The beauty of the glass bangles of Firozabad contrasts with the misery of people who produce them.

This paradox is also found in some other situations, for example, those who work in gold and diamond mines, or carpet weaving factories, and the products of their labour, the lives of construction workers, and the buildings they build.

l Look around and find examples of such paradoxes.

l Write a paragraph of about 200 to 250 words on any one of them. You can start by making notes.

The paradoxes of such kind can be found in large numbers in our daily life. One of the most common examples is our regular housemaids. They work to make our homes more comfortable for us, and yet they are never able to achieve the same level of comfort for themselves. This is due to several reasons such as lack of earnings, societal degradation, lack of access to facilities, etc. We enjoy the result of their misery and often fail to acknowledge their services. In fact, we cannot imagine a single day go by without the help of a housemaid, more specifically in the Indian context. Societal exclusion and degradation due to the kind of work they do are widely prevalent. Exploitation in the form of less pay for their services also pushes them further into poverty. Proper access to education and health is also absent which restricts their children from earning a better livelihood. It is commonly observed that the girl child of such housemaids is also forced to take up the same profession very young in life, often as young as 8 years old. It is, therefore, a vicious, continuous cycle of misery, one which is difficult to break.