India is proud for his son of the soil Kailash Satyarthi who is the proud fifth Nobel prize winner of the country.
The prize was introduced by Nobel who died in 1896. Scholars suggest it was Nobel’s way to compensate for developing destructive inventions. These included dynamite and
ballistite, both of which were used violently during his lifetime in war in 1880s. Nobel was also instrumental in turning Bofors from an iron and steel producer into an armaments company. The famous Bofors guns are still in use by armies including in India.
India has total of five Nobel prize winners. Rabindranath Tagore for Literature, first non-European laureate, as a British Indian subject, knighted in 1913. He renounced the award in 1919 in protest over the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre. C. V Raman in Physics and was Knighted as a British Indian subject in 1929. Mother Teresa was awarded for Peace in 1979. She was an ethnic Albanian who became naturalised Indian citizen in 1948. Amartya Sen was awarded in 1998 for his work in Economics
Kailash Satyarthi belongs to Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh. He is a trained electrical engineer turned into an activist for children’s rights at the age of 26. As a boy, he was moved by other children who had to work, because poor parents could not send them to school.
“If not now, then when? If not you, then who? If we are able to answer these fundamental questions, then perhaps we can wipe away the blot of human slavery,” said Satyarthi, summing up his philosophy.
In 1983, he founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) to fight child labour. He created “RugMark”, a scheme which certifies that carpets and rugs sold abroad have been made without the labour of children. In 1998, Satyarthi became chairman of a global march against child labour and worked in more than 60 countries and rescued children from jobs in Asia, Africa and Latin America and organised a rally in Geneva, at a conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
A year later, the ILO approved an accord designed to protect children from jobs that expose them to danger or exploitation.
