EENET asia Newsletters : Third issue November 2006 Contents

Is Poverty a Seedbed for Child Labour?

When cotton farmer Vidyadhar Rathod, 38 swallowed pesticide in Malvagad village near Mahagaon town (in India) on January 18, 2006, his 12-year-old son Raghav became a debtor by inheritance. Today months after his father committed suicide, Raghav toils from 6 am to 8 pm to herd the cattle of a big farmer for a paltry sum Rs. 20 (less than half a dollar) a day. Staring into space he says…“I have forgotten I used to go to school. It is not possible now and then after a short pause continues…I miss my friends in school and my teacher who always said I was a clever boy and am doing well in class. I know she loved me and cared for me as she smiled, patted my back and hugged me often. Now I have no time as I have to help my mother Rukmabai feed the family and look after my three younger siblings.”

All children have a right to education and leisure and other means that allow them to develop fully. Yet many children like Raghav have to begin work at a very young age to help their families. Some are forced to work to learn the trade of the family and are expected to continue it later. Millions of tender hands are engaged in work and pluck tea leaves, roll cigarette, polish gems, pick and open cotton pods, tie carpet knots, weave silk cloth, stitch buttons on finished garments, make slates etc. The list is long as young children perform a variety of jobs working in factories, on plantations, or in homes.

It is often the children of the poor and economically and socially disadvantaged who work as child labourers. Why are children being exploited and forced into labour? Is poverty the seedbed for child labour or is it simply because of a tolerance towards children being out of school? Many are of the view that the persistence of child labour very much depends on the demand for it. This demand for child labour is either from employers who want to make profits by employing cheap workers or from small employers or household enterprises that use child labour to survive in low productive activities.

Persistence of child labour also has to do with the assumption that some kinds of work activities are better performed by children than by adults In addition to exploitative working conditions, children may be “selected” as better workers because of their small hands, assumed preciseness and improved quality of work performance. India has all along followed a proactive policy in the matter of tackling the problem of child labour and always stood for constitutional, statutory and developmental measures that are required to eliminate child labour.

The Indian Constitution consciously incorporated relevant provisions to secure compulsory universal elementary education as well as labor protection for children and the policy on child labour has evolved over the years against this backdrop. The present regime of laws has a pragmatic foundation and is consistent with the international labour laws. However, due to cultural and economic factors, these goals remain difficult to meet. Child labour is both a rural and an urban phenomenon. Megacities in India and other parts of Asia are hiding high numbers of child workers in small-scale, informal industries and homes. This includes child domestic workers, who work in homes of other people, who are below the legal minimum working age and who are prevented from going to school. This is another form of exploitative child labour and many child domestic workers are found in cities. Most of them are full time residents in the employers’ households. They are on duty throughout the day and their movements are often restricted by their employers.

A large number of children work on the street selling goods to earn some money. As well as disguising the scale of the problem, the lack of visibility of child labour in factories and homes, increases the potential for exploitation and abuse. In India alone we have more child workers than the entire population of Belgium.
The current legislation in India does not ban all forms of child labour. For instance, the act does nothing to protect children who perform domestic or unreported labor, which is very common in India. In almost all Indian industries girls are unrecognized labourers because they are seen as helpers and not workers. Girls are therefore not protected by the law.

Taking cognizance of the issue, the Ministry of Labour recently issued a notification banning children below 14 years of age from working in residences and the hospitality sector. After agriculture, these are the areas where children are employed in large numbers, and it is hoped that prohibiting their employment in homes and at waiting tables, will address a large lacuna in the current laws against employing children. This is a welcome step yet far from adequate. Implicit in the above legislation is the view that certain types of employment are more hazardous than others. However, are ultimately not all forms of child labour hazardous? Documentation on specific types of labour done by children in different parts of India revealed the exploitative contracts and abysmal conditions of work.

Children work long hours (eg.12-14 hours in the lock making industry), for one-tenth the salary of an adult (eg. for gem polishing) and in dangerous work environment close to hot furnaces in the glass factories. Literacy is often low and they suffer ailments at an early age. Their life expectancy is likely to be low.

There are many gaps in the existing legislation as it excludes several dangerous processes. For example it prohibits the child to work in a sawmill but not in a carpenters workshop. Working with agriculture machinery is prohibited but field labour using a sickle is permitted. All working children are exposed to a variety of hazards only arising from the work environment, the exploitative conditions of work, and the intrinsic vulnerability of children.
It is commonly argued that child labour cannot be stopped and may even be harmful to end till such time as poverty is reduced and therefore the main policy thrust should be towards eradication of poverty. Experiences from some developed and newly industrialized nations reveal that the achievement of universal education and the abolition of child labour was not dependent on the level of per capita income or the level of industrialization or the socio economic status of families.

Experience in Kerela (a state in India) also indicates that near universal schooling and a very low incidence of child labour can be achieved at relatively low level of per capita income. Thus rather than income growth preceding a reduction in child labour the chronology was in fact that the spread of mass education and accompanying reduction in child labour preceded economic growth and can be viewed as a precondition for economic development. The abolition of child labour does not have to wait for the ending of poverty.

It is time to end all forms of child labour. The battle has to be won with a change in existing social norms, values and attitudes, proper legislation and its implementation.

Adapted from an article by Swaminathan.S, “Time to Ban all Forms of Child Labor.” in The Hindu, 10th October 2006

EENET asia Newsletters : Third issue November 2006 Contents