Introduction
It is interesting that as opposed to popular belief, child labour came to focus in India long before it ratified the United Nations Convention for Rights of Children in 1989. The discussions and debates to tackle the problem of child labour arose as early as 1920s when India was still a British colony. Of course, it was the International Labour Organisation of the League of Nations that gave a push to it even then. As a result, in 1938, the Employment of Children Act had come about detailing the age and occupation that the children were allowed to work in.
At the time, the ILO in its guidelines set the minimum age for working for children as 12 years, while in British India, the minimum age was 9 years. The suggestions to increase the minimum working age for children from 9 to 12 years, created a furore among the mill and factory owners, and huge debates ensued across the country. Sir Thomas Holland argued in the Legislative Assembly that the increase in age will unsettle the arrangement of textile factories as the equipments have been made keeping in mind the children working there.
Even then there were people who suggested compulsory education as the solution for eradication of child labour, but as Sir Holland explained, the factory owners will be unwilling to pay for the children’s’ education as it will eat into their profits coming from cheap labour. So, the debate turned into whether the education should be made compulsory first and then the child labour prohibition worked upon, or it should be the other way round.
The factory owners meanwhile argued that they were taking good care of the children, and were employing them for the benefit of the family. The working children were the main bread earners of the family and thus it was beneficial for them to be working. Also, they did not want the minimum age increased as they felt that younger children work faster and were more intelligent. Also, the work helped increase their skills and the general intelligence. There were others who said that the parents of working children wanted them to work and the State should not interfere in their personal affairs.
What is interesting is that even today there isn’t much difference in the points raised in the debate when it comes to prohibition of child labour. It shows how much of progress has been made in uprooting child labour and that despite extensive research conducted in various parts of India, there has been no work done on the identification of causes of child labour and trying to find alternate solutions.
In 1929, the Royal Commission on Labour in India was set up to look into the conditions of labour in plantations and industries. This Commission did substantive work travelling all over India and brought forward horrific tales of children being forced to work in beedi and shellac manufacturing industries. Children were crowded into airless rooms and often made to work for long hours and subjected to corporal punishment. Also most of the children working in the industries were from parents who were indebted to the owners in some way or the other (which we call bonded labour today). The findings of this study are eerily similar to the studies conducted in India today and it is shocking to see that for how long the problem of children working in hazardous industries has been going on.
So, when in 1985, a Bangalore-based NGO debated the drafting of a bill for prohibition of child labour, it was not a new matter, only this time there was more media coverage. But, even this group did not talk about prohibition of child labour as they felt that the main cause for child labour was poverty. They only talked of regulating child labour, unionizing the child labourers and making them aware of their rights. Interesting thing was that they were against setting a minimum age for children for employment.
But, the debates now were about whether child labour should be regulated or prohibited, keeping the basic premise of poverty being the root cause of the problem. The Government was not very committed towards setting a minimum age for child employment and the Bill that was drafted was quite weak. The Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act was passed in 1986, which listed the hazardous industries in which children cannot be employed before the age of 14 years. But such a ban would not be applicable for children working as a part of family labour or those working in State-supported institutions.
As shown before, there were not many differences between the arguments that went into the drafting of the bill, hence the Act was similar to the 1938 Act, except for the constitution of the Child Labour Technical Advisory Committee, which has helped bring amendments in the list of hazardous industries over the years.
Poverty as a cause of child labour
Poverty is described as the one of the push factors (Lieten, Child Labour and Poverty, 2004), which leads to child labour. It is argued that acute poverty causes the parents to send their children for work as they bring in extra income. Hence, when a family is deprived of shelter, food, health and sanitation, there is really no difference between exploitation and work. Children in these cases work for their own and the family’s everyday survival. Usually such situation arises due to sudden death of the bread earner in the family. In India, it also happens through exclusion and marginalisation from the community due to caste, and also the exploitative circle of bonded labour due to the feudal system existing in villages.
But, to consider poverty as the root cause of child labour is not only wrong but also an excuse for non-eradication of child labour. There are examples of States and countries with high levels of poverty but low child labour.
State-wise Distribution of Working Children according to 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 Census in the age group 5-14 years
Name of the State/UT | 1971 | 1981 | 1991 | 2001**** |
Andhra Pradesh | 1627492 | 1951312 | 1661940 | 1363339 |
Assam | * 239349 | ** | 327598 | 351416 |
Bihar | 1059359 | 1101764 | 942245 | 1117500 |
Haryana | 137826 | 194189 | 109691 | 253491 |
Karnataka | 808719 | 1131530 | 976247 | 822615 |
Kerala | 111801 | 92854 | 34800 | 26156 |
Maharashtra | 988357 | 1557756 | 1068427 | 764075 |
Madhya Pradesh | 1112319 | 1698597 | 1352563 | 1065259 |
Punjab | 232774 | 216939 | 142868 | 177268 |
Tamil Nadu | 713305 | 975055 | 578889 | 418801 |
Uttar Pradesh | 1326726 | 1434675 | 1410086 | 1927997 |
West Bengal | 511443 | 605263 | 711691 | 857087 |
Delhi | 17120 | 25717 | 27351 | 41899 |
Total | 10753985 | 13640870 | 11285349 | 12666377 |
Source: NSSO
Note: * 1971 Census figures of Assam include figures of Mizoram.
** Census could not be conducted.
*** Census figures 1971 in respect of Mizoram included under Assam.
**** includes marginal workers also.
As we can see in the above table there has been a significant decrease in the child labour in Kerala in 2001, yet there is no data to suggest that poverty has decreased in the region. The progress here is largely seen as a result of the leftist movement in Kerala, which is also said to be responsible for the high development index of the state. Thus, it is not necessary to wait for breakthrough in economic development to eradicate child labour.
The culture of child labour
Another push factor (Lieten, Child Labour and Poverty, 2004), especially in Indian context is considered to be the culture of making children work. It is argued that Indian families (especially in the rural context) want their children to work as they feel that it teaches them life skills that can be useful for them when they grow up. For example, children helping their parents in the farms is seen more as a socialisation process to help a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood.
Once again this is one explanation or cause that has been established more for the convenience of the State than for the purpose of solving the issue.
“One of the ways in which child labour has been promoted in the carpet industry has been through the setting up of training centres by the state governments in the Mirzapur-Bhadohi belt of Uttar Pradesh, in Kashmir and in Rajasthan. In doing so, the state government has taken advantage of an exception provided to the general ban on children working in the carpet industry in cases where the institutions involved are state-run or state-funded...Children in centres run by state governments are usually around the ages of nine or ten years and they are expected to join the industry after the training is over.”(Burra, Born to Work, 1995).
The Census data related to child labour also contributes to this myth. In the Census, even the farm helps or other work which is more a part of socialisation, is seen as child labour and counted so in the figures. The major problem here is that the distinction between child work which may be even positive for the development of the child and child labour has not been made and understood (This will be discussed later in the paper). Hence, the actual definition of child labour is skewed and very confusing.
Hence, the census data as well other official sources will always show rural child labour a lot more than the urban one. Though rural child labour may be more because of the bonded labour and the caste hierarchies marginalising a section of the population, but migration to the cities for more work and the rising pressures of market economy surely means that cheap child labour is very much prevalent in cities. The divide can’t be as big as projected.
The chart shown below is derived from the projected data by NSSO. The numbers are in millions.
Globalisation and industrialisation
Industrialisation was meant to remove poverty and most industrialised nations think of child labour as a past. But, the effect of globalisation and the neo-liberal policy has ensured that there is no equitable distribution of resources. Hence even as some children are cared for and protected by their parents and the State, the others have to earn for survival of their families.
Child labour by background characteristic, sub-Saharan Africa (www.childinfo.org/unicef)
Industrialisation led to migration from rural areas to cities and where once children used to work alongside their parents in the farms, they started doing the same in the factories. Yet, the bourgeois class children were much more protected and they set the standard of childhood as to how it should be. Also, along with industrialisation, the compulsory schooling did not come about. This meant that children were forced out of schools and put to work by their parents as they brought in extra income.
Globalisation has a great effect on the developing countries like India. Globalisation and the neo-liberal policy is actually slowing down the growth of the developing nations. Most developing nations are heavily in debt and thus must achieve much higher economic goals to repay those debts. There is huge disparity in the resource distribution and control between countries which is making the developing countries more vulnerable to the whims and fancies of the developed nations.
“The need for children is not likely to decline in the near future as the effects of economic competition, commodification, consumerism and the growing gap between the rich and the poor are drawing children into the workforce.” (Stegeman, Child labour in the context of globalisation, 2004)
Also globalisation is bringing in the culture of consumerism, where there is demand for goods other than the basic necessities. Coupled with that the production techniques in agriculture have not improved leading to lesser production and low incomes. As a result, more and more people are migrating to the cities, where due to rising prices and commodification of even the basic necessities like water, the poor have to forcibly enlist their children for work.
The increased demand for goods due to increasing population, is leading to requirement of more labour. Children being the cheapest labour are being inducted into the workforce despite high unemployment among adults. Profit making is the main agenda of a market-driven economy hence, wages have to be as low as possible, and so children are the best workforce. Along with low wages, they do not unionize and only obey orders.
“In the context of globalization new forms of child labour are emerging in India. Children working in cotton seed farms are one such case in point. It is found that labour employed on advanced capitalist cotton seed farms in Andhra Pradesh – which is linked to national and multinational capital - involves the employment of labour which is mostly unfree and female and young (7-14 years)... in order to secure cheaper female child labour, employers segmented the female labour market via ideologies about the superiority of female children over adult females.” (Magnitude of Child Labour in India -- An Analysis of Official Sources of Data (Draft), ncpcr.gov.in)
Why is child labour a problem?
Illiteracy and health problems are the most prominent and the most discussed consequences of child labour. And these two factors also seem to have connections with the dimensions of poverty and caste system.
Children are not sent to schools by the poor families as they can earn extra wages and support the family. Hence, they give more priority to work over school. A rural practicum visit to a village in Madhya Pradesh called Bisa Khedi, opened my eyes to this reality. The teachers were helpless as most dalit children would skip school in the sowing and ploughing season to help their bonded labourer parents in the fields. If they do not go to the field they would skip school to take care of their younger siblings in the absence of their parents.
But, the unavailability or inaccessibility of a school is not just about poverty. It is also about power and control. The traditional feudal system has ensured that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes have remained marginalised, as they do not have any assets in terms of land in the village. Most land is in the hands of the upper castes, who are landlords and money lenders. The landlords give the dalits food to eat and allow them to live in the village peacefully but in turn, they make them bonded labourers who have to work for them till the loans are paid off. The landlords would charge heavy interest on the money they lend resulting in a cycle of oppression as the dalits remain bonded labourers through generations.
And if the above concept seems a bit archaic, it’s only because the globalisation has ensured that those living a high life in cities have become too distant from the realities of rural India.
What this caste hierarchy does is that the upper castes do not want to give away their power. Hence, they ensure that the lower castes remain uneducated and illiterate. They were the biggest opposers of Right to Education Act which makes it compulsory for every child to get primary education. Now, that the Act has been enforced, they ensure the bias remains, by ensuring that the schools are built in areas far away from where dalits live so that they fear sending their children to it. Also, they make sure that the schools are in the upper caste areas, where through generations, dalits have never been allowed to enter citing untouchability.
Child Workforce Participation Rates in India by Caste (1993-94 to 2004-05 (in per cent))
Year | Age group | STs | SCs | OBCs | Others | All |
1993-94 | 5-9 | 2.85 | 1.13 | N.A. | 0.86 | 1.09 |
10-14 | 24.02 | 13.90 | N.A. | 10.06 | 11.88 | |
1999-00 | 5-9 | 1.43 | 0.50 | 0.56 | 0.27 | 0.54 |
10-14 | 14.87 | 8.87 | 7.96 | 5.17 | 7.79 | |
2004-05 | 5-9 | 0.45 | 0.22 | 0.19 | 0.10 | 0.20 |
10-14 | 7.31 | 5.26 | 5.21 | 3.93 | 5.12 |
( Source: Derived from Respective Unit Level Records of NSSO)
Impact on health
When it comes to children, “one has to examine a) whether hazards are intrinsic to the nature of work itself, b) whether they arise from working environment and conditions of work, c) whether the work is simply unsuitable for children” (Burra, Born to Work, 1995)
The biggest case in recent history of child labour that brought to focus the health aspect of the children working in factories was the Sivakasi match-making factory case in Tamil Nadu. Through studies it was found that thousands of children under the age of 14 were employed in the matchmaking factories of Sivakasi. These children were mostly bonded labourers and worked for 14 hours at a stretch. Since the payment was made per piece, and it was a meagre amount, the children had to work fast to make more pieces. These children were exposed toxic chemicals leading to lung infections, eye infections and hazards like fire. Fires would happen due to the friction between the match and the cover, and sometimes being in a hurry to finish the job, inadvertently such mishaps would happen.
There are many other such industries where children are employed despite the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act coming into force. Children working in zari industry are forced to do minute needle work in dingy windowless rooms for 14 hours a day for meagre amount. They are not fed properly, many of them die and there is no count or studies to bring the number of deaths into light.
What is interesting is that in these cases child labour becomes a vicious unending cycle. Neera Burra in her book Born to Work says that she interviewed child labourers who had grown up to adulthood and most of them said they could not work as their work had made them ill. As a result, they send their children to work and support the family.
Summary and Conclusion
The first and foremost thing is to define child labour more clearly. There has to be a distinction between what is allowed and what is not. Will a child helping his parents in household work be called child labour. In the Western countries, this has been termed as child labour and social services can come into picture the moment a child complains of being asked to work at home. But, is it the right way of looking at child labour, as a lot of this work is part of a child’s socialisation and also helps in his overall cognitive development.
GK Lieten in his paper, The Causes for Child Labour in India: the Poverty Analysis, says that child labour has to be separated from child work and child deprivation. He says that when a child helps his aren’t in the farm for a girl child works in the kitchen with her mother; it should be considered child work which is positive term. These activities help the children socialise to the norms of the society. Child deprivation is when a child is deprived of basic rights like education, health care etc., which may not be the manifestation of child labour.
While Neera Burra, in her book Born to Work, takes a stance that any child who is forced to be out of school is a child labourer. But, this definition is too general and is bound to create confusions. Having said that even Lieten’s classification may not be devoid of confusion as there are many kinds of work that children do that falls in the grey area and cannot classified into the three categories.
The definition of child labour should be contextual. Every time a child is said to be working, it has to be assessed if it is exploiting him or giving some kind of cognitive skills to him. One distinction could be that any work that is profit oriented in monetary terms should be termed exploitative for children.
There is a view that Right to Education that makes primary education compulsory for all children is a solution to the problem of child labour in India. Now that the Act has been implemented, there doesn’t seem to be much headway in reducing the child labour. Burra analyses the education paradigm in the way the West has managed to curb child labour.
In the West, the primary education was first made compulsory for children up to six years of age, then increased to 12 and then to 15. And this gradual extension helped tackle child labour better. But, while looking at the West as an example, we forget the diversity that India has as a nation and the fact that no overarching rules can be applied for the country. The moment we universalize rules in India, there are bound to be gaps because someone will always get excluded.
Along with non-addressing of issues like caste barriers and poverty, the one big reason why RTE has not been successful is that what is being taught in schools is not relevant for the children studying in it. There is a syllabus which is looking to prepare children for white-collar jobs, and is completely irrelevant to those living in villages. Also, if the schools have to be brought into prominence among rural minds, they have to be more flexible in terms of admission. A child, who used to work in a farm as bonded labourer at six years of age and had to leave school because of his family circumstances, has to join the first standard at the age of 12. He will not only be older but he is expected to gain the knowledge faster. He is constantly catching up with the rest of the children. Eventually, he is bound to drop out as he won’t be able to cope with the system.
Hence, whenever the argument around child labour is made, it’s the parents who are blamed for children to be working, but it is also the system that is to be held accountable. The system is not ready to include marginalised, vulnerable children and their families in their policies. It is important that there should be equitable resource distribution to curb poverty. The approach of the state towards child labour should not only be as a problem solving one but also that of a welfare mode. Sponsorship schemes, awareness about benefits of education, addressing the caste system, all these have to happen simultaneously for any progress to happen.
Till then, the existence of millions of children in India is just in statistics!
References
Neera Burra (1995), Born to Work: Child Labour in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi
GK Lieten (2004), Working Children Around the World: Child Rights and Child Reality, Institute for Human Development, New Delhi & IREWOC Foundation, Amsterdam
Musafir Singh, VD Kaura and SA Khan (1980), Working Children in Bombay – a study, National Institute of Public Co-operation and Child Development, New Delhi
Cathryne L. Schmitz, Elizabeth KimJin Traver and Desi Larson, Child Labor: A Global View, Greenwood Press, London
GK Lieten, The causes for child labour in India: The Poverty Analysis
Ranjan K. Agarwal, The Barefoot Lawyers: Prosecuting Child Labour in the Supreme Court of India
Data from Census 2001
