Child Labour in India

Assignment
Submitted by: Karan R. Hunurkar
Submitted to: HURT Foundation
Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Sectors involved in child labour

• Bonded Child Labour in India

• Child labour Policy

• Child labour: The Real Situation

• Stop Child Labour

Introduction
Child labour is done by any working child who is under the age specified by law. The word,
“work” means full time commercial work to sustain self or add to the family income. Child
labour is a hazard to a Child’s mental, physical, social, educational, emotional and spiritual
development. Broadly any child who is employed in activities to feed self and family is
being subjected to “child labour’.

It is obligatory for all countries to set a minimum age for employment according to the
rules of ILO written in Convention 138(C.138). The stipulated age for employment should not
be below the age for finishing compulsory schooling, that is not below the age of 15. Developing
countries are allowed to set the minimum age at 14 years in accordance with their socio-
economic circumstances.

C-138 has also made provisions for flexibility for certain countries, setting the minimum
age of 12 and 13 for their children - but only for partaking in light work. Light work can be
defined as children’s participation in only those economic activities which do not damage
their health and development or interfere with their education. Yes, work that does not
obstruct with a child’s education is considered light work and allowed from age 12 under the
International Labor Organization (ILO Convention 138). It is because of this that many
children employed in part time work like learning craft or other skills of a hereditary nature are
not called child labors. The same work translates into child labor if a child is thrown into
weaving carpets, working into factories or some other employment to earn money to sustain self,
or augment his family’s income - without being given school education and allowed
opportunities for normal social interactions. A child working part time (3-4 hours) to learn
and earn for self and parents after school, is not considered ‘child labor’.

Child labor in India is a human right issue for the whole world. It is a serious and extensive
problem, with many children under the age of fourteen working in carpet making factories,
glass blowing units and making fireworks with bare little hands. According to the statistics
given by Indian government there are 20 million child laborers in the country, while other
agencies claim that it is 50 million.

In Northern India the exploitation of little children for labor is an accepted practice and
perceived by the local population as a necessity to alleviate poverty. Carpet weaving
industries pay very low wages to child laborers and make them work for long hours in
unhygienic conditions. Children working in such units are mainly migrant workers from
Northern India, who are shunted here by their families to earn some money and send it to
them. Their families dependence on their income, forces them to endure the onerous work
conditions in the carpet factories.

The situation of child laborers in India is desperate. Children work for eight hours at a stretch
with only a small break for meals. The meals are also frugal and the children are ill nourished.
Most of the migrant children who cannot go home, sleep at their work place, which is very bad
for their health and development. Seventy five percent of Indian population still resides in rural
areas and are very poor. Children in rural families who are ailing with poverty perceive their
children as an income generating resource to supplement the family income. Parents sacrifice
their children’s education to the growing needs of their younger siblings in such families and
view them as wage earners for the entire clan.

The Indian government has tried to take some steps to alleviate the problem of child labor
in recent years by invoking a law that makes the employment of children below 14 illegal,
except in family owned enterprises. However this law is rarely adhered to due to practical
difficulties. Factories usually find loopholes and circumvent the law by declaring that the
child laborer is a distant family member. Also in villages there is no law implementing
mechanism, and any punitive actions for commercial enterprises violating these laws is
almost non existent.

Child labor is a conspicuous problem in India. Its prevalence is evident in the child work
participation rate, which is more than that of other developing countries. Poverty is the
reason for child labor in India. The meager income of child laborers is also absorbed by
their families. The paucity of organized banking in the rural areas creates a void in taking
facilities, forcing poor families to push their children in harsh labor, the harshest being
bonded labor.

Bonded labor traps the growing child in a hostage like condition for years. The importance of
formal education is also not realized, as the child can be absorbed in economically beneficial
activities at a young age. Moreover there is no access to proper education in the remote areas of
rural India for most people, which leaves the children with no choice.
Sectors involved in child labour
Beedi manufacture

A survey conducted between 1994 and 1995 revealed that child workers comprise of more than
30% of total hired workers in the beedi manufacture sector. The United States Customs Service
subsequently banned the import of Beedis made in Ganesh Beedi Works of Mangalore

Diamond industry

The International Labour Organisation reported in 2004 that child labour constitutes about 25%
of the labour in the diamond industry of Surat. A later report by A F Ferguson, however
estimated the proportion to be about .31% .

Fireworks manufacture

Fireworks manufacturers in Sivakasi had long been criticised for their use of child labour.
Although the manufacturers declare that child labour is no longer used, estimates suggest that at
least 3000 children still work at every stage of the manufacturing process with wages as low as
Rs 20 per day. There had been protests by the manufacturers against the anti child labour
campaign by various N.G.O.s , terming them as false allegations and conspiracies.

Silk Manufacture

Human Rights Watch estimates that at least 350,000 bonded children are employed by the silk
industry in India. As per Human Rights Watch, children as young as five years old are employed
and work for up to 12 hours a day and six to seven days a week. Children are forced to dip their
hands in scalding water to palpate the cocoons and are often paid less than Rs 10 per day.

Domestic labour

Official estimates for child labour working as domestic labour and in restaurants is more than
2,500,000 while NGOs estimate the figure to be around 20 million.The Government of India
expanded the coverage of The Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act and banned the
employment of children as domestic workers and as workers in restaurants, dhabas, hotels, spas
and resorts effective from October 10, 2006.

Indian Silk Industry And Child Labour

Hundreds and thousands of children are toiling as bonded labor in India’s silk industry
and the government is not able to do anything to protect their rights. Those children who
are working in India’s silk industry are virtually slaves.

Human rights organizations are calling on India to free these children from bonded labor and
rehabilitate them. The children are bound to work for their employers in exchange of the loan
taken by their parents or families, and are unable to leave because of the debt. They are also paid
very paltry sum for their labor. Most of these children are Dalits. Dalits are called untouchables
and belong to the lowest level in the hierarchy of the Indian caste system.

Contrary to the Indian governments claim bonded children are very conspicuous In India
everywhere. Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu form the core of India’s silk and sari
industry. Bonded children as young as five work for more them twelve hours a day in the silk
industry, at different levels of production. They toil for nearly seven days a week, breathing
smoky fumes from the silk making machinery. These children squat near cramped looms to help
and assist workers in dim and damp rooms. They are required to dip their little hands in boiling
hot water that causes blisters and handle dead worms which breed infections. Twisting thread
which injure their fingers is also a part of the silk making process. Their attempts to attend
school are met with protest and physical violence by their employers. Their adulthood is
impoverished, illiterate and damaged by the weight of their childhood.

The southern state of Karnataka is a major silk producing state in India. It is the major
producer of Indian silk thread. The production depends completely on the labor of bonded
children under the age of fourteen. Most of the bonded children are either Muslims or
Dalits. Children as young as nine years are tied and beaten with belts if they don’t do they
work properly by the supervisors and owners in these industries.

Bonded children are less common in the carpet Industry in Uttar Pradesh compared to the silk
industry. Child labor laws have been better imposed in the carpet industry due to strong pressure
from domestic and international activists.

Child Labour in Indian Sweet Shops

Indian sweet shops are notorious for profiting from child labor which is tantamount to
slavery. These shop also profit from illegal retail activities and use small and vulnerable
children in the manufacturing process. Children as young as eleven and thirteen toil in
these shops for hours on end and suffer from exertion and fatigue. They have no fixed
working hours and are constantly threatened with the fear of being fired, are depressed
and deprived of education and entertainment.

Indian sweet shops function quietly and illegally as household industries making little
children toil for long hours on very low wages before huge cauldrons of burning fat. Many
children working in Indian sweet shops remain unpaid or poorly paid, are scolded, ill
treated and underfed. Studies of children toiling in Indian sweet shops show that they
mainly hail from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Nepal. These children sometimes also double up
as domestic help for the owners of the sweet shops and their families.

Most of the children working in this sector are not paid more than 300 to 800 rupees in a month,
for more than twelve hours of labor each day - in suffocating rooms which are hot and smoky.
The different processes of making Indian sweets also tantamount to hard and relentless labor. A
study shows that most of the children working in Indian sweet shops want to quit work and go to
school. They also pine to stay with their parents and other family members. The owners of sweet
shop discourage their ambitions and shun the attempts of any social activists who try to bring
their plight in the lime light.

Sweet shop owners prefer to employ small children due to their vulnerability in terms of wanting
remuneration. Also, it is considerably easy to bully and scold a child. They mostly employ
minors, and are reluctant to divulge details about these little employers and their working
conditions. Besides the official statistics of 11 million child workers in India, thousands working
in these sweet shops go unreported, because of the unorganized nature of their labor. The
economic boom in India has given a fillip to the profits of sweet shops, ironically worsening the
lot of these children. They are forced to work for longer hours at lesser wages to fulfill the
demand for the sweets, they help to make.

In a recent raid in Delhi, India’s political capital, many boy child workers were rescued
from several sweet shops. Agents had lured them from India’s poorest regions with
promises of good wages and decent working conditions. India’s poor children are locked up
in hidden floors of garment factories, match stick making huts, carpet making work shops
and sweltering sweet shop kitchens to create goods for export. Some of their produce is sold
in top shops in the UK and America for huge profits, while they wither in dire poverty and
abject deprivation.

Bonded Child Labour in India

The most inhuman and onerous form of child exploitation is the age old practice of bonded
labor in India. In this, the child is sold to the loaner like a commodity for a certain period
of time. His labor is treated like security or collateral security and cunning rich men
procure them for small sums at exorbitant interest rates.

The children who are sold as bonded labor only get a handful of coarse grain to keep them alive
in return for their labor. Sometimes their period of thrall extends for a life time, and they have to
simply toil hard and depend on the mercy of their owners, without any hope of release or
redemption. The impoverished parents of the bonded child is usually a poor, uneducated landless
laborer and the mortgagee is traditionally some big landlord, money lender or a big business man
who thrives on their vulnerability to such exploitation.

The practice of bonded child labor is prevalent in many parts of rural India, but is very
conspicuously in the Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. Here the bonded child is allowed to
reside with his parents, if he presents himself for work at 8 a.m. every day. The practice of
child bonded labor persists like a scourge to humanity in spite of many laws against it.
These laws although stringent and providing for imprisonment and imposition of huge
fines on those who are found guilty are literally non- functional in terms of implementation.

However most of their efforts were sabotaged by high level government officials covering the
fact that children were doing bonded work in factory promises. They deliberately employed their
energy in running public awareness campaigns and made claims of creating propaganda against
child labor, instead of punishing erring employers and freeing and rehabilitating the bonded
children.

Governments did take few directions on the right track initially, but most of their efforts
came to naught with time. Moreover the government efforts did not reach high profile
industries like bidi, cigarette making and carpet weaving. According to Cousen Neff - an
official of the Human Rights watch – “Instead of living up to its promises, the Indian
government is starting to backtrack, claiming the problem is being solved. Our research
shows that it is not.”

Neff also identified a major link between caste and bondage in Indian society. Dalit
family’s functions as bonded labor due to caste based discrimination and violence and not
poverty in many cases. The caste system in India is one of the main foundations on which
the edifice of bonded labor rests. Dalits or the so called untouchable are denied access to
land in India, forced to work in inhuman conditions, and expected to perform labor for
free. This is due to the so called upper castes boycotting them socially and subjecting them
to economic exploitation. This attitude of society keeps the poor families bonded in a
scourge of perpetual poverty and labor. It is now very important for all International
donors to put pressure on the Indian government to enforce bonded labor and child labor
laws in the country.

Child Labour Policy in India

There are specific clauses in the draft of Indian constitution dated 26th January 1950,
about the child labor policy in India. These are conveyed through different articles in the
Fundamental rights and the Directive Principles of the State Policy. They lay down four
specific policy rules regarding child labor.

They are as following:- 1) ( Article 14) No child below the age of 14 years shall be employed
to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.

2) Article 39-E) The state shall direct its policy towards securing that the health and
strength of workers, men and women and the tender age of children are not abused and
that they are not forced by economic necessity to enter vocations unsuited to there are and
strength.

3) ( Article 39-f ) Children shall be given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy
manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth shall be
protected against moral and material abandonment.

4) (Article 45 ) The state shall endeavor to provide within a period of ten years from the
commencement of the constitution for free and compulsory education for all children until
they complete the age of fourteen years.

It was also decided that both the Union government and the State government could legislate on
matters concerning child labor. Various legislative initiatives were also taken in this regard at
both the State and Union level.

The main legislative measures at the national level are The Child Labor Prohibition and
Regulation Act -1986 and The Factories Act -1948. The first act was categorical in prohibiting
the employment of children below fourteen years of age, and identified 57 processes and 13
occupations which were considered dangerous to the health and lives of children. The details of
these occupations and processes are listed in the schedule to the said Act.

The factories act again prohibits the employment of children less than fourteen years of age.
However an adolescent aged between 15 and 18 can be recruited for factory employment only
after securing a fitness certificate from a medical doctor who is authorized. The Act proceeds to
prescribe only four and and hour’s work period per day for children between 14 and 18 years.
Children are also not allowed to work in night shifts.

Moreover, in the year 1996 the Supreme Court of India came out with a judgment in court that
directed the State and Union government to make a list of all children embroiled in hazardous
occupations and processes. They were then told to pull them out of work and asked to provide
them with proper education of quality. The judiciary also laid down that Child Labor and
Welfare Fund is set up. The contribution for this was to be received from employers who
contravened the Child Labor Act.

India is also a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ILO Abolition of
Forced Convention – No 105 and ILO Forced labor Convention – No. 29. A National Labor
Policy was also adopted in the year 1987 in accordance with India’s development strategies
and aims. The National Policy was designed to reinforce the directive principles of state
policy in the Indian constitution.

Child Labour: The Real Situation

The term ‘child labor’ means ‘working child’ or ‘employed child’. ‘Child labor’ is any
work done by child for profit. ‘Child labor’ is a derogatory term which translates into child
exploitation and inhumanity according to sociologists, development workers, medical
professionals and educationists. They have identified child labor as harmful and hazardous
to the child’s development needs, both mental and physical.

SHRI V.V. Giri – the former president of India has arrived on two concepts of child labor – first
as a bad economic practice and second as an overt social evil. In the first it is involvement of a
child labor in profitable activities to augment the family income. The second context, namely
child labor a social evil – is more complex in nature and extent. In order to assess the nature of
the evil, and gauge the extent of damage it becomes necessary to understand the character of the
job in which the child is engaged, the dangers to which they are exposed and the development
opportunities they are denied.

Technically the term ‘child labour’ is used for children occupied in profitable activities, whether
industrial or non industrial. It is especially applicable for activities which are detrimental to their
physical, psychological, emotional, social and moral development needs. It has been researched
and proved that the brain of a child develops till the age of ten, muscles till the age of seventeen
and his lungs till the age of fourteen. To be more specific, any activity which acts as a hazard for
the natural growth and enhancement of these vital organs, can be considered harmful for natural
human growth and development and termed – ‘child labor’.

It has been observed in India and other countries, that the practice of ‘child labor’ is a
socio- economic problem. Many appalling relities like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment,
low wages, ignorance, social prejudices, regressive traditions, poor standard of living,
backwardness, superstition, low status of women have combined to give birth to the
terrible practice of child labor. Mr. Madan, Deputy Director in the Ministry of labor has
been quoted as saying that “the children are required to seek employment either to
augment the income of their families or to have a gainful occupation in the absence of
availability of school going facilities at various places.”

Stop Child Labour

The future of a community is in the well being of its children. The above fact is beautifully
expressed by Wordsworth in his famous lines “child is father of the man”. So it becomes
imperative for the health of a nation to protect its children from premature labor which is
hazardous to their mental, physical, educational and spiritual development needs. It is
urgently required to save children from the murderous clutches of social injustice and
educational deprivation, and ensure that they are given opportunities for healthy, normal
and happy growth.

The venerable Indian poet Rabindranth Tagore has said time and again, that every country is
absolutely bound by its duty to provide free primary education to its children. It is important to
remember that industrialization can afford to wait but youth cannot be captured for long. It is
imperative that the basic tenet made in article 24 of the Indian constitution - prohibiting the
employment of any child below fourteen years of age, in a factory, mine or any other hazardous
employment be stopped – be adhered to. There should be no ambiguity in ensuring the right of
every child to free basic education and the promise of the constitution should be fully
implemented in the here and now.

Projects related with human resource development, dedicated to the child welfare issues
must be given top priority by the central and state governments to stop the menace of child
labor. Child labor laws need to be strictly implemented at the central and state levels.
Corruption and negligence in child labor offices and employee circles should be dealt with
very strictly by the judiciary and the police force.
The development needs of growing children can only be provided for, by stopping the onerous
practice of child labor in organized and non organized sectors with utmost sincerity. This is the
only way a nation can train its children to be wholesome future citizens, who are happy and
prosperous. The provision of equal and proper opportunities for the educational needs of growing
children in accordance with constitutional directives will go a long way in stopping the evil
practice of child labor.

Concerned about the future of its children India has implemented a country- wide ban recently,
on children below fourteen working in the hospitality sector and as domestics. It is intended that
those who are found to violate the law will be fined with 430 dollars and sent into rigorous
imprisonment for two years. Children in India are not allowed to work in mines, factories
and other hazardous jobs already. Two more professions have been added in a list of fifty
seven occupations which were considered hazardous for a child’s development needs in the
‘child labor act’ passed in 1986. Childs rights activists are waxing eloquent in high pitched
voices about the absolute importance of stopping child labor. But legislation in this regard
is just like an intention. It is more important to take development measures to ensure its
practical application by eliminating the reasons of child labor from our society. The reasons
giving birth to child labor are poverty, illiteracy, scarcity of schools, ignorance, socially
regressive practices, blind customs and traditions, migration and last but not the least
corruption amongst employees and government labor organizations. People should not be
able to get away with employing and exploiting children.