Child Labour in India Millions of children in today's world undergo the worst forms of child labor which includes

Child Slavery, Child prostitution, Child Trafficking, Child Soldiers. In modern era of material and technological advancement, children in almost every country are being callously exploited. The official figure of child laborers world wide is 13 million. But the actual number is much higher. Of the estimated 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are economically active, some 50 million to 60 million between the ages of 5 and 11 are engaged in intolerable forms of labor. Among the 10 to 14year-old children the working rate is 41.3 percent in Kenya, 31.4 percent in Senegal, 30.1 percent in Bangladesh, 25.8 percent in Nigeria, 24 percent in Turkey, 17.7 percent in Pakistan, 16.1 percent in Brazil, 14.4 percent in India, 11.6 percent in China. ILO estimated that 250 million children between 5 and 14 work for a living, and over 50 million children under age twelve work in hazardous circumstances. United Nations estimate that there were 20 million bonded child laborers worldwide. Based on reliable estimates, at least 700,000 persons to 2 million, especially girls and children, are trafficked each year across international borders. Research suggests that the age of the children involved is decreasing. Most are poor children between the ages of 13 and 18, although there is evidence that very young children even babies, are also caught up in this horrific trade. They come from all parts of the world. Some one million children enter the sex trade, exploited by people or circumstances. At any one time, more than 300,000 children under 18 - girls and boys - are fighting as soldiers with government armed forces and armed opposition groups in more than 30 countries worldwide. ILO estimates that domestic work is the largest employment category of girls under age 16 in the world. India has the dubious distinction of being the nation with the largest number of child laborers in the world. The child labors endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and struggle to make enough to feed themselves and their families. They do not go to school; more than half of them are unable to learn the barest skills of literacy. Poverty is one of the main reasons behind this phenomenon. The unrelenting poverty forces the parents to push their young children in all forms of hazardous occupations. Child labor is a source of income for poor families. They provide help in household enterprises or of household chores in order to free adult household members for economic activity elsewhere. In some cases, the study found that a child's income accounted for between 34 and 37 percent of the total household income. In India the

emergence of child labor is also because of unsustainable systems of landholding in agricultural areas and caste system in the rural areas. Bonded labour refers to the phenomenon of children working in conditions of servitude in order to pay their debts. The debt that binds them to their employer is incurred not by the children themselves but by their parent. The creditors cum employers offer these loans to destitute parents in an effort to secure the labor of these children. The arrangements between the parents and contracting agents are usually informal and unwritten. The number of years required to pay off such a loan is indeterminate. The lower castes such as dalits and tribal make them vulnerable groups for exploitation. The environmental degradation and lack of employment avenues in the rural areas also cause people to migrate to big cities. On arrival in overcrowded cities the disintegration of family units takes place through alcoholism, unemployment or disillusionment of better life etc. This in turn leads to emergence of street children and child workers who are forced by their circumstances to work from the early age. The girls are forced to work as sex -workers or beggars. A large number of girls end up working as domestic workers on low wages and unhealthy living conditions. Some times children are abandoned by their parents or sold to factory owners. The last two decades have seen tremendous growth of export based industries and mass production factories utilizing low technologies. They try to maintain competitive positions through low wages and low labor standards. The child laborers exactly suit their requirements. They use all means to lure the parents into giving their children on pretext of providing education and good life. In India majority of children work in industries, such as cracker making, diamond polishing, glass, brass-ware, carpet weaving, bangle making, lock making and mica cutting to name a few. 15% of the 100,000 children work in the carpet industry of Uttar Pradesh. 70-80% of the 8,000 to 50,000 children work in the glass industry in Ferozabad. In the unorganized sector child labor is paid by piece-by-piece rates that result in even longer hours for very low pay. Inadequate schools, a lack of schools, or even the expense of schooling leaves some children with little else to do but work. The attitudes of parents also contribute to child labor; some parents feel that children should work in order to develop skills useful in the job market, instead of taking advantage of a formal education. From the time of its independence, India has committed itself to be against child labor. Article 24 of the Indian constitution clearly states that "No child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or employed in any hazardous employment" The Bonded Labour

System Act of 1976 fulfills the Indian Constitution's directive of ending forced labour A Plethora of additional protective legislation has been put in place. There are distinct laws governing child labour in factories in commercial establishments, on plantations and in apprenticeships. There are laws governing the use of migrant labour and contract labour. A recent law The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation law) of 1986 designates a child as a person who has not completed their 14th year of age. It purports to regulate the hours and the conditions of child workers and to prohibit child workers in certain enumerated hazardous industries. However there is neither blanket prohibition on the use of child labour, nor any universal minimum age set for child workers. All of the policies that the Indian government has in place are in accordance with the Constitution of India, and all support the eradication of Child Labor. The problem of child labor still remains even though all of these policies are existent. Enforcement is the key aspect that is lacking in the government's efforts. Child labor is a global problem. If child labour is to be eradicated, the governments and agencies and those responsible for enforcement need to start doing their jobs. The most important thing is to increase awareness and keep discussing ways and means to check this problem. We have to decide whether we are going to take up the problem head-on and fight it any way we can or leave it to the adults who might not be there when things go out of hand.

Can we eliminate child labour? Though it is a desirable goal the fact remains that in the given socioeconomic scenario that is prevalent in our country, it is virtually impossible to do away with child labour. One cannot dispute the fact that employers exploit children by paying them much less than what they would pay in adult and the future of the working children is ruined as they will not be able to attend schools and get educated for a better future. But when one considers the economic compulsions of the families which force the children to work, one will be compelled to admit that elimination of child labour will be a distant dream as long as the socio-economic status of these families is not improved. Realizing the harm caused by child labour, the Indian Government made laws to protect children from exploitation at work and to improve their working condition. Besides, a comprehensive law called Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. 1986, was promulgated to prohibit employment of children in certain hazardous occupations and processes. In 1987, the Indian government formulated National Police on Child Labour to protect the interests of children and focus on general development programmes for the benefit of children. As a part of this policy National Child Labour Projects have been set up in different parts of the country to

rehabilitate child labour. Under these projects, special schools are established to prove non-formal education, vocational training, supplementary nutrition etc. to children who are withdrawn from employment. Though elimination of child labour is an impossible task in the current socio-economic scenario, the Indian government is committed to the task of ensuring that no child remains illiterate, hungry and without medical care. When this ideal will be achieved is a million dollar question. The development countries are exerting pressure on developing countries like India to eliminate child labour. According to the current thinking the developed countries may stop imports of those goods that involve child labour in their production. In some of our cottage industries like making of carpets, children are employed in larger numbers. These carpets, which are being exported, may soon lose their market abroad if the producers of these carpets persist with child labour. Child labour is, no doubt, an evil that should be done away with at the earliest. The prevalence of child labour reflects very badly on society that is not able to stop this evil. But in a society where many households may have to suffer the pangs of hunger if the children are withdrawn from work, beggars cant be choosers. These families have to send their children to work, even if the future of these innocents is ruined, as that is the only choice open for them to survive in this world. Therefore, unless the socio-economic status of the poor families is improved, India has to live with child labour.

Example of child labour :When he was four years old, Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded servitude by his parents, a common practice of poor Pakistani families hoping to pay off debts owed to landlords and local merchants. For the next six years, Masih was forced to work in a carpet factoryusually chained to a loomfor up to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. A small, sickly boy, Masihs growth was further stunted by malnutrition, carpet dust, constant stooping, and beatings he received as punishment for his repeated escape attempts and occasional refusal to work. At the age of ten, however, Masih saw posters distributed by the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF), a human rights organization founded by labor activist Ehsan Khan. These posters revealed that bonded and child labor were illegal in Pakistana fact generally ignored by the local manufacturers and civil officials. Masih secretly contacted BLLF members, who helped him escape from the carpet factory. Soon afterwards, Masih joined the BLLF and worked with them to liberate 3,000 bonded children from textile, brick, and steel factories in Pakistan. Under the tutelage of Ehsan Khan, Masih became a spokesman for the bonded children of south Asia, and he traveled to the United States and Europe to persuade potential buyers to stop purchasing Pakistani carpets until the country enforced its child labor laws. In 1992, as a result of Masihs efforts, Pakistans carpet sales fell for the first time in twenty years. The boys success

gained international attention, and in 1994, he won the Reebok Human Rights Youth in Action Award and a future scholarship to an American university. In 1995, however, twelve-year-old Masih was shot to death while visiting relatives in a rural village. Khan maintains that Masih was assassinated by the carpet mafiamembers of the Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association who were eager to keep child laborers in their factories. Iqbal Masihs life and violent death have inspired many organizations, consumer groups, businesses, and individuals to contest the use of child labor. Canadian Craig Kielburger was twelve when he learned of Iqbals story and began researching the issue of working children. In an article printed in the December 15, 1996, Chicago Tribune, Kielburger states that before reading about Masih, I did not know very much about where my running shoes or soccer balls were made, or who made them. . . . Poor children in many countries are employed in the textile, sporting goods and toy industries, making products that may eventually end up on the shelves of North American stores. By buying these products, we may be contributing to the exploitation of children. With a group of friends, Kielburger launched Free the Children, an organization that urges consumers to learn about the origin and assembly of goods and to buy child-labor-free products. Kielburger has taken personally funded tours of factories in several Asian countries to investigate the working conditions of child laborers, and Free the Children has initiated letter-writing campaigns and petitions urging businesses and governments to eliminate the use of child labor. Many advocates for children argue that efforts such as Kielburgers are desperately needed because most child laborers work under abusive and horrific conditions. These workers often toil for twelve to eighteen hours a day in congested, dusty, dangerous environments that severely impair their health, activists contend. Some child laborers, advocates point out, face verbal, physical, and even sexual abuse from their bosses. Since most of them do not obtain an education, child workers cannot attain higherpaying jobs as adults and stay trapped in poverty all of their lives, activists maintain. According to the International Labour Organization, a workers rights alliance, there are at least 250 million workers between the ages of five and fourteen in third world countries. This number may be as high as 500 millionhalf of the children in the developing worldif undeclared workers and domestic workers are included. For these reasons, asserts Kielburger, we . . . have to push for education, protection, and the rights of the child. In addition to Kielburgers Free the Children campaign, concerned parties have taken several other measures in an attempt to stop the exploitation of child labor. In 1992, Democratic senator Tom Harkin first introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act, a congressional bill that proposes a ban on the importation of products made by children overseas. Harkin argues that this legislation endeavors to stop the economic exploitation of children and to get them out of the most dangerous jobs . . . by limiting the role of the U.S. in providing an open market for foreign goods made by underage kids. As of November 1998, Harkins legislation had not passed. However, some North American

localessuch as Bangor, Maine, and North Olmsted, Ohiohave instituted their own voluntary boycotts by passing ordinances prohibiting the purchase of goods made by sweatshop and child labor. Moreover, several companies, including Levi Strauss, Guess, and The Gap, have recently adopted a No Sweat policy that ensures that their stores do not carry products made by suppliers that exploit children or adult workers. Other activists have taken a different route by implementing labeling programs that ensure that a specific product has been made without the use of child labor. Child advocate Kailash Satyarthi, for example, established Rugmark, a nonprofit foundation that allows consumers to identify handknotted rugs made only by adult labor. Rugmark inspects factories that wish to be certified as childlabor free and attaches special Rugmark labels to carpets that meet their requirements. Through these kinds of actions, many human rights activists hope to stop the abuse and exploitation of child laborers. To do less with the knowledge that we have today on the extent of this problem is to be a coexploiter of children, insists California state representative George Miller. Some activists caution, however, that humanitarian challenges to the use of child labor can backfire. For example, 50,000 Bangladeshi children garment workers lost their jobs in 1994 after news of Harkins Child Labor Deterrence bill aired. Many of these children then took on the more dangerous work of stone crushing or prostitution to make ends meet. According to Bangladeshi writer and activist Shahidul Alam, children factory workers in third world countries contribute needed income to their house- holds, and if these children are forced to leave their jobs they must choose between a life of increased poverty or a life of more exploitative, and often illegal, work. Childhood [in Bangladesh] is seen as a period for learning employable skills, writes Alam. Children have always helped out with family duties. When this evolves into a paid job . . . neither children nor their families see it as anything unusual. In poor families it is simply understood that everyone has to work. Alam contends that the complexity of the child labor issue must be reexamined if human rights activists truly want to improve the lives of working children. To avoid scenarios such as the one in Bangladesh, many activist organizations do not support the boycott of goods made by children. Instead, they demand safe and humane working conditions for children along with a serious examination of the socioeconomic conditions that require young children to work. At the first international conference of child laborers held in 1996 in Kundapur, India, child delegates from thirty-three developing countries drafted a ten-point proposal that rejected the tactic of boycotts and called for work with dignity, with hours adapted so that we have time for education and leisure. They also requested opportunities for professional training, access to good health care, and more actions that would address the root causes of our situation, primarily poverty.

While human rights activists may disagree about the best approaches to ending the exploitation of working children, some analysts contend that Westerners should maintain a hands off stance toward child labor in the developing world. For one thing, critics argue, labeling programs such as Rugmarks are probably futile. Rugmark uses only eighteen inspectors to examine more than eighteen thousand looms, and, in the opinion of Columbia University professor Elliott Schrage, Without a video camera on every loom in every home where rugs are made, theres no way you can know if children were involved. Moreover, critics point out, inspectors could simply be bribed to lie about the use of child labor. Instead of trying to force overseas manufacturers to abide by seemingly more enlightened labor standards, argues economist Murray Weidenbaum, Western consumers should recognize that the use of child labor and low-wage workers is a natural stage in the industrial development of poor nations. As nations become more economically successful, Weidenbaum contends, they generally abandon exploitative labor practices. Such was the case for many national economies of the twentieth century, he points out: Japan moved from poverty to wealth, as did South Korea in the last half of the twentieth century. . . . Nations in Southeast Asia are undergoing a similar transformation. In each of these cases, rising portions of the population advanced to better paying jobsnot as a result of idealism but from changing economic circumstances. Concerns about the use of child labor and sweatshops are likely to increase as corporate power continues to expand into multinational domains and as a growing number of companies come to rely on outside manufacturers. Child laborers, of course, are not the only ones who are exploited. Adult workers in many third world countriesand even in the United Statesface long hours, menial pay, and hazardous working conditions. The authors in At Issue: Child Labor and Sweatshopsexamine the issues surrounding the use of child laborers and adult workers who are exposed to substandard work environments.