Child labour

According to a recent estimate of the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 120 million children between the ages of 5-14 are employed as full time labourers around the world. A good number of such children labour in the most hazardous and dangerous industries. In India itself, it is estimated that there are at least 44 million child labourers in the age group of 5-14. More than eighty percent of child labourers in India are employed in the agricultural and non-formal sectors and many are bonded labourers. Most of them are either illiterate or dropped out of school after two or three years.

What is child labour?

Child labour is not child work. Child work can be beneficial and can enhance a child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development without interfering with schooling, recreation and rest. Helping parents in their household activities and business after school in their free time also contributes positively to the development of the child. When such work is truly part of the socialization process and a means of transmitting skills from parents to child, it is not child labour. Through such work children can increase their status as family members and citizens and gain confidence and self-esteem.

Child labour, however, is the opposite of child work. Child labour hampers the normal physical, intellectual, emotional and moral development of a child. Children who are in the growing process can permanently distort or disable their bodies when they carry heavy loads or are forced to adopt unnatural positions at work for long hours. Children are less resistant to diseases and suffer more readily from chemical hazards and radiation than adults. UNICEF classifies the hazards of child labour into three categories, namely (i) physical; (ii) cognitive; (iii) emotional, social and moral: 

  1.       Physical hazards

There are jobs that are hazardous in themselves and affect child labourers immediately. They affect the overall health, coordination, strength, vision and hearing of children. One study indicates that hard physical labour over a period of years stunts a child's physical stature by up to 30 percent of their biological potential. Working in mines, quarries, construction sites, and carrying heavy loads are some of the activities that put children directly at risk physically. Jobs in the glass and brassware industry in India, where children are exposed to high temperatures while rotating the wheel furnace and use heavy and sharp tools, are clearly physically hazardous to them. 

2.     Cognitive hazards

Education helps a child to develop cognitively, emotionally and socially, and needless to say, education is often gravely reduced by child labour. Cognitive development includes literacy, numeracy and the acquisition of knowledge necessary to normal life. Work may take so much of a child’s time that it becomes impossible for them to attend school; even if they do attend, they may be too tired to be attentive and follow the lessons. 

3.     Emotional, social and moral hazards

There are jobs that may jeopardize a child’s psychological and social growth more than physical growth. For example, a domestic job can involve relatively ‘light’ work. However, long hours of work, and the physical, psychological and sexual abuse to which the child domestic labourers are exposed make the work hazardous. Studies show that several domestic servants in India on average work for twenty hours a day with small intervals4. According to a UNICEF survey, about 90 percent of employers of domestic workers in India preferred children of 12 to 15 years of age. This is mostly because they can be easily dominated and obliged to work for long hours and can be paid less than what would have to be paid to an adult worker. Moral hazards generally refer dangers arising for children in activities in which they are used for illegal activities, such as trafficking of drugs, the sex trade, and for the production of pornographic materials.

Child Labour Laws 

 Child labor is a reality in spite of all the steps taken by the legal machinery to eliminate it. It prevails and persists as a world phenomenon in spite of child labor laws. The causes of child labor in the contemporary world are the same as those in U.S. hundred years ago- namely poverty, lack of education and exposure, poor access to education, suppression of workers’ rights, partial prohibition of child labor and inadequate enforcement of child labor laws. 

India is also a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ILO Abolition of Forced Convention – No 105 and ILO Forced labor Convention – No. 29. A National Labor Policy was also adopted in the year 1987 in accordance with India’s development strategies and aims. The National Policy was designed to reinforce the directive principles of state policy in the Indian constitution.

The Extent and General Pattern of Child Labour and its Hazards in India

·        The agricultural sector

               A recent ILO report states that in some developing countries nearly one third of the agricultural workforce is comprised of children. According to a survey of 1989, about 82 percent of the 6.1 million fully economically active children in Bangladesh worked in agriculture. Similarly, in India about 80 percent of child laborers are employed in agriculture and allied occupations. Studies also reveal that about 86 percent of bonded labour is found in India’s agricultural sector.

·        Street work

               There are thousands of children who live and work in the city streets of India. According to a study conducted among the street children in the city of Chennai (Madras), about 90% of them live with their parents in the streets. The same study also revealed that the largest group of street children in Chennai work as coolies (22%). About 10.4% of them work in hotels (small restaurants and snack bars), 9.6% do rag picking, 8% pull rickshaws, and 7.1% sell flowers. A smaller percentage of children are employed in other areas of work, including prostitution (0.3%). They work for 10-12 hours a day and at the end of the day what they earn is barely enough for their survival. About 32% of them receive less than 100 rupees (about 2.5 U.S. dollars) per month as wages. The local police and even the municipal cleaners create great difficulties for the street children in India. For any petty thefts, they are the first ones to be accused by the police. The local municipal cleaners, in turn, demand money and labour from them. If the children refuse to comply, they are threatened with the police, who will compel them to pay even more. A memorandum presented at a 'street children’s rally' in Bangalore alleged that the police extorted about half the earnings of the rag pickers as commission. The children also had to pay some staff members of the municipality to ease the way for rag picking.

                                                   Child labour is considered to be a "necessary evil" in poor countries such as India for the maintenance of the family. In that context, some consider it virtuous to give a job to a child. In fact, some academics and activists campaign not for the reduction of child labour but only for a reduction in the exploitation of children. However, the question has to be asked whether it is justifiable to allow children from poor families to undergo physical, cognitive, emotional and moral hazards because they must help their families. Is the joy of childhood reserved only for some, privileged, and children?