Introduction

God has given human beings the boon of wisdom and discretion to think upon the

signs of the universe and to draw conclusions. That is the reason

why they disclose the hidden facts of it and its structure and have

made remarkable progress in many walks of life. Children are the

flowers of heaven. They are the most beautiful and purest creation of

God. They are innocent both inwardly and outwardly. No doubt,

they are the beauty of this world. Early in the morning when the

children put on different kinds of clothes and begin to go to schools

for the sake of knowledge, we feel a specific kind of joy through

their innocence.

But there are also other children, those who cannot go to schools due to financial

problems, they only watch others go to schools and can merely wish to seek knowledge.It is

due to many hindrances and difficulties; desperate conditions that they face in life. Having

been forced to kill their aspirations, dreams and other wishes, they are pressed to earn a living

for themselves and for their families. It is also a fact that there are many children who play a

key role in sustaining the economically life of their family without which, their families

would not be able to make ends meet. These are also part of our society who have forgotten

the pleasures of their childhood. When a child in addition to getting education, earns his

livelihood, this act of earning a livelihood is called as child Labour. The concept of child

Labour got much attention during the 1990s when European countries announced a ban on

the goods of the less-developed countries because of child Labour.

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 The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines child Labour as:

1- When a child is working during early age

2- He overworks or gives over time to Labour

3- He works due to the psychologically, socially, and materialistic pressure

4- He becomes ready to Labour on a very low pay

Another definition states:

“Child Labour” is generally speaking work for children that harms them

or exploits them in some way (physically, mentally, morally or blocking access to education),

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund(UNICEF) defines “child”

as anyone below the age of 18, and “child Labour” as some type of work performed by

children below age 18. (UNICEF)

Child Labour is an important and a serious global issue through which all and

sundry countries of the world are directly or indirectly affected, but, it is very common in

Latin America, Africa and Asia. According to some, in several Asian countries’ 1/10

manpower consists of child Labour. In India the number of children between the ages of 10-

14 has crossed above 44 million, in Pakistan this number is from 8 to 10 million, in

Bangladesh 8-12 million, in Brazil 7 million, whereas their number is 12 million in Nigeria.

In Pakistan children aged 5-14 are above 40 million. During the last year, the Federal

Bureau of Statistics released the results of its survey funded by ILO’s IPEC (International

Program on the Elimination of Child Labour). The findings were that 3.8 million children age

group of 5-14 years are working in Pakistan out of total 40 million children in this age group;

fifty percent of these economically active children are in age group of 5 to 9 years. Even out

of these 3.8 million economically active children, 2.7 million were claimed to be working in

2
the agriculture sector. Two million and four hundred thousand (73%) of them were said to be

boys.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) a new generation of

children is being deprived of the chance to take their rightful place in the society and

economy of the 21st Century. The ILO has proposed that ‘child labour’ will disappear in a

decade. If this happens well and good. But in reality the situation is worsening. One in eight

children in the world is exposed to the worst forms of child labour which endanger children’s

physical, mental health and moral well being.

According to the statistics given by International Labor

Organization there are about 218 million children between the age of 5 and

17 working all over the world. The figure excludes domestic labor. The most

condemned form of child labor is the use of children for military purpose and

child prostitution. Child agricultural works, child singers and child actors

outside of school hours during season time are more acceptable by champions

of human rights and law. The phenomenon of child labor is a complex

development issue worthy of investigation. The fact that vulnerable children

are being exploited and forced into work, which is not fit for their age, is a

human rights concern now. India and other developed and developing

countries are really plagued by the problem of child employment in organized

and unorganized sectors.

Child labor is a human rights issue of immense sensitivity. Child

labor is considered exploitative by the United Nations and International

Labor Organization. The article 32 of the UN speaks about child labour as

follows-“States parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from

economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be

3
 hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the

child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.” To

sum up, most countries of the world consider it highly inappropriate when a

child below a certain age is put to work. People should be prohibited from

hiring labor below a certain age. However, the minimum age at which a

human can be put to work differs from country to country. In the US the child

labor laws have set the minimum age to work in an organization without the

parents consent at sixteen.

The problem
In many countries children lives are plagued by armed conflict, child labour, sexual

exploitation and other human rights violations. Children living in rural areas have fewer

opportunities to obtain good quality education. They have less access to services than

children living in cities. The UN Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC) (Article 38)

has explicitly prohibited person under age 18 being recruited into the armed forces or direct

participating in hostility. In spite of this special provision under CRC, many countries still

involve children below 18 years in hostilities.

Child labour keeps children out of school and is a major barrier to development. To

make the anti child labour law a reality, poverty and unemployment need to be eliminated.

Unless the standard of living improves at the lower levels of the society, children will be

forced to work. Many middle and upper class families do not hesitate to engage young boys

and girls to help them with household cores. The middle class family feels by employing a

child below 14 years they are helping poor families to increase their earnings for daily

livelihood.

4
Age of the Child.

According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child article (i) defines “The child

as every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child,

majority is attained earlier”.

The Indian Penal Court (IPC) defines the child as being 12 years of age.

Indian Traffic Prevention Act 1956 defines a “Minor” as a person who has reached

the age of 16 years.

Section 376 of IPC which punishes the perpetrators of the crime of rape defines the

age of consent to be 16 years of age.

Section 82 and 83 of the IPC states that a child under the age of 7 years cannot be

guilty of an offence and further a child under 12 years is not considered to have attained

sufficient maturity to have an understanding of the nature of the Act and the consequences of

his conduct.

Juvenile justice Act 2002 defines a male minor as being below 16 years and a female

minor as being below 18 years of age

From the above definitions, it could be seen, in the Indian context the age of an

Individual in order to be determined as a “Child” is not uniformly defined. The consequences

of this are that it offers various gaps in legal procedures which are used by the guilty to

escape punishment.

5
Indian Scenario of Child Labour & Legislation
According to the UN Study about 150 Million children of

age group five to 14 are working in various industries in India.

They are found working in road-side restaurants, tea stalls and

shops, at construction sites and in factories. Girls suffer labour

exploitation to such a degree that millions of girls die before they

reach the age of 15. They are paid a pittance as low as Rs.20 per day and many live in shops

or work places where they are subjected to various forms of exploitation. Besides the work

they are abused physically, mentally and sexually by the scurrilous task masters.

Mafia gangs bring children for “Begging” in urban cities. A child beggar of aged

between five and ten collects the maximum. With a burn scar or decapitation they can earn

more. As they grow older their earnings decrease. As a consequence they graduate to be big

-time traders involved in drug peddling, pick pocketing, robbery and prostitution. A child

beggar will only be paid 10% of his earnings of Rs.300 to 500 a day. If he fails to meet the

target fixed by the contractor he is punished brutally. The girls by the time they reach 13

years switch over to prostitution.

Begging is used as a profession by antisocial elements forcing children in begging.

Begging is prohibited in some cities of India by local governments.

The Indian government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992

and introduced various pieces of legislation to curb child labour. The Labour Ministry of

India has imposed a ban on children under age 14 from working as domestic help in hotels.

Under this law any employment of children under 14 will invite imprisonment up to two

years and a fine of Rupees twenty thousand. India has also banned employment of children in

hazardous industries including the manufacture of fire crackers, carpet making, glass making

etc. under Child Labour Act 2002

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 Although India has the second largest child population in the world, there is no single

unified separate legislation to deal with all the offences against children.

It is high time India introduced an all encompassing common act to safeguard the

rights of a child.

Child labour 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 labourers in the country,

while other agencies claim that it is 50 million.

In Northern India the exploitation of little children for

labour 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 labourers 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 labourers 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.

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 The Indian government has tried to take some steps to alleviate the problem of child

labour 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 labourer 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 nonexistent.

Child labour 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 labour in India. The meager income of child labourers 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 labour, the harshest

being bonded labour.

Bonded labour 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.

8
NOs. industry (India) %share

1 Pan, Bidi & Cigarettes 18

2 Construction 15
3 Domestic workers* 12
4 Spinning/ weaving 11
5 Brick-kilns, tiles 9.5
6 Dhabas/ Restaurants/ Hotels/ Motels* 7.7
7 Auto-workshop, vehicle repairs 7
8 Gem-cutting, Jewellery 6.2
9 Carpet-making 5.8
10 Ceramic 4.1
11 Agarbati, Dhoop & Detergent making 2.7
12 Others 2

Historical

9
Child labourer, New Jersey, 1910

During the Industrial Revolution, children as young as four were employed in production

factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions. Based on this understanding of

the use of children as laborers, it is now considered by wealthy countries to be a human

rights violation, and is outlawed, while some poorer countries may allow or tolerate child

labor. Child labor can also be defined as the full-time employment of children who are under

a minimum legal age.

The Victorian era became notorious for employing young children in factories and mines and

as chimney sweeps. Child labor played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its

outset, often brought about by economic hardship, Charles Dickens for example worked at

the age of 12 in a blacking factory, with his family in debtor's prison. The children of the

poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long hours in dangerous

jobs for low pay, earning 10-20% of an adult male's wage. In England and Scotland in 1788,

two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were described as children.

In 19th-century Great Britain, one-third of poor families were without a

breadwinner, as a result of death or abandonment, obliging many children to work from a

young age. Workhouses would also sell orphans and abandoned children as "pauper

apprentices", working without wages for board and lodging. Those who ran away would be

whipped and returned to their masters, and some were shackled with "irons riveted on their

10
ankles, and reaching by long links and rings up to the hips, and in these they were compelled

to walk to and from the mill to work and to sleep."

Two girls protesting child labor (by calling it child slavery) in the 1909 New York City Labor

Dayparade.

In coal mines, children began work at the age of five and generally died before the age of 25.

They would crawl through tunnels too narrow and low for adults, many working long hours

from 4 am until 5 pm. Conditions in the mines were dangerous, with some children killed

when they dozed off and fell into the path of the carts, while others died from gas

explosions. Many children developed lung cancer and other diseases. Chimney

sweeps employed "climbing boys" and girls who would scale narrow chimneys, with some

masters lighting fires under them to force them to climb faster, and some children falling to

their deaths. Children employed as "scavengers" by cotton mills would crawl under

machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins, working 14 hours a day, six days a week. Some lost

hands or limbs, others were crushed under the machines, and some were decapitated. Young

girls worked at match factories, where phosphorous fumes would cause many to

develop phossy jaw. Children employed at glassworks were regularly burned and blinded,

and those working at potterieswere vulnerable to poisonous clay dust. Children also worked

in agriculture, with a gangmaster walking behind them and whipping them if they stood up

straight before they reached the end of the field.

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 Children also worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or selling

matches, flowers and other cheap goods. Some children undertook work as apprentices to

respectable trades, such as building or as domestic servants(there were over 120,000 domestic

servants in London in the mid-18th Century). Working hours were long: builders worked 64

hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants worked 80 hour weeks.

The industrial revolution caused unspeakable misery both in England and in America.

... In the Lancashire cotton mills (from which Marx and Engels derived their livelihood),

children worked from 12 to 16 hours a day; they often began working at the age of six or

seven. Children had to be beaten to keep them from falling asleep while at work; in spite of

this, many failed to keep awake and were mutilated or killed. Parents had to submit to the

infliction of these atrocities upon their children, because they themselves were in a desperate

plight. Craftsmen had been thrown out of work by the machines; rural laborers were

compelled to migrate to the towns by the Enclosure Acts, which used Parliament to make

landowners richer by making peasants destitute; trade unions were illegal until 1824; the

government employed agents provocateurs to try to get revolutionary sentiments out of wage-

earners, who were then deported or hanged. Such was the first effect of machinery in

England.

Children as young as three were put to work. A high number of children also

worked as prostitutes. Many children (and adults) worked 16 hour days. As early as 1802 and

1819 Factory Acts were passed to regulate the working hours of workhouse children in

factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day. These acts were largely ineffective and after

radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time Committees" in 1831, a Royal Commission

recommended in 1833 that children aged 11–18 should work a maximum of 12 hours per day,

children aged 9–11 a maximum of eight hours, and children under the age of nine were no

longer permitted to work. This act however only applied to the textile industry, and further

12
agitation led to another act in 1847 limiting both adults and children to 10 hour working

days. Enforcement was difficult due to the small number of inspectors.

By 1900, there were 1.7 million child laborers reported in American industry under the age of

fifteen. The number of children under the age of 15 who worked in industrial jobs for wages

climbed to 2 million in 1910.

Present day

A young boy recycling garbage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2006

Child labor is still common in some parts of the world, it can be factory work,

mining, prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's

own small business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as

guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants

(where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive

jobs such as: assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning.

However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labor occurs in the informal

sector, "selling many things on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses—

13
far from the reach of official labor inspectors and from media scrutiny." And all the work that

they did was done in all types of weather; and was also done for minimal pay. As long as

there is family poverty there will be child labor.

According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labor

worldwide, excluding child domestic labour. The United Nations and the International Labor

Organization consider child labor exploitative, with the UN stipulating, in article 32 of

the Convention on the Rights of the Child that:

...States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation

and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's

education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social

development. Although globally there is an estimated 250 million children working.

In the 1990s every country in the world except for Somalia and the United States became a

signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC. Somalia eventually signed

the convention in 2002; the delay of the signing was believed to been due to Somalia not

having a government.

A boy repairing a tire in Gambia

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In a recent paper, Basu and Van (1998) argue that the primary cause of child labor is

parental poverty. That being so, they caution against the use of a legislative ban against child

labor, and argue that should be used only when there is reason to believe that a ban on child

labor will cause adult wages to rise and so compensate adequately the households of the poor

children. Child labor is still widely used today in many countries,

including India and Bangladesh. CACL estimated that there are between 70 and 80 million

child labourers in India.

Child labor accounts for 22% of the workforce in Asia, 32% in Africa, 17% in Latin

America, 1% in US, Canada, Europe and other wealthy nations. The proportion of child

laborers varies a lot among countries and even regions inside those countries.

Recent child labor incidents

Young girl working on a loom in Aït Benhaddou, Morocco in May 2008.

Meatpacking
In early August 2008, Iowa Labor Commissioner David Neil announced that his department

had found that Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking company in Postville which had

recently been raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had employed 57 minors,

15
some as young as 14, in violation of state law prohibiting anyone under 18 from working in a

meatpacking plant. Neil announced that he was turning the case over to the state Attorney

General for prosecution, claiming that his department's inquiry had discovered "egregious

violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa's child labor laws." Agriprocessors claimed that it

was at a loss to understand the allegations. Agriprocessors' CEO went to trial on these

charges in state court on May 4, 2010. After a five-week trial he was found not guilty of all

67 charges of child labor violations by the Black Hawk County District Court jury in

Waterloo, Iowa on June 7, 2010.

Firestone

The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company operate a metal plantation in Liberia which is the

focus of a global campaign called Stop Firestone. Workers on the plantation are expected to

fulfil a high production quota or their wages will be halved, so many workers brought

children to work. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against Firestone (The

International Labor Fund vs. The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company) in November 2005 on

behalf of current child laborers and their parents who had also been child laborers on the

plantation. On June 26, 2007, the judge in this lawsuit in Indianapolis, Indiana denied

Firestone's motion to dismiss the case and allowed the lawsuit to proceed on child labor

claims.

GAP

After the news of child laborers working in embroidery industry was uncovered in

the Sunday Observer on 28 October 2007, BBA activists swung into action. The GAP Inc. in

a statement accepted that the child laborers were working in production of GAP Kids blouses

and has already made a statement to pull the products from the shelf. In spite of the

documentation of the child laborers working in the high-street fashion and admission by all

16
concerned parties, only the SDM (Sub-divisional Magistrate) could not recognise these

children as working under conditions of slavery and bondage.

Distraught and desperate that these collusions by the custodians of justice, founder of BBA

Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson of Global March Against Child Labor appealed to the

Honorable Chief Justice of Delhi High Court through a letter at 11.00 pm. This order by the

Honorable Chief Justice comes when the government is taking an extremely reactionary

stance on the issue of child labour in sweatshops in India and threatening 'retaliatory

measures' against child rights organisations.

In a parallel development, Global March Against Child labor and BBA are in dialogue with

the GAP Inc. and other stakeholders to work out a positive strategy to prevent the entry of

child labor in to sweatshops and device a mechanism of monitoring and remedial action.

GAP Inc. Senior Vice President, Dan Henkle in a statement said: "We have been making

steady progress, and the children are now under the care of the local government. As our

policy requires, the vendor with which our order was originally placed will be required to

provide the children with access to schooling and job training, pay them an ongoing wage and

guarantee them jobs as soon as they reach the legal working age. We will now work with the

local government and with Global March to ensure that our vendor fulfils these obligations."

On October 28, Joe Eastman, president of Gap North America, responded, "We strictly

prohibit the use of child labor. This is non-negotiable for us – and we are deeply concerned

and upset by this allegation. As we've demonstrated in the past, Gap has a history of

addressing challenges like this head-on, and our approach to this situation will be no

exception. In 2006, Gap Inc. ceased business with 23 factories due to code violations. We

have 90 people located around the world whose job is to ensure compliance with our Code of

Vendor Conduct. As soon as we were alerted to this situation, we stopped the work order and

prevented the product from being sold in stores. While violations of our strict prohibition on

17
child labor in factories that produce product for the company are extremely rare, we have

called an urgent meeting with our suppliers in the region to reinforce our policies."

H&M
In December 2009, campaigners in the UK called on two leading high street retailers to stop

selling clothes made with cotton which may have been picked by children. Anti-Slavery

International and the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) accused H&M and Zara of

using cotton suppliers in Bangladesh. It is also suspected that many of their raw materials

originates from Uzbekistan, where children aged 10 are forced to work in the fields. The

activists were calling to ban the use of Uzbek cotton and implement a "track and trace"

systems to guarantee an ethical responsible source of the material.

H&M said it "does not accept" child labor and "seeks to avoid" using Uzbek cotton, but

admitted it did "not have any reliable methods" to ensure Uzbek cotton did not end up in any

of its products. Inditex, the owner of Zara, said its code of conduct banned child labour.

India
In 1997, research indicated that the number of child laborers in the silk-weaving industry in

the district of Kanchipuram in India exceeded 40,000. This included children who were

bonded laborers to loom owners. Rural Institute for Development Education undertook many

activities to improve the situation of child laborers. Working collaboratively, RIDE brought

down the number of child laborers to less than 4,000 by 2007.

On November 21, 2005, an Indian NGO activist Junned Khan, with the help of the Labor

Department and NGO Pratham mounted the country's biggest ever raid for child labor rescue

in the Eastern part of New Delhi, the capital of India. The process resulted in rescue of 480

children from over 100 illegal embroidery factories operating in the crowded slum area of

Seelampur. For next few weeks, government, media and NGOs were in a frenzy over the

exuberant numbers of young boys, as young as 5–6 year olds, released from bondage. This

18
rescue operation opened the eyes of the world to the menace of child labour operating right

under the nose of the largest democracy in the whole world.

Next few years Junned Khan did extensive campaigning on the issue of children involved in

hazardous labor, advocating with the central and state governments for formulation of

guidelines for rescue and rehabilitation of children affected by child labor. In 2005, after the

rescue, Junned Khan, collaborated with BBA to file petition in the Delhi High Court for

formulation of guidelines for rescue and rehabilitation of child labor. In the following years,

Delhi's NGOs, came together with the Delhi Government and formulated an Action Plan for

Rescue and Rehabilitation of child labor.

Primark

BBC recently reported on Primark using child labor in the manufacture of clothing. In

particular a £4.00 hand embroidered shirt was the starting point of a documentary produced

by BBC's Panorama (TV series) programme. The programme asks consumers to ask

themselves, "Why am I only paying £4 for a hand embroidered top? This item looks

handmade. Who made it for such little cost?", in addition to exposing the violent side of the

child labor industry in countries where child exploitation is prevalent. As a result of the

programme, Primark took action and sacked the relevant companies, and reviewed their

supplier procedures.

19
Impact of Child exploitation on Children

Employing children for labour is an act that endangers a child’s

physical/emotional health and development without giving the child an

opportunity for good education, food and shelter. Of the four major types

of child abuses, physical, sexual, emotional and neglect, child labour

falls under neglect exploitation and emotional abuse. Child labour is the

exploitation of children for commercial reasons.

Neglect is a different concept to exploitation and constitutes a failure to provide for a

child’s basic need. The forms of neglect include physical, educational and emotional.

Physical neglect includes inadequate provision of food, housing and clothing, denial of

medical care and inadequate hygiene. Educational neglect is the failure to enrol a child at a

mandatory school age in school. Emotional neglect is the lack of emotional support such as

the failure to provide psychological care, domestic violence and allowing a child to

participate in drugs and alcohol abuse.

A child worker becomes alienated from the rest of the family, has low self

esteem, and is likely to engage in self destructive behaviour. He or she is likely to have

impaired psychological development and develop anti social behaviour including lying and

living with fear complex.

20
Causes of Child Labour:

Some common causes of child labor are poverty, parental illiteracy, social apathy,

ignorance, lack of education and exposure, exploitation of cheap and unorganized

labor. The family practice to inculcate traditional skills in children also pulls little ones

inexorably in the trap of child labor, as they never get the opportunity to learn

anythingelse.

Absence of compulsory education at the primary level, parental

ignorance regarding the bad effects of child labor, the ineffictivity of child labor laws

in terms of implementation, non availability and non accessibility of schools, boring

and unpractical school curriculum and cheap child labor are some other factors which

encourages the phenomenon of child labor. It is also very difficult for immature minds

and undeveloped bodies to understand and organize themselves against exploitation in

the absence of adult guidance. Poverty and over population have been identified as the

two main causes of child labor. Parents are forced to send little children into hazardous

jobs for reasons of survival, even when they know it is wrong. Monetary constraints

and the need for food, shelter and clothing drives their children in the trap of

premature labor. Over population in some regions creates paucity of resources. When

there are limited means and more mouths to feed children are driven to commercial

activities and not provided for their development needs.

This is the case in most Asian and African countries.

Illiterate and ignorant parents do not understand the need for wholesome proper

physical, cognitive and emotional development of their child. They are themselves

uneducated and unexposed, so they don’t realize the importance of education for their

children. Adult unemployment and urbanization also causes child labor. Adults often

find it difficult to find jobs because factory owners find it more beneficial to employ

children at cheap rates. This exploitation is particularly visible in garment factories of

urban areas. Adult exploitation of children is also seen in many places. Elders relax at

home and live on the labor of poor helpless children.

21
The industrial revolution has also had a negative effect by giving

rise to circumstances which encourages child labor. Sometimes multinationals prefer

 Child Labour Laws

Child labor is a reality in spite of all the steps taken by the legal machinery to

eliminate it. It prevails and persists as a world phenomenon in spite of child labor laws.

The causes of child labor in the contemporary world are the same as those in U.S.

hundred years ago- namely poverty, lack of education and exposure, poor access to education,

suppression of workers rights, partial prohibition of child labor and inadequate enforcement of child

laborlaws.

The existing law and codes of conduct regarding child labor are blatantly violated by the

beneficiaries and the victims of this terrible practice all over the developing world. There are

ambiguities in the export and manufacturing sector, which means multiple layers of outsourcing and

production- making the monitoring of labor performers not only difficult but impossible. Extensive

subcontracting also makes it impossible to identify the use of child labor whether intentional or

unintentional.

Even when laws or codes of conduct exist, they are often violated.

The Indian constitution categorically states that child labor is a wrong practice, and

standards should be set by law to eliminate it.

The child labor act of 1986 implemented by the government of India makes

child labor illegal in many regions and sets the minimum age of employment at fourteen years.

There are many loop holes in this law in terms of affectivity. First is that it does not make

child labor completely illegal and does not meet the guidelines set by ILO concerning the minimum

age for employment, which is fifteen years. Moreover the policies which are set to reduce

incidences of child labor are difficult to implement and enforce. The government and other agencies

responsible for the enforcement of these laws are not doing their job. Without proper enforcement

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all policies and laws concerning child labor prove useless.

Moreover certain sectors like agriculture and domestic work are not included in the

exemption of child labor. In some countries very strict child labor laws exist but the offices and

departments responsible for implementing them are under funded and under staffed. The judicial

machinery and courts are also found to be faltering and falting where proper enforcement of such

laws is concerned. Many state governments are feisty in allocating resources to enforce child labor

laws.

There are also many loop holes while setting laws and rules for child labor which allows

exploitation. For example in Nepal, the minimum age for a person to go for work is 14 years, but

plantation of brick clines is exempted from this. Kenya prohibits children under 16 from going to

work in industries but excludes agriculture. Bangladesh also specifies a minimum age to go to work,

but excludes agriculture and domestic work.

Indeed laws become unpractical and redundant in the face of necessity. Poor

children and their family members depend so much on little ones to provide the basic necessities of

life in the impoverished areas that it becomes impossible for them to adhere to any laws and

regulations regarding child labor. We must also remember, that about one fifth of the world’s six

billion humans live in absolute poverty.

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.

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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.

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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.

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 castesystem.

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 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.

Children who work in silk factories are kept behind covers by being

pushed into individual homes. Tamil Nadu in South India is the home of the largest

number of bonded children. However more attention has been paid to rehabilitate

children working on match and fireworks manufacture, compared to silk factories.

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 Kanchipuram is the hub of silk sari weaving in Tamil Nadu, where child

labor thrives with a relish. Children are ill-treated, scolded, beaten and denied

development needs regularly for commercial gains in these industries. Silk fabric and

silk threads are also produced in some other states of India, where child labor

flourishes. The plight of these small silk workers epitomizes the sorry state of bonded

children in the country. Commercial exploitation and corrupt government machinery

has violated all human rights efforts to improve the lot of these children.

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
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 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.

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 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

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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 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

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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.”

It has been observed and repeatedly stated in recent times that

‘child labor’ does not remain a mere means of economic exploitation but has become

a necessity due to the economic needs of the parents and the child himself. Professor

Gangrade has iterated that child labor is also caused by different factors like social

traditions, family attitude, customs, and dearth of schools or parental reluctance to

send children to school, industrialization, urbanization, migration etc. To counter the

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