Divakaruni Live Free And Starve Summary

However, addressing the problem of child labor will require more than recognizing its connection to poverty. Governments, human rights organizations, labor leaders, corporations, and health professionals must all work together to find effective ways to ensure that the world's children are educated and not exploited in jobs in multinational or illegal industries. By proposing this act, it would prohibit U.S. imports of goods produced by children laborer. Such legislation would help third world countries enforce laws against child labor; ultimately, it would protect the world's youngsters from the abusive and hazardous conditions often found in factories that rely on low-wage labor. It would curb poverty by getting these kids out of hazardous, abusive working conditions and into school where they may receive an education and contribute productively to their economy. We look out for animals and prisoners, but fail to protect youngsters from exploitive and abusive labor.

Throughout her article, Divakaruni makes an excellent argument by tossing her stance back and forth from the pros to cons of the bill. She exercises caution by agreeing with her target audience and allowing them to hold their sympathetic emotions, while also using gentle sarcasm and logical appeals to express the other side of the story. Chitra includes a personal story, putting a face and name to a child who benefitted from work, and is able to use the story to show that, perhaps, allowing child labor is the only way to give these children better lives. She ends with a strong, powerful thought that the reader can take away from her article and that will stick in the reader’s mind: that they could leave these children worse than when they had jobs. Overall, Chitra Divakaruni has crafted a convincing argument that is difficult to oppose, and has probably affected the minds of many Americans with her

Child labor is very demanding throughout many countries around the world, especially those were the economy is not doing so well. As in the United States there are some very strict rules and guidelines for the employers to follow or they can get fined and these fines are not cheap in anyway. As in fines if employers violate these laws they can also be imprisonment on top of fines if the Justice department see fit to do so. These laws and rules will help the individual child, the society and the economy down the road. In this paper we will examine the laws behind child labor, the definition and the history of how the child labor law became about. Also, we will discuss the international child labor law and how that became about. We will discuss

One advantage of globalization is that it has tried to decrease the amount of child labor in Third World countries. Divakaruni states in her essay that, “Some days back, the House passed a bill stating that the United States would no longer permit the import of goods from factories where forced or indentured child labor was used” (340). Although this bill seems like a great idea, Americans do not truly see all the reasons behind using child labor. America is significantly different than Third World countries. One of the main reasons for parents selling their children was because they could not afford to take care of them or keep them properly nourished, for it was not for the sole purpose to get rid of their children. The children’s strong work ethic provided money to live and feed themselves. However, the author states that this bill is “of no use unless it goes hand

I always thought that child labor was morally wrong. As Kass would say my repugnance of child labor was “the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it” (Kass 20). This class reinforced my belief that repugnance was not enough. I realized that parents did not send their children to work out of greed, but to survive. Christopher Udry, a Yale economics professor, explains that “child labor is a symptom of poverty…and also a cause of future poverty” (Udry 243). To tackle child labor we need to tackle poverty with a diverse array of governmental policies. Altruistic boycotts are not productive. These boycotts against firms that use child labor force employers to fire their childhood-aged workforces. This would be a disastrous turn of events for the child because they would not be able to help their families survive. Basu cites the example of Nepalese firms firing carpet makers because of a global boycott of their products due to child labor. Basu explains that as a result of the boycott, between 5000 and 7,000 girls became prostitutes. A well-intentioned campaign ended up hurting the very people it sought to protect” (Basu

In between his chores, Nimai was also encouraged to learn to read and write. This anecdote into her past allows the reader to see that not all child labourers are placed in harsh conditions, and that they are given a better opportunity to succeed as they are given proper food and education, all while supporting their families. Divakaruni's logical appeal, shows the cause and effect the bill will have. Children who are not working are starving: forced to “[steal from] the neighbours’ fields and [eat] whatever they [can] find”(Divakaruni 468), and children that are working have access to food and the possibility of education as they are “encouraged to learn to read and write” (Divakaruni 468). Divakaruni forces the reader to second-guess the bill’s positive impact of ‘freeing the children’ and accepting her argument, that the bill will do more harm than good. Furthermore, this example makes it clear to the reader that there are only two possible outcomes for the children; they can work and earn a livelihood for their families or, due to the bill, they can starve and resort to begging as a means of

Alberto’s example is not the only example of child labor. There are 196 countries in the world today, and 46 countries don’t protect children under the age of 18 from performing hazardous work. Globally 168 million children between ages 5-17 are child laborers. Many kids never go to school or drop out limiting future options and forcing children to accept low wage work as adults and to raise their own children in poverty. Children work because work is perceived as the best use of their time in contributing to the needs of the family and preparing them for the life they are expected to

The use of child labor in developing nations is not a moral issue, it is a cultural one. International corporations should not let the moral argument or current legislation such as the Child Labor Deterrence Act (CLDA) influence how and where they conduct operations. Grounded in what appears as legitimate concern for children, proposed legislation such as the CLDA hinder the potential growth and progress of developing nations by limiting the number of corporations who are willing to set up operations within developing countries. The fallacy with CLDA and similar legislation is that they based on a one-sided moral perspective that inhibits change in developing countries by preventing

Our paper has looked at factory conditions and found that the management of the children is very poor. Children in factories worked a gruesome sixteen hours a day, and were not tended to properly. The over working of these children will lead to many deaths in the future, due to the insanitation and the labor they endure every day. Ms. Pennypincher stated that the “children were beaten, slapped, and whipped” if they disobeyed the orders in her factory, resulting in the average thirty deaths a year in her factory. In addition, the amount of children who worked in one room would be on average around ten to fifteen kids. The ten to fifteen children would operate the machines in the factory with optimum lighting, due to ceilings with tall windows.

Currently there are 168 million child laborers in the world. More than half of them, 85 million, employed at hazardous jobs, according to the International Labour Organization. In the article “In Praise of Cheap Labor Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all”, Paul Krugman Professor of economics at MIT, explains that child labor cannot just be wiped away like so many other distasteful practices. That it takes a perfect storm of economic success and low child labor numbers for a full transition to labor laws that ban it. Employers will agree to follow the law; similar to what happened in the U.S. in the 1930’s when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This Act established standards for the basic minimum wage and overtime pay. It restricts the hours that children under age 16 can work and forbids the employment of children under age 18 in certain jobs deemed too dangerous. Krugman believes that many developing countries are not at a point where they can support a full ban on child labor. He gives the example of countries like “Indonesia [who are,] still so poor that progress is measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat” (Krugman 4). Professor of economics at Yale university, Christopher Udry, in his article “Child Labor” provides a definition of child labor as “ the sacrifice of the future welfare of the child in exchange for additional income” (243). The causes of Child labor are not as simple as cultural or economic reasons, and a

There are children that suffer through child labor daily. Child labor is the use of children in a business or industry, usually illegal. “3 billion people around the world survive on $2.50 a day or less. And 2 billion people do not hold a bank account or have access to essential financial services” (“Living in Poverty”1). Children that are normally in labor come from a poor family that’s in need of money so badly that it comes down to selling their own children or putting them up for jobs. Child labor is happening right now, all around our world. There are children being forced into labor and not knowing anything different. Therefore, some parents and families may rely on child labor in order to have lives basic

Modern society is troubled by remnants of the past that exist today, not only due the pervasive exploitation of child labor in developing nations, but also because of the fact that child labor is undeniably at an all time high.

Child labour is a very real problem in the world today, and although it is declining, progress is happening at a slow and unequal pace. Child labour by the International Labour Organization is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development (Diallo, Etienne, & Mehran, 2013, p. 2).” In the most extreme forms of child labour it could account for child enslavement, separation from their families, exposure to serious hazards and illnesses and being left to fend for themselves on the streets (Dinopoulos & Zhao, 2007). In order for certain types of work to be included as “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type of work,

Regardless of some elaboration on this issue which clearly states that systematic approaches to child labor have not yet been materialized; in terms of sociology many countries continue to use child labor illegally. According to recorded information from the U.S. government presented by Caulfield’s (2009), he demonstrates how India has the peak rate of forced child labor and trafficking in areas such as textile manufacturing factories, goal mines, restaurants and household servants. Therefore, the major aim of Caulfield’s research is to focus the exploitation of young children in India, accounting both the legal and illegal side to show the different ways in which Indian government had tried and can defeat this issue of children being exploited and forced to work.

“In factories and loom-sheds in India, Neap and Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of children as young as five are reported as working in near-slave conditions. They are put to work weaving and hand-knotting oriental rugs and carpets for export. Labouring up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, they are often forced to eat and sleep where they work. Sometimes they are locked in at night. Children who make mistakes or try to run away risk being beaten, deprived of food or even tortured. These child workers are usually from the poorest families, toiling to pay off their parents’ debt to a money broker. Needless to say, they don’t get to go to school” (Litvinoff page 75). This quote displays the hopelessness these many of children face in their everyday life. They are forced to work an excruciating amount of time, with no hope of ever having a better life. These children are uneducated due to their lack of free time or money to attend school, which in turn strips away another possibility of rising up and breaking free of this vicious cycle that affects their family and fellow children. Within this job, they will never make enough money to earn a living, which will always put them in debt and having to work more and more. When these children grow up and potentially have children of their own, those children will be forced to follow in the same path as their parents. This cycle will continue until us the consumers intervene and attempt to help these children. If we were to help