it cannot be stopped? Turning a blind eye to this form of labour and doing nothing about the deprivation cannot be a solution to the problem. Children's right to universal education has to be implemented. How? That is the most important question. On this count at least, Bangladesh needs to be a welfare state. It has to take up the responsibility of educating each and every child and to that end work out a formula for their part-time employment as well as education in evening schools or under some alternative arrangements.
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com
Respect for dignity of labour
Nilratan Halder | Published: July 21, 2017 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
0
Share if you like