By Riya JainGrade 9

Definition

Fact• A thing that is known or

proved to be true

Opinion• A view or judgment formed

about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

Examples

• Fact: today the temperature is 22 degrees C. Opinion: Today it is mild to warm.

Fact: Drink too much alcohol and you get drunk. Opinion: Alcohol is bad for society.

Fact: Drinking alcohol diminishes driving ability. Opinion: Drunk drivers should be locked away.

Fact: Japan condones the harvesting of whales. Opinion: Killing whales id bad.

Article on child labor• Labourers below the age of 14 years are called child labor. India has

the largest number of child labor in the world. According to the census figures of 1991, India has 11.29 million child labourers, which constitute 1.34 per cent of the total population of our country. Most of the child labourers are engaged in agriculture and allied subject like livestock, foresting and fisheries. In the urban areas, children work in dhabas, eateries helpers or cleaners in trucks and as domestic servants etc. They have long working hours, bad and unhygienic working conditions and fewer wages. The main reason behind child labor is poverty. Children born in poor families are forced to work not only for their own survival but also for their family. Awareness of the people and Government also compels poor parents to make their children employed as laborers in agricultural forms, factories, brick kilns and as domestic servants. Let us all take a step to ban this evil.

• But in all this mess, there was one silver lining. While trying to understand the intricacies of the Palestine-Israel conflict by reading Chetan Bhagat tweets, I came across the news that Bolivia has lowered its legal working age to 10. Fourteen-year-old Rehan Vadra might be already pulling at his uncle's kurta sleeves wanting to be a member of the Bolivian Parliament rather than just visiting the Indian one to observe proceedings.

• "So how on earth does lowering the working age to 10 make good news?" you are perfectly right to ask as you bury yourself deeper into this column so as to avoid any eye contact with the eight-year-old outside your car window peddling badly photocopied pirated editions of The Polyester Prince and Fifty Shades of Grey at a signal crossing. Well, let's just say that bringing the law in touch with reality is not always a bad thing.

• Bolivia — no, it wasn't one of the countries that was in the football World Cup this time despite being east of Brazil and north of Argentina — has about a million children between the ages of 5 and 17 working. That's about 15% of the country's workforce. Many of them are hawkers, supplementing their parents' income. But a majority work in the Dickensian environs of mining and cane-harvesting, not exactly behind a McDonald's counter.

• So, the Bolivian Congress, with support from President Evo Morales —who reportedly herded llamas as a boy — pushed through the law last Thursday. Under the legislation, "self-employed" (read, family-operated) 10-year-olds can now work as long as they are under parental supervision. They will also have to attend school, which is a bummer if you're a Bolivian minor hoping to cut classes and earn bolivianos from a tender age. A Bolivian has to be 12 to gain employment under contract. This, too, will now involve going to school. The flip side is working kids will now get safeguards and the state will, hopefully, get serious about punishing lawbreakers.

• Back here in We're-Feudal-But-We-Have-Malls India, we have around 4.98 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 working. Most of them are engaged in agriculture-related labor across not-so-bucolic India. An overwhelming majority is engaged in that giant cesspool politely called the unorganized sector. Which doesn't only mean that boy serving tea in the chai shack or that girl stitching glitter on the salwar, but also the kid working as a domestic with minimum-wages-are-for-trade-unions functions.

• The Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986 makes the employment of children under 14 in "hazardous" workplaces such as catering, construction, auto garages, bidi-making, tanning and brick kilns illegal in India. But you wouldn't be delusional to think that child labor in India, despite the law, isn't very picky. Getting the Indian reality to match Indian legislation like they've done in the Plurinational State of Bolivia won't be a bad idea. Unless you really think that the only folks employing kids in India are those big, bad multinationals running garment godowns. Frankly, if we had it our way, we would have hired only kids on the cheap.

Facts and opinion

• Fact:- Children are sold or kidnapped and forced to do all the labor work. They are scared and can’t raise their voice against this crime. There are more child labors in India. Experts estimate that child labor on South Asia’s carpet looms has dropped from 1 million to 250,000 since the launch of GoodWeave in 1995. They have long working hours and very few wages. We have around 4.98 million children working between the ages 5 and 14 working.

• Opinion-: we should not encourage this crime. We should not hire children below 14 years. We should stop this crime wherever we see it. We should let children study not work. You wouldn’t be delusional to think that child labor in India, despite the law isn’t very picky. Frankly, if we had it our way. We would have hired only kids on the cheap.

Information on fact• A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The

usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is, whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience.

• In most common law jurisdictions, the general concept and analysis of fact reflects fundamental principles of jurisprudence, and is supported by several well-established standards.

• In science, a "fact" is a careful observation or measurement, also called empirical evidence. Facts are central to building scientific theories. Various forms of observation and measurement lead to fundamental questions about the scientific method

• Facts may be understood as that which makes a true sentence true. Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" is about the fact Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.

Information on opinion• In general, an opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement about matters commonly

considered to be subjective, i.e. based on that which is less than absolutely certain, and is the result of emotion or interpretation of facts. What distinguishes fact from opinion is that facts are verifiable, i.e. can be objectively proven to have occurred. An example is: "America was involved in the Vietnam War" versus "America was right to get involved in the Vietnam War". An opinion may be supported by facts, in which case it becomes an argument, although people may draw opposing opinions from the same set of facts. Opinions rarely change without new arguments being presented. It can be reasoned that one opinion is better supported by the facts than another by analyzing the supporting arguments.

• Public opinion• In contemporary usage, public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs

held by a population (e.g., a city, state, or country), while consumer opinion is the similar aggregate collected as part of marketing research (e.g., opinions of users of a particular product or service). Typically, because the process of gathering opinions from all individuals are difficult, expensive, or impossible to obtain, public opinion (or consumer opinion) is estimated using survey sampling (e.g., with a representative sample of a population).

• Group opinion• In contemporary usage, public opinion is the aggregate of individual

attitudes or beliefs held by a population • while consumer opinion is the similar aggregate collected as part

of marketing research• In some social sciences, especially political science and psychology,

group opinion refers to the aggregation of opinions collected from a group of subjects,

• In these situations, researchers are often interested in questions related to social choice, conformity, and group.

• Scientific opinion• "The scientific opinion" (or scientific consensus) can be compared to

"the public opinion" and generally refers to the collection of the opinions of many different scientific organizations and entities and individual scientists in the relevant field. Science may often, however, be "partial, temporally contingent, conflicting, and uncertain" so that there may be no accepted consensus for a particular situation.

• Legal opinion• A "legal opinion" or "closing opinion" is a type of professional opinion,

usually contained in a formal legal-opinion letter, given by an attorney to a client or a third party.

• The opinion expresses the attorney's professional judgment regarding the legal matters addressed. A legal opinion is not a guarantee that a court will reach any particular result. However, a mistaken or incomplete legal opinion may be grounds for a professional malpractice claim

• Judicial opinion• A "judicial opinion" or "opinion • of the court" is an opinion of a judge or group of judges that accompanies

and explains an order or ruling in a controversy before the court, laying out the rationale and legal principles the court relied on in reaching its decision. Judges in the United States are usually required to provide a well-reasoned basis for their decisions and the contents of their judicial opinions may contain the grounds for appealing and reversing of their decision by a higher court.

• Editorial opinion• An "editorial opinion" is the stated opinion of a newspaper or of its

publisher.

conclusion

• The conclusion is that it is balanced if we see both are equal. On every fact, we have opinions.