Buddhia running for life?

The last few days Buddhia Singh has been the cynosure of the Indian media…..though not as he would have liked…..”Child exploitation” screamed the dailies, and the picture of four year old Buddhia with his small pitiful figure running 68 kms along with CRPF jawans made frontpage news…..that imagery is perhaps the most powerful of human tools was made evident by the furor it created around the country…people who did not care to acquaint themselves of the facts were moved by the pictures which to them must have seemed indeed like exploitation or more like a human freak show…..

And what was indeed pathetic was that the media never felt the need to burrow into the facts before painting the “exploited” picture……guess we can say
“Whats new?” to that!!!!




Well, these are a few facts that I found out…the story behind the picture, so to say…so here it is in a bare-rag fashion…


Buddhia Singh was born in an extremely poverty-stricken home…his father was an alcoholic and used to beg and died when Buddhia was small….his mother used to eke out a living as a maid to try and feed her two children (Buddhia and his sister)….

Now Biranchi Das is a guy who can be called in a simplified manner as a philanthropic local talent-spotter….he would go around Bhubaneswar looking for destitute children who and would offer them lodgings and education and training in sports (mainly judo and athletics), or in other words a way out of their grinding hopelessness….now Das was acquainted with Buddhia…..

Buddhia in the meantime had developed gangrene and his leg was slated to be amputated….Biranchi Das offers to pay for the treatment and Buddhia is saved from a tragedy that would have certainly finished him off……

Of course, inability to meet the cost of medical treatment was not Budhia’s mother’s only problem….ultimately, what must be the case for thousands of poverty stricken Indians, she had to make the choice between having a better chance of fighting it out with one mouth to feed or have all of them being wiped out of existence….its a terrible choice but I believe that at this stage people become more practical….so she ‘sells’ Buddhia’ to a hawker for 400/- ( a princely sum for a human no? I bought a DVD for more yesterday)…..

Now Biranchi Das hears of this and tracks down the hawker and gets back Buddhia and offers him a better (much better) chance…..

Buddhia is taken to Das’s camp where scores of children (and many adults too) already train under him….he is given basic training and what is more important, a good balanced diet…..now as it happens, one day Biranchi Das notices that Buddhia has almost limitless stamina and can actually run for hours on end…..Das is intrigued especially when he notices that he has an innate tendency to run in the same manner as the naturally marathonic African runners…..so Das starts testing him slowly increasing the distance….10, 20, 30 Km….and the little guy doesn't break a sweat….

Now Das knows that he has a prodigy in his hands….so he begins to personally give special attention to his training…..and soon Buddhia becomes a star attraction and a state hero…..The Chief minister personally awards numerous awards to Buddhia and so do many other organization….and the little guy breaks one record after another…

It was on one such occasion that the news breaks out that child exploitation is happening in the streets of Orissa (guess the old and actual stories of child labour exploitation in zari and fireworks industry has become too boring to merit a front page splash)…and Buddhia becomes ‘in’famous…..






A better storyteller can tell it better but I am more concerned with reactions…..

The next thing we know NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) jumps in crying foul over the alleged exploitation of Buddhia….I began to wonder where the commission was when Buddhia was sold off so that the rest of his family could survive….then of course I remember that this is the same NHRC that jumped in favour of sparing Dhananjoy who was sentenced to be hanged for raping and murdering a schoolgirl in Kolkata….again, NHRC was being oh so politically correct…..and like the media, crying themselves hoarse without bothering about the facts….in fact even the doctors have said that his condition is pretty normal….of course he was tired and so the body indicators showed….and in any case what would you expect anybody to have who has run 68 kms, even a seasoned runner? And the doctors have maintained that he was in no danger whatsoever….

And what is the reaction of the NHRC (and its doctors) to that? That a 4 year old should not be made to run so much…..its like saying that Mozart should not be allowed to play the piano so much or write music so much (Mozart was composing and playing music since 4 yrs old, a music prodigy if any)…downright silly….

Budhia’s mother has gone on record accusing government of double standards…she asked where the government and the NGO were when her husband was dying because he didn’t have work, when Budhia’s leg was about to be amputated and when he was sold and finishing off by saying that Biranchi Das is now Budhia’s father, Mentor and God, since he was the one who stood by him all the time……and Buddhia has himself said quite unequivocally that he would not want to be anywhere else (but then you can say he is just 4, how can he tell what he wants….yeah like we can!!!)

But look at the irony….we have just discovered a prodigy…..one, whom, if we nurture properly can perhaps become a winner of that elusive gold medal at the Olympics….and what do we do? We accuse the one who discovered him, trained him, fed him, protected him of exploiting him….I have not yet come across anybody (in the newspapers and other ‘popular’ media) who thinks that we need to nurture Buddhia for the future….

It’s pretty much typical….we cry foul and shout from the rooftops about the injustices….but what about thinking of the children’s future? We ‘rescue’ children employed in the zari industries….and send them back to their families…to do what? Don’t we understand why they came away from their families (and why their families sent them) in the first place? Of course we do, but as usual, as with perhaps everything else, we take the simple way out, the path of least resistance….and everytime we send the ‘exploited’ children back, we cross out numbers on our nations balance sheet, “there we saved some more souls”….

We can do worse of course…we can send them all to correctional homes……

What needs to be done, realistically?

Give Biranchi Das lots of state support and funding…..he seems to be a self-motivated man who wants to do something constructive….give him lots of technical support as well so that the bonding that is there between him and his young ward is nurtured and strengthened via sports…..most of all Buddhia needs emotional support right now….he needs it if he needs to develop properly as an athlete….then?...mark Buddhia as a potential national treasure and treat him as such….and of course, give lots of incentives to guys like Biranchi Das so that the undoubted talents we have in various sports in India are given an opportunity to flourish….

Of course we wont do it….Buddhia will perhaps be separated from the man who has given him everything…maybe he would be paid lip service of support, which would of course be forgotten in a great hurry….what gangrene could have done (and failed), we would succeed……

Or perhaps he won’t but he would be forgotten all the same….so would his mentor….and we would move on to the next story….

And then in 2008 Olympics, we would have a great big debate perhaps hosted by Barkha Dutt on why we don’t win medals….

Ah well…..