RESEARCH:- Child Labour In India.

Name Ritesh lingale

ROLL NO:- 67
CLASS:- SYBBA
DIV-B
GUIDED BY:- SACHIN LAD SIR

Introduction:–

Children in Indian society has always been a topic less spoken or discussed. Children in every
society have always been taken as the greatest gift to humanity. Childhood is an important stage
of human development as it holds the potential to the future development of any society.
Children who are brought up in an environment, which is helpful to their intellectual, physical
and social development go on to be responsible and productive part of the society. If we are to
engage the children in to work when they are too young for the task, we are unduly reduceing
their present welfare or their future income earning capabilities, either by shrinking their future
external choices or by reducing their future individual production capabilities. Generally it is
said that due to economic problems children are forced to forego educational and other development
opportunities and take up jobs which mostly exploit them as they are usually underpaid and engaged in
hazardous conditions. Parents send their child for a job as a desperate measure due to poor economic
conditions. It is therefore no wonder that the poor households represent the largest segment contributor of
child labour. One of the key aspects of child labour is that children are sent to work at the expense of
education. There is a strong effect of child labour on school attendance rates and the length of a child’s
work day is inversely associated with their capacity to attend school. Child labour restricts the right of
children to access and benefit from education and denies the fundamental opportunity to attend school.
Child labour, thus, prejudices children’s education and also adversely affects their health and safety.
Who is a Child – International Labour Organization (ILO) states, the term child labour is best defined as
work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to
their physical and mental development. It refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or
morally dangerous and harmful to children, or work whose schedule interferes with their ability to attend
regular school, or work that affects in any manner their ability to focus during school or experience
healthy childhood. i ILO states that child labour may be defined in different ways, and different definition
would yield different estimates of child labour. According to ILO, children or adolescents who
participate in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their
schooling, is not child labour; rather it may generally be regarded as being something positive.
Such harmless work includes activities such as helping their parents at home, assisting family or earning
pocket money outside school hours and on holidays. Such kinds of activities may contribute to children’s
development by providing them with skills and experience, and help to prepare them to be productive
members of society during their adult life. ii UNICEF definition of child labour is different. A child is
involved in child labour activities if between 5 to 11 years of age, he or she did at least one hour of
economic activity or at least 28 hours of domestic work in a week, and in case of children between 12 to
14 years of age, he or she did at least 14 hours of economic activity or at least 42 hours of economic
activity and domestic work per week. UNICEF in another report says, "Children’s work needs to be seen
as happening along a spectrum, one end being destructive or exploitative work and beneficial work -
promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and
rest’ being the other end. And between these two end there are vast areas of work that may or may not
negatively affect a child’s development." iii In India , The Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act,
1986 has defined the child as anyone who is “a person who has not completed his fourteenth year of age”
The law further has defined the establishment for employment as, “The “establishment” includes a
shop, commercial establishment, work-shop, farm, residential hotel, restaurant, eating-house, theatre or
other place of public amusement or entertainment”.
Significant:-

According to data from Census 2011, the number of child labourers in India is 10.1 million of which 5.6
million are boys and 4.5 million are girls. A total of 152 million children – 64 million girls and 88 million
boys – are estimated to be in child labour globally, accounting for almost one in ten of all children
worldwide.Despite rates of child labour declining over the last few years, children are still being used in
some severe forms of child labour such as bonded labour, child soldiers, and trafficking. Across India
child labourers can be found in a variety of industries: in brick kilns, carpet weaving, garment making,
domestic service, food and refreshment services (such as tea stalls), agriculture, fisheries and mining.
Children are also at risk of various other forms of exploitation including sexual exploitation and
production of child pornography, including online .Child labour and exploitation are the result of many
factors, including poverty, social norms condoning them, lack of decent work opportunities for adults and
adolescents, migration and emergencies. These factors are not only the cause but also a consequence of
social inequities reinforced by discrimination. Children belong in schools not workplaces. Child labour
deprives children of their right to go to school and reinforces intergenerational cycles of poverty. Child
labour acts as a major barrier to education, affecting both attendance and performance in school. The
continuing persistence of child labour and exploitation poses a threat to national economies and has
severe negative short and long-term consequences for children such as denial of education and
undermining physical and mental health.Child trafficking is also linked to child labour and it always
results in child abuse. Trafficked children face all forms of abuse-physical, mental, sexual and emotional.
Trafficked children are subjected to prostitution, forced into marriage or illegally adopted; they provide
cheap or unpaid labour, are forced to work as house servants or beggars and may be recruited into armed
groups. Trafficking exposes children to violence, sexual abuse and HIV infection. Child labour and other
forms of exploitation are preventable through integrated approaches that strengthen child protection
systems as well as simultaneously addressing poverty and inequity, improve access to and quality of
education and mobilize public support for respecting children’s rights. Teachers and others in the
education system can be frontline supporters to protect children and can alert other stakeholders such as
social workers to situations where children display signs of distress or indicate they work long hours.
Getting children out of work and into school also requires broader changes in public policy to empower
families to choose education over exploitative labour. UNICEF works with government and for-profit
agencies to put in place the necessary policy framework to end child labour. It works with businesses to
assess the supply chains and to find sustainable options to address business practices that lead to child
labour. It works with families to support the ending of labour that is a result of bonded or debt labour.
UNICEF supports state governments to integrate programmes that would end child labour. We also
support communities in changing their cultural acceptance of child labour, while ensuring alternative
income to families, access to preschools, quality education and protection services.

Problem / Statement:-

Children were employed as familial labour and were expected to contribute to the household economy.
Even after the Industrial Revolution, factory owners in Europe preferred to employ children wherever
possible because they could be paid half of what an adult worker would need to be paid. In fact, in
plantations in formerly colonised nations, where labourers were largely migrants, owners preferred to
employ a family instead of four men, because it presented a double benefit: they could pay a family less
than what they would need to pay four male workers, and a family ensured that their workforce was
reproduced within the plantation, thereby saving the owners the trouble of having to constantly look for
more sources of labour. It was only in the 20th century, that the need to educate children before
employing them was recognised. In the second half of the century, when education began to be
considered one of the most important indicators of development, governments all over the world started
thinking of eradicating child labour as a practice.
In this reading list, we examine the phenomenon of child labour and look at how India has handled the
issue.

1) A Consequence of Poverty?
The 2011 Census shows that child labour has been a chronic problem in India and at least 10.1 million
children are still employed by various industries. In his 2004 article analysing National Family Health
Survey (1998–99) data, S Mahendra Dev argues that the occurrence of child labour is dependent on
several demand and supply side factors. He reiterates the commonly held notion that poverty compels
families to send their children to work in order to augment the family income, and therefore, in countries
with high levels of poverty, child labour will be correspondingly high. In addition, he writes that socio-
economic factors like female literacy, fertility rates, family size, adult wage rates, diversification of the
rural economy, and female work participation rates are also important determinants of child labour. The
dismal plight of India's children between six and 14 years of age is vividly brought out by Myron Weiner:
"Less than half of India's children between ages six and 14—82.2 million— are not in school. They stay
at home to care for cattle, tend younger children, collect firewood, and work in the fields. They find
employment in cottage industries, tea stalls, restaurants, or as household workers in middle class homes.
They become prostitutes or live as street children, begging or picking rags and bottles from trash for
resale. Many are bonded labourers and working as agricultural labourers for local landowners."

2) Not Just an Economic Problem

Child labour has traditionally been understood as a symptom of economic underdevelopment. This
conception assumes that if a country is able to achieve higher rates of economic growth, it will
automatically eliminate poverty because of which child labour will cease to exist. Kiran Bhatty, however,
has argued that this notion is incorrect and that child labour cannot be posited as an economic problem
alone. If there is sufficient political will to enforce primary education, then children can be kept away
from hazardous workplaces. Child labour must be seen as less a phenomena of poverty and more of social
attitudes and sensibilities. This is evident from the fact that the developed world tackled this problem
much before its economies grew strong. And even in the developing world there are countries where this
problem is relatively non-existent. The extent of child labour in certain industries and the social
degradation and damage it leads to in the long run must force us to acknowledge the social dimension of
the problem and the moral and ethical questions it raises. Only when society as a whole internalises this
sentiment will there be enough conviction to make a positive impact on the eradication of child labour.

3) Gendered Dimension of Child Labour

Adding to the argument about social attitudes being responsible for child labour, Neera Burra emphasised
the importance of expanding the definition of child labour beyond wage labour. She pointed out that the
contribution of girls to the household economy is often unpaid and unrecognised. Their labour goes
entirely unacknowledged and there is practically no effort to send them to school because of long-
standing stereotypes and norms that perpetuate gender discrimination. It can be argued from one
universalist perspective that those parents, who believe that girls need to be socialised into their adult
roles as children and that formal education has no meaning for them, suffer from false consciousness.
Social and historical circumstances determine the range of choices that communities, families and
individuals are presented with and it is possible to keep adding to the list of what many indefensible like,
for instance, the practice of child marriage in India or the practice of female circumcision in Africa.

4) Legal Loopholes
The elimination of child labour from the production process altogether requires a two-pronged approach
to curb it at both the demand side and supply sides. Ann George and Dev Nathan have argued that
corporate initiatives can deal with the demand side, but social policy intervention is required to deal with
the supply side. Consequently, corporations need to move beyond legal obligations and adopt social
responsibility measures to successfully prevent children from entering the workforce. However, there is
little incentive for them to do so because employing children is economically advantageous. Laws have
proven to be inadequate in preventing corporations from hiring children, especially since corporations
often exploit legal loopholes. For instance, in India, two different legal regimes guide the understanding
of child labour and this is exploited by corporations to employ children. India's Child Labour (Prohibition
and Regulation) Act of 1986 allows children beyond the age of 14 to work in factories or elsewhere as
regular workers. However, international contracts often include a clause about the non-employment of
anyone below the age of 18, the internationally accepted and the International Labour Organisation's
(ILO) definition of adult labour—so not employing anyone below the age of 18 becomes a contractual
rather than a legal obligation.

Objectives:-
 Child labour continues to proliferate across India’s cities, slums, and villages despite
decades of social reform.
 Children are not only led to labour due to poor school infrastructure but also find
themselves ‘caught in the crossfire’ of India’s poverty problem.
 In many cases, it is parents and relatives who force children into labour.
 Child labour also becomes a means of survival for children who find themselves
homeless or abandoned as a result of adverse circumstances.
  To work for strengthened protections, guarding youth from excessive, inappropriate, and
hazardous labor.
 To advocate for better enforcement of child labor laws and regulations, including devising and
encouraging innovative ways to ensure employer compliance.
 To educate the public, business, and governments to broaden awareness and understanding about
the nature of child labor exploitation in the United States and other countries, and how it differs
from legitimate and positive youth employment; and
 To urge the Congress of the United States to act quickly to ratify and enforce all the International
Labor Organization and United Nations Conventions that affect child labor.

Limitation & Scope:-

We know that child labour involves exploitation of children, but it is vital to understand how it is not only
child victims but how society suffers when it is implemented. This damage isn’t one which can be
sidelined and overlooked by those who are only concerned with their own selfish interests – it affects
every single individual, immediately as well as the long term.

Here’s why we need to put an end to this evil practice.

We know that child labour involves exploitation of children, but it is vital to understand how it is not only
child victims but how society suffers when it is implemented. This damage isn’t one which can be
sidelined and overlooked by those who are only concerned with their own selfish interests – it affects
every single individual, immediately as well as the long term.

Here’s why we need to put an end to this evil practice.

1. Health damage
Victims of child labour usually suffer from depression and anxiety, pushing them to destructive habits
like smoking, alcoholism or drug abuse. Formative environments of abuse also trigger a lifetime of low
self-esteem, depression, and relationship difficulties. Psychological and emotional conditions such as
panic disorder, dissociative disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, anger,
posttraumatic stress disorder, and reactive attachment disorder have also been noted in children who have
grown up in abusive conditions.

2. Employment
At the moment, India has 60 million child labourers. http://www.friendsofsbt.org/statistics/ Imagine the
losses India’s economy faces when successive generations of children attempt to attend the formal
workforce. Across industries, this means that the potential talent of children who have been deprived of
primary and secondary education will be lost. Instead, they will only be capable of manual and menial
labour, in skills like serving tea, cleaning tables and working with hazardous chemicals. Despite
aggressive attempts to end child labour, India has still not been able to achieve a blanket ban on the
practice.

3. Acceptance of child labour

Today, child labour exists in many invisible forms. You probably ignore everyday incidents of child
labour around you, such as the children working as hawkers, or minors used as servants for work like
cooking, cleaning utensils and sweeping floors. Even our festive fireworks are made using child labour.
Silently ignoring child labour is just giving approval to this crime, making it acceptable to treat children
as utilities and ‘beasts of burden’. In the long run, you are engineering an economy to rely on the
dispensability of desperate children, not the energy of eager and productive men and women. That is
dangerous for a country’s GDP, and also unacceptable internationally considering the aggressive
initiatives the United Nations has taken to end child labour in all forms.
Conclusion
Now that you have gotten a glimpse of the immediate threat that child labour poses, you should consider
how you can swiftly contribute to ending it. The easiest and most efficient way to the fight against child
labour is to donate online, to an NGO like Save the Children. Your donations will fuel India’s finest child
rights activism, through programmes to uplift, empower and rescue children.

Hypotheris:-

 The existing legal frameworksagainst child labour might not be sufficient to stop the
activity of child labour in Rural India.
 There will be no significant relationship between parental socio-economic status and
child labour
 There will be no significant relationship between parental socio-economic status and
child labour practices.
 The difference with someone who completed secondary school is of 170% (López,
2005:91). Child labor contributes to create a poverty trap as households substitute
education by child work, in an attempt to increase daily income within the household.
(Ravallion, et.al, 2000; Ureña, 2008) Is a constraint to human capital , and therefore, to
economic growth and development (Udry, 2006; Glewwe & Hacoby, 1994).

 Boys and girls that go to school at the same time that work decrease their learning
competence because of the lack of time for studying and because of being tired.