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Falling Through The Cracks by Ananthapriya Subramanian

Two stories on two days, both from Delhi and both shocking in their revelations. Both involved child abuse. The first story was about a university professor on the run, allegedly after it came to light that he had employed a 10-year-old boy in his house, and worse, regularly beat him. The second story was even more mind-numbing in its details. Sanjana (name changed to protect identity), a 14-year-old girl, is in hospital with a broken spinal cord; she was employed in the home of a middle-class businessman. How many more such 'cases' do we have to read about before we do something about this insidious form of child labour?

These two children are not stories in isolation but the ones that caught the attention of the media. There are hundreds of thousands of child domestic workers across India without a voice, subject to exploitation and part of a growing breed of full-time child workers in the country's towns and cities; this despite the fact that child domestic work is illegal.

Through a notification on October 10, 2006, the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act (CLPRA) specifi-cally prohibited employing children below 14 years as domestic help. Unfortunately, five years on, child domestic work, which is tantamount to modern-day slavery, is still endemic.

While poverty is certainly a reason for child labour, our policymakers promote the pernicious argument that it is the only reason while abdicating their responsibility to ensure that children go to schools and not to work in middle-class homes. Harish Rawat, former minister of state for labour, justified India's reluctance to sign International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 182 which seeks to eliminate the worst forms of child labour saying, "Under existing socio-economic conditions in the country and compelling conditions, children are forced to seek employment to supplement their family income."

Does poverty justify children being subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse? Does poverty justify children being robbed of their childhood?

The plight of Sanjana could be that of Mithu or Halima across the metros of India. Children working as domestic help are forced to work long hours, without food, are either paid minimal wages or not paid at all, and as they live with the employer, are largely invisible to the outside world. This invisibility is a key reason for the vulnerability of child domestic workers to exploitation and physical and psychological abuse, as the recent two cases show.

The invisible nature of child domestic work makes it difficult to take it out in the public domain as an issue for public debate. What also allows this cruel form of child labour to continue is the social and cultural sanction surrounding the employment of children as domestic workers.

More than the inadequacy of existing legislation or the moral bankruptcy of our policymakers, it is we, the middle class, who sanction and legitimise this modern-day slavery called child labour. The great Indian middle class that has contributed to and benefited from the runaway growth story knowingly employs children in its homes using the same argument of poverty.

Organised operations working across underdeveloped states/districts traffic children of poor families and hand them over to place-ment agencies based in cities and metros. West Bengal and Jharkhand are two such states from where thousands of children are sent or trafficked every year to Kolkata, Mumbai or Delhi to work as child labour; some of them are even sold into prostitution. As domestic help, the children shoulder heavy responsibilities with little or no remuneration, are completely at the mercy of the employer and frequently suffer from physical and sexual violence.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, Article 32, recognises 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 or social development. Child domestic work is one such hazardous and exploitative form of labour recognised by the ILO as intolerable.

Little has been done so far to rescue child domestic workers and to punish their employers; there is a poor track record of enforcement of laws. In one parliamentary session in 2009, Rawat made a written statement that under the CLPRA, there had been seven prosecutions and four convictions in the past three years! This sums up the deplorable state of affairs. There is an urgent need to make child labour a cognisable offence and to strictly enforce the law to bring offenders to book.

Having said this, unless we, the middle class, demur at employing children in our homes, the law can only serve a limited purpose. We should also speak out in our own circles against those employing children as domestic help and report any such cases to Childline or the local child welfare committee.

The writer is national manager - media and communications with Save the Children, raising this issue on the occasion of Children's Day.