Anees Jung wants the children to become free from the

vicious cycle of poverty into which they have fallen due

to the middlemen, sahukars and law enforcement
officials. She wants them to be bold enough to raise
their voice against their oppressors. She wants them to
be fearless and optimistic so that they can dream of
taking up other occupations, She wants some people to
help them develop these qualities so that they can be
free from injustice and exploitation take up other
respectable and better paying jobs which will improve
their financial condition.
Extreme poverty, hard work and dismal working
conditions result in the loss of the childhood of children
who are in this profession. The working conditions of all
bangle-makers are pathetic and miserable. They work in
high temperature, badly lit and poorly ventilated glass
furnaces due to which child workers especially are at
risk of losing their eyesight at an early age and get
prone to other health hazards. The stinking lanes of
Ferozabad are choked with garbage and humans and
animals live together in these hovels. There is no
development or progress in their lives with the passage
of time. They have no choice but to work in these
inhuman conditions. Mind-numbing toil kills their dreams
and hopes. They are condemned to live and die in
squalor, subjected to a life of poverty and perpetual
exploitation.
Mukesh’s father represents the underpaid, over
exploited bangle makers of Ferozabad who is a victim of
his own caste and is caught in a vicious circle of
Sahnkars, middlemen, politi¬cians and policemen. He
leads a hand-to-mouth existence in a shack with his
family which includes two elderly parents, two sons and
a daughter-in-law. Lack of education and awareness,
the stigma of caste and a vicious nexus of people who
exploit them have killed all initiative and drive in the
young and the old. Time seems to stand still in Mukesh’s
home in Ferozabad. There is no progress and no
development despite years of mind- numbing toil. All the
labourers of Ferozabad are victims of middlemen and
touts. Their desire to dream and dare is snubbed in their
childhood. They have no choice but to accept their
subservience silently as their spirit is broken and their
initiative dormant.
Through the story of the bangle makers of Firozabad,
the author expresses concern over their exploitation in
the hazardous job of bangle making and addresses the
circumstances which keep the workers in poverty. They
live in stinking lanes, choked with garbage in homes.
Their houses are hovels with families of humans and
animals coexisting in a primeval state. They cannot
organise themselves into cooperatives. Their families
are caught in a web of poverty and in a vicious circle of
the sahukars, the middlemen, the keepers of law, the
policemen, the bureaucrats and the politicians who
impose on them a baggage which they cannot put down.
They move in a spiral from poverty, to apathy, to greed
and to injustice.