Child Labour in India

Child labour is a big problem in India and the country has highest number of child workers in the world. It deprives the children of their childhood which should be spent in going to school and learning to be good citizens. It harms their full physical and mental development. Moreover, employing child labour is illegal and unethical.

Status

As per the Census 2011, the number of working children in the age group of 5 to 14 years in India is 82.2 lakh, which has gone down from 1.26 crore in Census 2001. The government figures say that 80% of the child labourers are dalits and there is one in every 11 children working. Most of the child labour is in rural areas. More than half of child labourers are in five states viz. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Nature

Child labourers in India are employed in many industries and trades including textile, footwear, brick kilns, stainless steel, hotels & restaurants, shops, export oriented units such as carpet weaving, gem polishing, fire crackers, oil mills, metalwork, electroplating, stone quarrying, lock making, beedi or gutkha industries, tea gardens etc. and unorganized works such as picking rags, hawking goods etc.

Notwithstanding the government figures, most of the child labourers are hard to reach; invisible and excluded. Most of them work in unorganized sector or within the household units, which are out of purview of the labour laws. Sector wise, around half (48%) children work in manufacturing industries, followed by 20% in agriculture and allied activities, 10% in wholesale or retail trade.

Causes

Poverty is main cause of Child Labour in the country and most children work out of necessity in such a way that without their earnings, their families may not survive. A large number of child labourers don’t even have families; and for them alternative to work is destitution or crime. Another reason of child labour is that in them, the employers find cheap labour.

Legislative Action

Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986

Way back in 1979, the government had set up Gurupadswamy Committee to study the issue of child labour and to suggest measures to tackle it. On the basis of recommendations of this committee, the government enacted Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. The Act prohibits employment of children in certain specified hazardous occupations and processes and regulates the working conditions in others. The list of hazardous occupations and processes is progressively being expanded on the recommendation of Child Labour Technical Advisory Committee constituted under the Act.

Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016

The parliament has passed this act in 2016 to widen the scope of the existing law and make is in consonance with the ILO convention on labour law. This act has completely banned the employment of children below 14 years in all occupations and enterprises except those which are run by the child’s family, provide such employment does not hamper education of the child. Further, the children in age group 14-18 years are barred from employment in hazardous employments. Employment of children has been made congnizable offense and provided for a jail term from 6 months to 2 years. It has also provided for a Rehabilitation Fund for the rehabilitation of children.

Reregulation in different acts

Child labour is also regulated under different laws such as Factories Act, 1948; Plantations Labour Act, 1951; Mines Act, 1952; Beedi and Cigar Workers (Conditions of Employment) Act, 1966; Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act, 1972 etc.

Executive / Policy Action

The National Policy on Child Labour of 1987

This policy was launched to combine the enforcement of laws with developmental programmes and address the root causes of child labour viz. Caste and poverty. Under this policy, government strived for rehabilitation of children involved in hazardous occupation.

National Child Labour Project (NCLP)

The 1987 policy had envisaged project based plan of action for areas of high concentration of child labour. Towards this, the government launched National Child Labour Project (NCLP) in 1988 in nine districts of high child labour prevalence. Under this scheme, special schools for child labour withdrawn from work were opened and children were provided education plus vocational training along with an stipend of Rs. 150 per month.

Judicial Action

In 1996, Supreme Court had ordered creation of Child Labour Rehabilitation Welfare Fund and mandated that every offending employer will deposit Rs. 20,000 mandatorily in this fund. Further, it also issued comprehensive directions to central and state government to see that an adult member of the family gets the job in lieu of the child, but this was not imposed on government. The Supreme Court also directed the states to conduct a survey on child labour within six months, for nine industries among primary cases of child labour employers. These industries included: match industry in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu; diamond polishing industry in Surat, Gujarat; precious stone polishing industry, Jaipur, Rajasthan; glass industry in Firozabad, brassware industry in Moradabad and the handmade carpet industry in Mirzapur-Bhadoi, lock making industry in Aligarh-all in Uttar Pradesh; slate industry in Markapur, Andhra Pradesh, and slate industry in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh.

Actions of NGOs

Several NGOs have been working towards ending child labour in India as follows:

Bachpan Bachao Andolan

It was launched in 1980 by Kailash Satyarthi. It is focuses on ending bonded labour, child labour and human trafficking, as well as demanding the right to education for all children. It has freed 80,000 child laborers and helped their successful re-integration, rehabilitation and education.

Plan India

This is a Delhi based NGO which works to improve the lives of disadvantaged children, their families and communities through an approach that puts children at the centre of community development. It works in around 13 states.

CRY (Child Rights and You)

It’s a non-profit organization working towards restoring child rights by partnering with NGOs. It focuses on four basic rights of survival, development, protection and participation as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)

Save The Children

It is an international NGO working in some 120 countries around the world. In India it is working in 15 states. It has consultative status with the UNESCO and it generally works like a pressure group to promote policy change that allows more rights to children.

Social and Economic Consequences of Abolishing Child Labour

We have discussed above that the root cause of child labour is poverty and unless poverty is eliminated, elimination of Child labour is practically impossible. Further, though removing children from employment is easy, the difficult task is to manage the socio-economic consequences of the same. The freed children need to be educated, and their families need to be supported to make them both ends meet. This needs a heavy expenditure on Government’s end which does not seem to be feasible. Further, the Child labour is cheap and replacing it with adult labour would put pressure on employers and industries. This would impact the income efficiency and economy of industries.