Kailash Satyarthi recalls three significant events that shaped his life path and professional career. The first occurred in 1959 when he was five and a half years old and studying in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh.
On his first day of school, he noticed a boy cleaning shoes near the gate. Feeling curiosity and confusion, he asked the teacher why the child was sitting outside the school. He was told that it was not uncommon for poor children to have to work. Satyarthi did not accept this explanation. Daily, he observed this boy, roughly his age, who sat there with his father. One day, he gathered the courage and asked the father why his son did not attend school. The man replied with deep despair: 'Grandma, people like you go to school. We are born for this kind of work.'
In childhood, Satyarthi felt that something was wrong, but he could not understand what it was. He remembers: 'I was taught that God made us all equal. Why this inequality?' This clash of views gave him a completely different perspective on life at a very early age.
The second event happened when Satyarthi was only 11 years old. He discovered that his best friend and other students had stopped attending classes in the new semester. He was informed that such dropouts occurred because poor families could not afford even minimal fees and textbooks. Satyarthi decided to do something. He came up with an idea and shared it with his friend. He recounted that his father had given him money for buying sweets after successfully passing an exam. They went to a vegetable vendor, gave him the money, and rented his cart.
They toured the surroundings, persuading people to donate used books from their children so that those in need could use them. 'Within a few hours, the cart was full, and we had to make a second round. That day we collected 2300 books,' he recalls. Soon another idea was born—creating a permanent book bank for needy children, which even school principals and bookstore owners participated in. About 10,000 books were collected.
Decades later, when Satyarthi returned to Vidisha after receiving the Nobel Prize in 2014, he heard someone call out to him during a parade in an open jeep. 'The gentleman said, 'I am a retired school principal. I almost dropped out due to lack of money. But your book bank initiative allowed me to continue',' Satyarthi recalls. It was an important moment for both.
The third event took place when Satyarthi was 27 years old and began publishing the magazine 'Sangharsh Jaari Rahega,' which advocated for oppressed and marginalized sections of the population. The office was located near Mandi House in central Delhi. One day, a sick man in Lundi knocked on his door, having lost consciousness after a few words. He was holding a copy of the magazine. When the man regained consciousness, he began to moan: 'Babuji, please save my daughter.' His name was Wasal Khan. Over the next few minutes, he told his life story. He and his wife were taken from a village in Aligarh district and brought to Sirhind in Punjab, where they were enslaved at a brick factory for 17 years. They worked without pay, receiving only food and old clothes. 'He said that the owners planned to sell Sabo, his 15-year-old daughter, to brothel agents from Delhi,' Satyarthi recounts. Wasal escaped on a truck and reached Chandigarh, where a magazine subscriber gave him an old copy and advised him to go to Delhi for help.
Satyarthi faced a difficult choice: write an article or take action. He chose the latter. He organized a truck, and upon arriving at the location, he and his friends from Punjab—one of whom had a camera—boldly told the lone armed guard that they were journalists from Delhi. The guard fled. 'We were about to leave with 36 men, women, and children when a police jeep arrived with the owners. They started beating us and forcing the workers off the truck,' Satyarthi recalls. The truck driver fled. Satyarthi and his friends were also forced to flee. 'We lost our slippers, our clothes were torn.'
They somehow managed to reach Chandigarh and then Delhi. 'They took the camera. But two reels that vividly captured the workers on video remained with us. We had good evidence,' he says. Satyarthi approached Swami Agnivesh, and through him, the renowned lawyer Gobind Mukhoty, who filed a Habeas Corpus petition in the Delhi High Court. Since no one knew the names of the brick factory owners, the notification was sent to the Punjab state police and the state itself.
Ultimately, Wasal Khan, Sabo, and the others were presented in court and released. The children who grew up at the brick factory did not know life outside of it. 'When we walked from the High Court to our office, they jumped like frogs released from a bucket, oblivious to the traffic. That day I understood what true freedom was. I felt God in their joy. We also knew that this was the field where we should work. For decades, our organization, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has saved over 140,000 men, women, and children,' he concludes.
Furthermore, Satyarthi believes that in the age of artificial intelligence, technology must incorporate compassion (karuna), which he defines as 'the strength born from the feeling of others' suffering and prompting us to act.' He posits that the development, creation, and implementation of AI technologies must be governed by a sense of responsibility. 'AI must have a moral compass. It cannot simply crave profit.'
