NEW YORK: Forget jargon-filled monologues, raids to rescue enslaved Indian children inject drama into a documentary about Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, who hopes the film will inspire viewers to play a part in the global fight to eradicate modern slavery.
“Kailash,” which premiered last week at the US-based Sundance Film Festival, charts Satyarthi’s rise from domestic anti-trafficking figurehead to Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Satyarthi, 64, whose charity Bachpan Bachao Andolan has been credited with freeing at least 80,000 child slaves in India over 30 years, said the film might shock audiences and spur them to take action such as refusing to buy goods made with slave labor.
“Many people have never thought that slavery still exists in its cruelest form,” Satyarthi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Sundance, the independent film industry’s premiere US gathering — now in its 33rd year.
“I always feel that consciousness-raising is the first step to societal change,” added Satyarthi, joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.
In an early scene of the documentary, one of many filmed with handheld cameras, activists working under Satyarthi’s lead storm into a New Delhi apartment housing several child laborers. After one campaigner breaks down a padlocked door, his frantic colleague eventually unearths stunned-looking children from under piles of plastic bags where they had been hidden.
Filmmaker Derek Doneen spent two years shooting scenes with Satyarthi’s team, which the American director said had enabled him to avoid making a film dominated by data and talking heads.
“I didn’t want to make the sad child-slavery movie that you see and maybe it affects you but you don’t want to ... talk about it because it’s too heavy,” said the Kailash director.
Countless children across India are trafficked and enslaved every year — either forced to work or sold into sexual slavery.
About 60 percent of the more than 23,000 trafficking victims rescued in India were children in 2016, government data shows.
But activists say slavery figures are hugely underestimated in the socially-conservative society, where the fear of being blamed, shamed or stigmatized means victims and their families often keep quiet and choose not to report the abuses they face.
Worldwide, about 10 million children were living as modern slaves last year — either trapped in forced labor or forced marriages — according to the United Nations International Labor Organization and human rights group Walk Free Foundation.
Nobel laureate Satyarthi’s film exposes India child slavery
Nobel laureate Satyarthi’s film exposes India child slavery
Some Warren Buffett wisdom on his last day leading Berkshire Hathaway
OMAHA, Nebraska: The advice that legendary investor Warren Buffett offered on investing and life over the years helped earn him legions of followers who eagerly read his annual letters and filled an arena in Omaha every year to listen to him at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings.
Buffett’s last day as CEO is Wednesday after six decades of building up the Berkshire conglomerate. He’ll remain chairman, but Greg Abel will take over leadership.
Here’s a collection of some of Buffett’s most famous quotes from over the years:
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“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
That’s how Buffett summed up his investing approach of buying out-of-favor stocks and companies when they were selling for less than he estimated they were worth.
He also urged investors to stick with industries they understand that fall within their “circle of competence” and offered this classic maxim: “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”
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“After they first obey all rules, I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper to be read by their spouses, children and friends with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter.
“If they follow this test, they need not fear my other message to them: Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless.”
That’s the ethical standard Buffett explained to a Congressional committee in 1991 that he would apply as he cleaned up the Wall Street investment firm Salomon Brothers. He has reiterated the newspaper test many times since over the years.
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“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
Many companies might do well when times are good and the economy is growing, but Buffett told investors that a crisis always reveals whether businesses are making sound decisions.
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“Who you associate with is just enormously important. Don’t expect that you’ll make every decision right on that. But you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.”
Buffett always told young people that they should try to hang out with people who they feel are better than them because that will help improve their lives. He said that’s especially true when choosing a spouse, which might be the most important decision in life.
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“Our unwavering conclusion: never bet against America.”
Buffett has always remained steadfast in his belief in the American capitalist system. He wrote in 2021 that “there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America. Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking.”
