Building a Wider
Horizon With Labour
On February 14, Chandni Rajbanshi - three years old - was playing catch with her cousin Swapna. They raced through the Teena Brick Works in Pundaooh, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, where their father Uday Rajbanshiwas a labourer. It was Sunday morning and most of the kiln-workers were resting. Ten-year-old Swapna had caught up with Chandni, and lifted her in her arms, when she stepped on a plastic sheet - the lid of a furnace, which split and dropped both girls into the flames. It required a backhoe excavator to lift out their remains four hours later. All that could be found was a hip-bone. The accident might even have gone unnoticed except for another child playing nearby who saw the two girls fall.
