-Hindustan Times Bhopal: Shanti Dhakad of Madhya Pradesh’s Raisen district got married when she was 13. Six years later, her husband died in an accident, forcing the illiterate Dhakad into manual labour to raise her three children. Thousands of kilometres away, Leelabati Shaw, now in her late twenties, was forced to work as a maid in Kolkata after losing her husband when she was 18. "Life is tough for a teenage widow. Tracking...

-Hindustan Times The government plans to relax child labour laws and allow children below the age of 14 to work in select family enterprises if it doesn't hamper their education, saying it wants to encourage learning at home as it leads to entrepreneurship. A draft provision in the Child Labour Prohibition Act says the prohibition on child labour will not apply if they are helping the family in fields, forests and home-based...

-PTI Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya says there is a need for a total ban on child labour for children age up to 14 years The government will take up the bill on prohibition of child labour in the upcoming Budget Session of Parliament. The session is to commence on February 23, while the Union Budget 2015-16 will be presented on February 28. "Child protection bill is to be produced in the next session of...

-Pune Mirror Child rights activists demand that Centre amends Child Labour Act to ban children from working in the field Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) submitted a charter of demands to Pune MP Anil Shirole to be raised in Parliament when the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Bill, 2014, comes up for discussion during the ongoing session. And, one of CACL's principal demands - perhaps the most important one -...

-The Week Shambhu Kumar, 8, quite liked his job as a domestic help in a small town in Assam. He had to mind two children nearly his age, keep an eye on the ducks and be available for chores all day. It wasn't too hard, and he was well fed, too, though he missed his grandmother, a tea garden labourer. One day, some women from the state education department came to the...