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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | No More Excuses To Eliminating Child Labour by Ananthapriya Subramanian

No More Excuses To Eliminating Child Labour by Ananthapriya Subramanian

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published Published on Aug 5, 2010   modified Modified on Aug 5, 2010


What do three members of the National Advisory Council, two members of the Planning Commission, Editors (including the editor and executive editor of this magazine), MPs from across the political spectrum, CII members and the NCPCR have in common? One single demand: no child under 14 should be engaged in child labour. Forty-five eminent members of society from very diverse backgrounds have thrown their considerable weight behind an ongoing campaign by Save the Children seeking changes in the child labour laws that would ensure that every child under 14 is at school, not at work. The premise of the campaign is this: with the Right to Education Act in place, the Government must waste no more time in removing the scourge of child labour in our society.

According to the 2001 census, there are 12.6 million children under the age of 14 engaged in child labour. This is surely a conservative estimate. The government estimates also do not acknowledge the millions of children working in agriculture. Civil society places the number of child labour at a more realistic 40 million or so. The law mandated with tackling child labour, the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986, makes a distinction between hazardous and non hazardous categories of work for children under 14. So, for example, the law bans child labour in dhabhas deeming it hazardous labour but not child labour in agriculture. Apart from the moral argument that you cannot have arbitrary definitions of what constitutes child labour to decide whether a child under 14 can work or not, child labour in any form is detrimental to the physical, mental and cognitive growth and development of the child. Even if one were to buy the distinction between what constitutes hazardous and non hazardous work, the agriculture sector is considered one of the three most dangerous industries to work at any age, in addition to construction and mining (ILO, 2007).

Approximately 70 per cent of children in child labour are in agriculture. Owing to the labour intensive nature of cotton production, the use of child labour in cotton fields, especially for cross-pollination, has increased over the years. Children working in cotton fields are continuously exposed to poisonous pesticides. Apart from the health effects such as headaches, nausea and respiratory ailments borne out by various studies, children working in cotton fields are deprived of schooling. Working long hours in the field means that children cannot attend school regularly or even if they are enrolled, invariably drop out at some point.

Whatever might have been the rationale for the CLPRA to be enacted, that logic is now a non sequitur. You cannot have one law that promises elementary education to all children and another one regulating child labour. Children cannot be expected to be both working and in school at the same time. The RTE overrides the CLPRA and the latter is in clear conflict with the former. This being the case, the very first step must be to amend the CLPRA to remove the “regulation” terminology. No child under 14 should be engaged in child labour. India is one of the few countries that have not ratified ILO Convention No. 138 that states that the basic minimum age of employment is 15 years. Also, any law that is mandated with tackling child labour cannot overlook the category of children in agriculture if it is serious about eliminating child labour given that the majority of child workers are in agriculture.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the growth of 7.4 per cent in 2009-10 as one of the best performances in the world after the recent global economic crisis. India is indeed a country of stark contrasts. On the one hand, we have the distinction of doing well on economic growth despite a bleak global scenario. On the other, we have the dubious distinction of having the highest number of child labourers in the world.

Despite being a country of promise and rapid economic growth, poverty is often cited as a reason for the extent of child labour. This is a simplistic, reductionist argument. Families with child labourers are typically from the most marginalised communities in society. More often than not, they are deprived of minimum wages and unaware of any alternate source of income. Lack of education and social discrimination also mean that they fail to stake claim to the benefits of various social security schemes available for them.

Countries that have undergone rapid economic development over the last 100 years have also reduced the extent of child labour. While increased per capita income may be a principal reason for the reduction in child labour, legal and political reform combined with investments in education played a bigger role and it can even be argued that the reduction in child labour was itself a significant factor in subsequent economic growth.

Eliminating child labour should be seen as a generational investment, a sustained commitment to our future generation in order to reap the benefits when they reach adulthood. Initially, the economic burden may outweigh the returns but as has been the experience of some developed countries, the economic dividends from improved health and education can only be positive. The investments necessary to end child labour can be made, and they must be made.


Tehelka, July, 2010, http://tehelka.com/story_main46.asp?filename=Ws170710AnanthapriyaSubramanian.asp


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