Why does India still have Child Labour issues?

Child labor denies children their right to go to school and strengthens the cycles of poverty. According to data from UNICEF, almost one of ten child laborers in the world are Indians. More than 12.9 million children are laborers in India. Child Labour in India has always been a major concern, yet there are no signs of it declining. There are many institutions and government agencies that are trying to curb this issue. If you want to help, you can see the section below. But first, let us understand what is Child labour in India.

Child Labour in India

All over the world, children are being exploited and deprived of primary education. This situation is worse in India, where the rate of Child labor just does not decrease. According to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are more than 152 million child labors in the world. These children as exposed to life threats, unpaid work, forced begging, trafficking, etc. Let us see the whole truth of child labor in India below.

How many child laborers are in India?

There are more than 12.9 million children between the age of 5 and 17 years in India who are employed. In such situations, children have to drop out of school and are deprived of primary education. They are just entangled in the vicious cycle of poverty. There are approximately  10.1 million children between the age of 5 and 14 years who are engaged in work. There are both boys and girls who work in factories, quarries or sell goods on the street. They work about 16 hours or more a day just to make ends meet and help their families earn bread.

When a child starts working from a young age, they grow up to be involved in more work. Almost 20% of children between the age of 15 and 17 years work in hazardous industries. And these numbers are just the ones that are recorded. There are many cases of Child labor in India that are not recorded or identified. Around 18 million children between the age of 5 and 17 years are marked as inactive. This means they are neither in school nor working. These missing children may be subject to some of the worst forms of child labor.

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Where do children in India work?

The majority of child labor in India happens in the agriculture sector. This includes cotton plantations and rice fields. Almost 71% of them work for these sectors. Around 17% work as service staff, mainly as domestic workers or in restaurants, and another 12% of them are spread across jobs in the industry sector, including dangerous activities in mines. Many children work for starvation wages in textile factories, carpet processing, brick making, and quarries. Some are working for the tobacco industry; making and selling cigarettes and bidis on the street. Children are being used in steel extraction, gem polishing and carpet manufacturing industries.

Not just this, but a lot of children are subject to trafficking. Most of these are girls. Some of these happen under the name of traditional bondage and others are purely organized crime. These children as used for forced begging, selling goods on the street, slavery, forced servant, etc. But the worse form of child labor in India is commercial sexual exploitation. These children are sold into prostitution. Most of the children working in India are unpaid or underpaid.

Causes of child labor

More than 1/3rd of India lives below the poverty line. Even though the economy of the nation has been booming and IT sectors have developed, they have failed to create jobs for the poor. Families affected by poverty are left with no option but to take their children out of school and put them to work just to have an additional source of income to feed the family.

Due to financial constraints, many parents even agree to sell their children or abandon them. The traffickers take advantage of this and exploit children and their families. The children are forced to work for other houses, taken to big cities and sold off for slavery and prostitution. They are made to beg and all the proceeds are taken away. The children are mostly unpaid or paid a very small wage.

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Child labor acts in India

In 1993, the Indian government enforced a law against child labor prohibiting dangerous work or activities that could harm the mental, spiritual, moral, or social development of girls and boys under the age of 18 years. However, people have found loopholes in the act and child labor continued. Another reason is, many big businesses hold political office or have influence. They do not want to let go of cheap labor.

In 2016, the act was reinforced with amended laws. This act aims at ensuring that children under the age of 14 are prohibited from working as domestic help or service staff in restaurants and hotels. However, child labor in family businesses continues to be acceptable. This act does not apply to children above the age of 15 years. It only mentions that’s children between the age of 15 and 17 years are prohibited from doing dangerous work, but does not specify what is dangerous.

The government is now working on tightening the laws. They are developing another act that would raise the penalty for employers who use child labourers under the age of 14, changing the punishment from a fine to a prison sentence which would last several years.

What can be done to stop child labor?

From a political point, the laws against such labor must be strengthened.  Poverty, the root cause of child labor, must be combated. Every child must have access to free/low-cost education at the primary level.

CRY (Child Rights and You) has taken up the initiative to curb this issue and the efforts made by them to prevent this matter are:

• Identifying the root causes which force families to allow children to be engaged in employment
• Addressing these underlying problems by interacting with parents, community leaders, and children’s collective where the value of child rights and the damaging consequences of labor are discussed
• Empowering communities with the knowledge to demand proper implementation of employment systems, food security, and access to all government provisions
• In instances of child trafficking and children forced into labor, CRY works on rescue, repatriation, and recovery of children through child protection networks under the Juvenile Justice Care & Protection Act and the Integrated Child Protection Scheme
• CRY works to create and strengthen ‘Children’s Collectives’. These forums create a platform for school-going children to play an important role in influencing children who are out of school to get enrolled/re-enrolled

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How can I help?

If you want to help curb the issue, you can donate to different institutions that are constantly working on this issue. Your contributions will work on strengthening their efforts of assuring children go to school, instead of work.

You can donate to CRY here: Click.