Not as obvious as it might seem

A week ago I had a dinner with Jeremy and Ahsan Kirmani, AIESEC alumnus who recently came back from United States from his Masters program and is now working in Pakistan.

As many foreigners (or Pakistanis who came back from abroad) and meeting in a restaurant, we talked a lot about Pakistan. What is different in this country, where it is going, and what can make a difference here.

It was a long talk, but one of the things that struck me most was about child labor in Pakistan.

Ahsan was telling us how, during his university years in Lahore, he was involved in one interesting research program. At that time some Pakistani companies were refused to export their production to Europe due to the fact that they “used child labor” which is against EU standards. So students were supposed to interview the management of the companies and find out why it happened.

My first thought was “Fair enough. Using child labor is not acceptable thing to do. It seems like the right solution”.

But then he told us what was the response of company management. They said: look, we have a choice. These 12-year old kids might not work, and they go begging on the street. Or we can involve them in production, pay them money, and they will have food to eat and go to school.

This is the paradigm that is very difficult to understand for a European people who have normal living standards and who can not imagine how employment can help someone survive from begging, selling flowers on the street, let alone sleeping outside and not eating for days.

On a related note, Mariam was even telling me that some kids are being paid by NGOs for going to school! If they weren’t, they would go begging which is the easy way to get money for food.

The same question is raised when people talk about servants in Pakistan. I mentioned some time before how every upper-class family in Karachi would have their own servants: cleaning ladies, drivers, cooks. “It’s not fair!” – you could say – “how could people be servants for others!” Yet if you look at things from the other side, you will see that these servants get the opportunity to earn money and send their children to good schools, so that they achieve more in life than their parents.

Things might not be as obvious as they look from the 1st glance.

Being in Pakistan, I learned to look from different sides.