Yesterday, while riding my scooter, I saw two women doing manual labor. They were lifting heavy bricks and stones under the scorching heat of the sun. A question arose in my mind: how painfully difficult their lives must be. At the same time, I couldn’t help but smile at the paradoxical nature of this world.
On one side, we sit in air-conditioned rooms talking about equality, dignity, and freedom, while on the other side, we turn our faces away from the harsh reality of life. We see people like them and still ignore them, then return to our daily race of earning money.
My question is: will those of us who call ourselves liberals and protectors of human rights actually do something to improve the lives of these people? Will we step outside our comfortable lives and say that we will give them dignified jobs? Will we replace machines with human labor so that these people can get work, even if it means a small financial loss for us? Will we stop merely talking about welfare and actually practice welfare at the ground level?
But the truth is that ninety percent of people will not do it, because it requires selflessness and sacrifice — the kind that existed in people like Kailash Satyarthi, B. R. Ambedkar, Nelson Mandela, and Abraham Lincoln. That is why I consider this world paradoxical.
The paradox is that we speak endlessly about welfare, but our actions move in the exact opposite direction — toward comfortable lives and personal comfort.
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