Discuss Some Issue of Personal, Local, National, or International Concern and Its Importance to You.

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Places in India are often quickly associated with street cows, monuments, festivals and modernisation, which I do not deny to have seen and marvelled at during my thirteen years here. But, one particular place has struck me deeply, a sight that is so common, but ironically so ignored – the separation of two simply contrasting worlds, worlds of the rich and the poor. At every stoplight, it is not hard to find a feeble child next to a Mercedes begging for a ten-rupee note or even a coin or two. It is also not hard to find a pool party at a five-star hotel right next to a slum colony with only a wall separating the two places. Analogously, the American Embassy School and the Vivekananda slum camp stand in contrast with each other, separated by a thick concrete wall with barbed wires. We can see a group of teenagers from the Vivekananda camp heading towards a nearby construction site with shovels and pickaxes. Then later after school, around five o'clock, similar group of camp kids returning back home exhausted. Whenever I see the camp kids walking to the construction site, a sense of guilt strikes me, making me stare at my hands. Being able to use my hands to write, draw, play basketball and hug friends while the children at the camp use theirs to shift boulders, causes that guilt to tingle within me along with a remorseful feeling. Child labour is prevalent in India as children are put to work with minimal payment, if any. In dark, shoddy factories, these children work 24/7 to make carpets or firecrackers. Despite the ban on child labour, children are still favoured and are pushed more distant from education. By being forced to work in deplorable factories, they are exposed not only to diseases but to illiteracy. I believe that this is an issue that must be undertaken immediately in order to free the children labouring under the sweltering heat at this very

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