ABP Ideas Of India | Schemes And Laws Are There For Children, Implement Them In Letter And Spirit: Kailash Satyarthi

Kailash Satyarthi was speaking at the inaugural session of ABP Network’s first Ideas of India Summit, which is bringing together thought leaders to start a dialogue on the ideas of India.

Kailash Satyarthi was the first guest at the ABP Network's first Ideas of India Summit, in Mumbai on March 25, 2022

Mumbai: Nobel Peace Prize winning child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi Friday said the roadmap for changing India in the next 25 years is to begin by providing quality education to all the children. He said education to them is what can become the beginning of changing the country in the next 25 years.

“Children in a healthy, safe, and free atmosphere should be sent to school where they can get education at par with the children of politicians, and other influential people,” he said. “And it can simply be done by implementing schemes, laws meant for children.”  

Satyarthi was speaking at the inaugural session of ABP Network’s first Ideas of India Summit, which went underway in Mumbai on Friday. The event is bringing together visionary leaders from different walks of lives to start a dialogue on the ideas of India. 

Satyarthi, who was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize along with Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, in 2014, had dedicated his award to the nation. 

At the summit, he said 40 per cent of the population in India is less than 18 years of age, which shows where the future of the country lies. He said the efforts should be at bringing happiness to the faces of children.

“Today, if you bring happiness on the face of a girl child who comes from a vulnerable background, a year later, you will see that that happiness has brought a change in her life,” he added. “This is what needs to be done.”

'Dreams Are Powerful'

Some 35 years ago, he said, thinking about this change was difficult because there were no laws on child trafficking, bonded labour, no schemes, zero societal awareness, and no conversation about it in Parliament.

“But dreams are powerful, and anything can be achieved with the aid of it,” he said during his conversation with ABP Network’s Sumit Awasthi, who chaired the session on ‘Surakshit Bachpan, Surakshit Bharat’.

Today, Satyarthi said, there are many laws and government schemes for the welfare of children in the country. He said the need is to implement them in letter and spirit. 

The 68-year-old said he has so far liberated more than 86,000 children in India from child labour, slavery and trafficking through his programmes. He was also attacked many times for doing his work. 

“Our country is the one of the few in the world that, alongside a multitude of problems, has a variety of solutions available to them. This is the beauty of it us,” he said, in response to a question. 

Satyarthi said he started his activism during childhood, after being triggered by events of discrimination, including with himself when he was “ostracised” and made to stay in a separate room for many years. Recalling his trials and tribulations, Satyarthi said the toughest of them was to see one of his co-workers getting killed during a protest to seek implementation of a scheme. 

He said the incident bogged him down but he never gave up.

“The children keep me going, and are motivated along the journey. I want the world to see through the eyes of children who do not have to use any filters. If it does, the world is a beautiful place to live. There is nothing better than having the innocence of a child to have inside you,” he added.

“For me, children of all nations are alike, be it Pakistan, America or Africa,” he said.