As I write this article, I am deeply embarrassed. My head hangs in shame to learn about the news that should in fact make me feel proud. I know absolutely nothing about Mr.Kailash Satyavarti, an Indian unsung hero who won the Nobel Prize for peace recently. The pity is, I checked with many people but none of them have any clue about Mr. Kailash Satyavarti and his Bachpan Bachao Andolan!
As an Indian, it hurts to accept the fact that I need a Nobel committee to introduce me to someone doing commendable work in my own country! There is huge dent on my ego to admit that I had not heard of him till the news
broke about him being conferred upon the Nobel peace prize for 2014. This means I am not perhaps as well read and aware citizen as I take myself to be. It is also a reflection of us as society and the mainstream media, that fails to cover meaningful news that matter, its due coverage.
A Bollywood celebrity getting a boob job done, a page three "socialite" or a scamster politician involved with corruption of billions catch more eyeballs ensuring readership/viewership and offers staple diet of insatiable titillation of sensation. Nobody is interested to read/write about crusaders against the real evils,the age old, never ending issues like child labour. Children as young as three work everywhere and have become so much part of our everyday existence that we no more find anything wrong with it or are moved by this evil. Try observing keenly on that long commute from home to office everyday and you would be shocked to notice how our traffic signals, road side shops, so many industries that we regularly depend on for our requirements thrive because of young children who work in inhuman condition for sake of their survival.
Amidst incessant buzz of Bollywood gossip, the ubiquity of sting operations, scams and ravenous paparazzi coverage of real stories of heroes like Kailash Satyarthi if at all coverd, stands awkwardly on some strange corner of inside page of the newspaper. Indian media is enslaved to its obsession with Bollywood and self created heroes and incessantly keep embroiling the nation with trivia while someone who has been in public life for more than four decades, sustaining the
relentless struggle for the cause close to his heart even at the risk to his
own life, his unique work and commendable feat of saving 80,000 children from child labour goes almost unnoticed!
It is time media woke up to the fact that there are many unsung heroes, whose work goes unnoticed because it completely lacks the sheen of sensation!
Congratulations Mr. Kailash Satvarthi ! My salute to you and your noble work!
