In Uttar Pradesh, kids fan bureaucrat in charge of social welfare

In a nation where the government runs a slew of programmes to end child labour, this picture of kids fanning a bureaucrat while he was attending a function in Uttar Pradesh is a new low. [caption id=“attachment_1174805” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image courtesy: @ANI_news[/caption] The image tweeted by news agency ANI shows children holding hand-fans made of paper and fanning a panel of people attending a meeting in the Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh. Among the panel was Principal Secretary for social welfare in the state, Sunil Kumar, whose official duties require him to be responsible for the upliftment of marginalised sections of society. It wasn’t immediately clear if this was part of one of the schemes or was just a way to beat the heat by the organisers of the meeting. Kumar has not made any comment on the issue as yet and the Uttar Pradesh government has not offered any explanation for why children were needed for the task. However, it isn’t an entirely new thing for bureaucrats and government officials to make common citizens share their burden. This video showed Punjab cops standing on the shoulders of some not-so-giant villagers to brave flood waters. Not just government officials, there have been the case of a journalist too, who chose to ride of the shoulders of a flood victim in Uttarakhand. As Firstpost’s Praveen Swami had noted at the time : The bottom line is probably this: these societies haven’t made the transition to a mass culture based on citizenship, rather than status vested by wealth or status. This is the bedrock of a republic—and though we might aspire to be one, we’re not there yet.