CHILD WORKER: LAW AND ECONOMY

CHILD WORKER: LAW AND ECONOMY

PRITISH KISHORE

MARYADA SHARMA

5^TH SEMESTER, B.A.LL.B ( Hons.)

CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, PATNA, BIHAR

ADDRESS: C/O REGISTRAR, CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

                      A.N SINHA INSTITUTE, GANDHI MAIDAN , PATNA- 800001

PHONE No. – 9470841971

E. Mail i.d. – pritish.kishor@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION

“A Child is a father of the man”. This famous line quoted by William Wordsworth refers to the importance of the child in a society for the development of society as well as for the development of the whole nation. For welfare and development of the nation, a child should be introduced to high education and should be devoid of several social evils. One of these evils is CHILD LABOUR. Child labour is a practice usually followed in developing and underdeveloped countries. India, unfortunately, is one of them.

               Child labour is work that harms children or keeps them away from attending school. The various problems arising in the countries economic, political and social condition is one of the major reasons for growth of this problem. The International Labour Organization estimates that 246 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 currently work under conditions that are considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative.

               United Nations secretary General Kofi Annan quoted, "Child labour has serious consequences that stay with the individual and with society for far longer than the years of childhood. Young workers not only face dangerous working conditions. They face long-term physical, intellectual and emotional stress. They face an adulthood of unemployment and illiteracy."

               Also former president of India and a well known scientist Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Azad said, “All of us should feel proud on all literates, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and affluent citizens of the country but it should not be forgotten that such categories of persons are almost surrounded from all corners by large number of people who are poor and illiterate. They make our life comfortable and worth living by hard work of day and night and it may be dangerous to neglect them ....”

               Children are considered as one of the most important national asset of a country. They are the future custodian of sovereignty, rule of law, justice, liberty, fraternity and finally international peace and security. They are the future shoulder's in the form of great philosophers, rulers, scientists, politicians, able legislators, administrators, teachers, judges, technologists, industrialists, engineers, workers, planners on which the country would rest. The future of any nation is largely determined on how its children grow and develop. The issues relating to rights of Child Care and Welfare have been constantly engaging attention of the universe. However, the community has developed its sensitivity towards children's issues only during the last two decades which has brought on the national agenda issues like Child Abuse, Child Marriage and Child Labour.

               Child labour is not the problem of just a child; it is a malady that has to be looked into in totality. Just asking the child not to work is not going to solve this problem. It is important to look into the pros and cons of this. May be his family is depended on his income, in such cases; alternative means should be provided.

CONCEPT OF CHILD LABOUR

The term ‘Child Labour’ is, at times, used as a synonym for ‘employed child’ or ‘working child’. In this sense it is co-extensive with any work done by a child for profit or reward. But more commonly than not, the term ‘child labour’ is used in a derogatory sense. It suggests something which is hateful and exploitative. Thus, child labour is recognized by the sociologists, development workers, educationists and medical professionals as hazardous and injurious to the child, both physically and mentally.

               Shri V.V.Giri, former president of India, has thus distinguished the two concepts of the child labour. The term ‘child labour’ is commonly interpreted in two different ways: First, as an economic practice and secondly, as a social evil. In the first context it signifies employment of the children in gainful occupations with a view to adding to the income of the family. It is in the second context that the term child labour is now more generally used. In assessing the nature and extent of the social evil, it is necessary to take into account the character of the jobs on which the children are engaged, the dangers to which they are exposed and the opportunities of development which they have been denied.”
               The term ‘child labour’ applies to children engaged in all types of activities whether these be industrial or non-industrial but which are detriment to their physical, mental, moral and social well being and development. The brain of a child develops anatomically till the age of ten, the lungs till the age of fourteen and the muscles till the age of seventeen. Anything which obstructs the natural growth of any or all of these vital organs should be considered as detriment to natural physical growth, or even hazardous.

DEFINITION OF A CHILD

Definition of child is subjective and depends upon the matters it is related to.
In general term, child is used for a person who on account of his young age, is considered to be of immature intellect ad imperfect discretion and thus unable to comprehend the consequences of his own act. Such a person is known as minor.

               According to article 1 of United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child 1989:
“A child means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.”

               In case of child labour the definition of child can be referred under Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986. It states that: Child means a person who has not completed 14 years of age.

               From the above point, it is clear that a person up to the age of 14 years is a child while concerning child labour. Convention 59th of International Labour Organisation lays down that: “No child below the age of 14 years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.”

MAGNITUDE OF CHILD LABOUR

INDIAN SCENARIO

There are varying estimates of the magnitude of child labour in India due to differing concepts, methods of estimation and identifying the sources of data, among others.[1] To these can be added the vast unorganised, informal and unregulated sector of the economy and corresponding labour market. For example, it is in the informal sectors that child labour mostly operates without being adequately represented in the official labour statistics, including the census

               Based on the number of non- school going children and families living in destitution, Campaign against Child Labour estimates that there are between 70 to 80 million child labourers in the country.[2] A survey of child labour throughout the country ordered by the Supreme Court was completed during 1997, and it documented the existence of some 126,665 wage- earning child labourers. When this figure was challenged as patently low, the states conducted a second survey, in which an additional 428,305 child labourers in hazardous industries were found. However, even the combined total of the two surveys understates the true dimension of the problem.[3]

               As per the census of India, there were 10.75 million child labour in the age group of 5 to 14 years in 1971; 13.64 million in 1981; 11.28 million in 1991 and 12.66 million in 2001. Out of these 12.66 million, about 5.77 million children were classified as ‘main workers’ and the rest 6.88 million children were as ‘marginal workers’.[4] Most of the working children are engaged in agricultural activities as wage labourers or cultivators. Manufacturing, processing, servicing and repairs in the household industries engaged 3 per cent of child workers, while 3 per cent were engaged in factory work and the other 15 per cent were engaged in service sector, mostly as domestic workers, and in small trade activities.[5]

               Working children are usually classified in terms of work situations in (a) domestic work; (b) non- domestic and non- monetary work; (c) bonded labour work; (d) wage work in hazardous and non- hazardous occupations; and (e) commercial sexual exploitation work.[6] Each work situation has deep rooted consequences on their human rights, healthcare and future economic production processes.

               According to UNICEF’s, The State of the World’s Children 2006 about 14 per cent of the children (5 to 14 years) of the total children in the age group were engaged in child labour activities in 2004, with the percentages for boys and girls almost same at 14 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively.[7]

INTERNATIONAL SCENARIO

Reliable statistics on child labour are rare and, when available, often incomplete. Because child labour is illegal below a certain age in almost every country, national government surveys often do not collect information on working children below 15 years old.

               According to the latest available statistics of the United Nations Children’s Educational Fund (UNICEF) an estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour all over the world. Of these, almost 70 per cent (171 million) work in hazardous occupations, such as working in mines, chemical factories, in agricultural fields (approximately 70 per cent) with constant contact with pesticides or with dangerous machinery. Moreover, millions of girls work as domestic helpers and also unpaid household help and are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Millions of other work under horrific circumstances; they may be trafficked (1.2 million), forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery (5.7 million), into prostitution and pornography (1.8 million), into participating in armed conflict (0.3 million), or other illicit activities (0.6 million).[8]

               Regional estimates indicate that: Asian and Pacific regions harbour the largest number of child workers in the 5 to 14 age group, 127.3 million in total (19 percent of the children work in the region). Sub- Saharan Africa has an estimated 48 million child workers. Almost one child out of three (29 percent) below the age of 15 works. Latin America and the Caribbean have approximately 17.4 million child workers (16 per cent of children work in the region). 13.4 million children work in the Middle East and North Africa, which constitutes 15 per cent of the total children. Approximately 2.5 million and 2.4 million children are working in industrialized and transition economies, respectively.[9]

CAUSES OF CHILD LABOUR

There are many socio- economic factors, responsible for the increase of child labour in India:-

Poverty: Poverty is undoubtedly a dominant factor. Families below the poverty line force their children into work to supplement their household’s meagre income. Though children are not well- paid, they still serve as major contributors to their family income.

Schooling Problems: Many a times children seek employment simply because there is no access to schools. A major reason that India has the largest child work force is that millions of children are not in schools.

Big Families: In most of the rural areas in India, there are large families with limited options of income. These big families promote child labour for their livelihood.

Cheap and Safe Child Labour: Due to industrialisation and modern scientific technology, the tendency among the employers is to have quicker and greater profits at low costs. Children are paid very low wages and subject to excessive hours of work.

Other Factors: The other factors responsible for increasing the demand of child labour are –

Ø  Low profitability and productivity of small scale family enterprises that cannot afford adult paid labour and lack of law enforcement.

Ø  Economic and political instability.

Ø  Discrimination and migration.

Ø  Traditional cultural practices.

Ø  Increasing landlessness that has lead to dependence on wage and contractual employment.

Ø  Inadequate social protection.

Ø  Children are trouble free and cannot organise agitation.

Child labour, thus, is an outcome of economic and social related factors.

CONSEQUENCES OF CHILD LABOUR

Child labour is a concrete manifestation of the violations of the rights of children, especially the right to education and development. Working at a young age has many adverse and direct consequences:

Ø  Children are deprived of their right to education.

Ø  Children are deprived of their right to play, leisure and healthy growth.

Ø  Children are deprived of their free mental, physical, psychological and spiritual growth owing to hazardous nature of their work and over work that is not compatible with their age.

Ø  Children are deprived of their childhood itself.

Ø  Child labour creates and perpetuates poverty.

Ø  It condemns the child to a life of unskilled, badly paid wok.

Ø  Ultimately leads to child labour with each generation of poor children undercutting wages.

       Child labour is as much the cause as also consequence of adult unemployment and under- employment. It at once supplements and depresses the family income. It is not only a subsidy to industry but also a direct inducement to the payment of low wages to adult workers. Child labour involves the use of labour at its point of lowest productivity; hence it is an inefficient utilisation of labour power. It represents premature expenditure rather than saving.[10]

               “Long hours of work, late hours of night employment, continuous standing, indoor confinement in noisy factories and dusty trades, carrying heavy loads under the arm or lifting heavy weights, contact with industrial poisons, etc., all have negative impact on the health of the children and make them unhealthy adults.

               As was summed up by the government committee on child labour, it can now authoritatively be stated that child labour deprives children of their educational opportunities, minimizes their chances for vocational training, stunts their physical growth, hampers their intellectual development and by forcing them into the army of unskilled labourers or blind alley jobs, condemns them to low wages all their lives. Therefore, child labour is economically unsound, psychologically disastrous and physically as well as morally dangerous and harmful.[11]

NATURE OF CHILD WORK

From time immemorial it has been the practice that children were to engage themselves in some sort of work or the other, both in home and in the field. In olden days, children of tender age performed even toilsome work along with adult agricultural and other workers. In the medieval period, children used to be engaged as trainees under the guidance of their parents to learn traditional crafts of the family.

In agriculture, children are employed not only in agricultural operations but in non-agricultural operations also. They are employed in such diverse agricultural operations as ploughing, sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, threshing and guarding the crops, etc.
In plantations, child labour is a part of family labour. They assist their parents in plucking of leaves and coffee berries, or collecting of latex, or they do some secondary jobs, such as, weeding, spreading of fertilizers, the care of nurseries, digging of drains, etc. They are also employed to pick out stalks and coarse leaves of tea spread over the green leaves in the shadow.
               There is also an increasing concern about the accident and disease incident among child agricultural workers, controls on hazardous insecticides and pesticides are deficient and neither the children nor their parents receive any instruction as how to use them safely. The same is true of mechanical operations.

               Children in cities perform much larger varieties of activities than those in villages because of the extensively diversified structure of urban economics. Often, children are employed for packing, labelling, etc., in the factories. Other industries in which children are engaged are match factories, bidi manufacturing, mica cutting, wood and cork, furniture and fixture, printing, publishing and allied trades, leather products, rubber and rubber products, machinery, transport equipment, lock factories, gem cutting and polishing, potteries, glass bangle industries, brass work, carpet industries and personal services like laundaries, dyeing and cleaning.

               Millions of small boys and girls are engaged in the unorganized sector, comprising hotels, restaurants, canteens, wayside ‘dhabas’, shops, repair workshop, and establishments of various types. They also work as hawkers, coolies, shoe-shine boys and vendors. In big cities, children can be seen cleaning and washing automobiles just for a trip. The bigger the city, the higher is the persistent demand for teenagers to work as domestic servants and it is there that they are often subjected to worst types of exploitation without any means of protections-legal or social on the kitchen floor and are, as a rule, not permitted to attend school. Sexual abuse is also reported to be frequent.

               In a good number of occupations child worker is invariably exposed to risks of various natures because of his tender age. For instance, he is likely to suffer burn injuries while working round about big ovens, or while carrying hot beverages; the newspaper hawkers and shoe-shine boys are exposed to the risk of road accident; rag-pickers may get cut injuries from glass pieces or broken tin cans; or the child working on construction sites along with his parents may sustain injuries while carrying brick or stone loads.
Interestingly, children are sometimes also employed as performing artists. They are given roles in films, and in circus they perform acrobatic feats. Magicians and jugglers use them as ‘Jamura’ (the helping boy) and they are also used by them for arousing public sympathy at wayside shows for alms.

               Some writers and social workers are of the view that begging is a major field of operations where children are put to work. Mrs. Sengupta has observed:
“Our seething millions where child employment is rife and has become a various form of exploitation ….. begging is becoming a real profession and there are scaring rumours that gangsters and syndicates of inhuman beings trade in human babies and children. Certainly the mother clad in a rag and clutching a baby in her arms is a sight that is shameful. Children are drugged or even, one hears, tortured. To see pavement dwellers in all their horrors living in filth, children picking up rejected and popping food mixed with filth into their mouths make one feel desperate: but no one seems to do prevent from flaunting drugged babies or little tots on the road and to use them for employment purposes.” Curiously, some well to do urban families, having connections in the country-side, take in some child of a poor relative, ostensibly, for supporting the child out of sympathy for the poor relatives, but he or she ends up as a domestic servant with no opportunity for education. It has been also discovered that a sizable number of children ranging between 5 to 12 years of age had actually been kidnapped from different places to weave carpets and were forced to work for as long as 22 hours a day. These children treated like virtual slaves, were found to bear scar marks of torture. They were, reportedly, severely beaten even with iron rods, if they were deficient in work or committed errors in weaving. The most nefarious rather barbarian form of child exploitation is the practice of bonded labour. The child is handed over by the loaner as security or collateral security against small sums of loan obtained at an exorbitant rate of interest. The bonded child usually gets only a handful of coarse grain for his subsistence. He has to toil very hard and exists at the mercy of his lord for the whole of life without the least hope of redemption. The mortgagee is usually some big landlord, money- lender or the village businessman and the mortgager is the poor landless labourer. Though this practice is prevalent in many parts of rural India, it is predominant in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu but with a distinguishing feature that there the bonded child is allowed to stay with his parents on the condition that he must present himself at work daily at 8 a.m. The practice of bounded labour is still prevalent despite stringent laws against it which provide for imprisonment of and imposition of fine on, the guilty.

CHILD LABOUR AND EDUCATION

Child labour and illiteracy go hand in hand as one tends to breed the other. Numerous studies have examined the impact of education on the incidence of child labour. Most of the child labours are either illiterate or partially literate. The parents of child labour are also more often than not, illiterate. No study has ever found a child labour coming form an educated family.[12]

               Myron Weiner, a strong advocate of compulsory education for children to combat child labour in India, maintains that without the iron frame of legislation to compel at least few years of elementary education, millions of Indian parents will never send their children to school, employers will never release their grip on a nimble fingered, easy to handle and cheap source of labour and India will continue to head the international illiteracy league well into the coming century.[13]

KERALA EXAMPLE:

Child labour and mass illiteracy are undoubtedly huge blots on the nation’s record, and the importance of education in curbing child labour cannot be underestimated. By taking the example of the State of Kerala, this statement can be corroborated. Child labour is almost nonexistent in Kerala and the literacy rate is almost touching cent percent. Historical and political factors explain this success.

               Historically, the Christian missionaries who started arriving in the state since 1498, built churches (palli in Malayalam) and along with it schools (pallikoodam) and enrolled children, regardless of caste, religion or their parents’ income. Over the years, the number of schools kept rising, even if they did not cover the needs of the whole population.

               Kerala’s government financed schools also proved to be increasingly successful since independence. Enrolment is free and free school meals encourage the poor families to send their children. The minimum wage, which is higher than elsewhere in India, allows parents to survive without their children having to go out to work. Anyone who has not enrolled his son or daughter in school comes under pressure from the other inhabitants of the village. Even primary teachers before the beginning of the school session go about looking for children to be enrolled, may not be with the sole motive of imparting education, but definitely to save their employment.

               Thus, it can be seen that a whole range of factors have contributed to Kerala’s success story in the field of education and resultantly, the almost eradication of child labour from the state. “Almost”, because the exodus of workers from the state to the Gulf countries has in turn, produced a shortage of unskilled labour within the state. This demand is filled in part by the arrival of inhabitants from the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu where education has not spread so much and the minimum wages are low. The migrant families thus use children to fill the vacuum. Therefore, whatever child labour is there in the state, is mostly migrant child labour and not of the local inhabitants.[14]

               If India is to succeed in the fight against child labour, it needs to urgently do something in the lines of what Kerala has done without having to look to other countries as was acknowledged by Myron Weiner.

CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS

• Article 15(3) enables the State to make special provisions.

• Article 23 prohibits the traffic in human beings and forced labour in all its forms.  

• Article 24 prohibits employment of children below the age of 14 years in hazardous jobs.

• Article 37(e) makes it a duty of the State to prevent the children from entering into jobs unsuited to their age.

• Article 39(f) recommends the protection of childhood against exploitation and moral and material abandonment. The founding fathers made these safeguards to protect interests of the lsory education to all children up to 14 years of age within the time limit of 10 years.

ARTICLE 23 OF CONSTITUTION AND CHILD LABOUR

In the celebrated case of People’s Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India[15] (popularly known as the Asiad case), P.N. Bhagwati J equating child labour with forced labour under article 23[16] observed that it was against the tenets of the Constitution.

               According to the judge, “what article 23 prohibits is ‘forced labour’, that is, labour or a service which a person is ‘forced’ to provide and ‘force’ which would make such a labour or service ‘forced labour’ may arise in several ways. It may be physical force, which may compel a person to provide labour or service to another or it may be ‘force’ exerted through a legal provision such as a provision for imprisonment or fine in case the employee fails to provide labour or service or it may even be compulsion arising from hunger and poverty, want and destitution. Any factor which deprives a person of a choice of alternatives and compels him to adopt one particular course of action, may be regarded as ‘force’ and if labour or service is compelled as a result of such ‘force’ it would be forced labour. There is no reason why the word ‘forced’ should be read in a narrow and restricted manner so as to be confined only to physical or legal force particularly when the national charter, its fundamental document has promised to build a new socialist republic where there will be socio- economic justice for all and every one shall have the right to adequate means of livelihood.”

               “Child labour is the enemy of child education,” proclaims Krishna Iyer J. “The right to life, which includes the right to education and development, interdicts child labour which not only risks life and opportunity for growth but also denies those freedoms and facilities which a child is condemned to midgetry, moronism and penury of creativity.”

               To him democracy without education is hypocrisy without limitation. Likewise, life unlettered is human span halted at simian stage. The right to education up to age 14 is free and compulsory and is to be read with the right to life, article 45 being a facet of article 21 in the egalitarian context of the preamble and the spirit of articles 15(3) and 39(e) and (f). He finds a vested interest for the leaders to keep the masses uneducated. Quoting Henry Peter, “Education makes people easy to lead but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave”, he states that “the incidence of poverty is often used as an alibi for children not going to school, having been diverted to child labour. Thus, we have child illiteracy and child labour, mutually interacting, which makes a mockery of the promise (in the Preamble) of the Republic that justice, social, economic and political is the title of the young and old.”

               Criticizing the Ministry of Labour for harshly accepting child labour as a ‘harsh reality’, taking the view that abolition of child labour is not an economic feasibility, a stand which is blatant disregard of the Constitution, ha apportions the blame to treasury benches and opposition parties alike. The culpability of the establishment is aggravated, he states, by the fact that far from withdrawing children from labour, provision for training of children to labour better is being organised.

               The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, the judge felt is really a confession that government does not intend to wipe out the torture of child labour but will only introduce a benignant component in the malignant operation. According to him, there are many there are many sins committed by the state, which cannot be forgiven, but those, which relate to the welfare of children, deserve condign public censure because the child is the first charge on the state’s resources. Because children are voiceless, they are neglected with impunity by those in power who will be held guilty by the future.

Reading the provisions in articles 21, 38, 39(e) and (f), 41 and 45 of the Constitution together in the landmark case of Mohini Jain v. Union of India[17], Kuldip Singh J observed that the constitutional mandate of child education is an integral part of right to life. He observed further that although education is not a guaranteed fundamental right[18], reading the above mentioned provisions cumulatively it becomes clear that the framers of the Constitution made it obligatory for the state to provide education for its citizens.

               The dignity of man, the judge has held, is inviolable. It is the duty of the state to respect and protect the same. It is primarily the education, which brings forth the dignity of man. The framers of the Constitution were aware that more than seventy per cent of the people, to whom they were giving the Constitution of India, were illiterate. They were also hopeful that within a period of ten years illiteracy would be wiped out from the country. It was with that hope that articles 41 and 45 were brought in chapter of the Constitution.

               “Although a citizen cannot enforce the directive principles contained in chapter IV of the Constitution, but these were not intended to be mere pious declarations”, the judge declared. “The directive principles which are fundamental in the governance of the country cannot be isolated from the fundamental rights guaranteed under part III. These principles have to be read into the fundamental rights. Both are supplementary to each other. Without making “right to education” under article 41 a reality the fundamental rights under chapter III shall remain beyond the reach of large majority which is illiterate.

               Thus, the judge was, in fact, stating the obvious. Unless education is made compulsory and every child is made to attend school, child labour will continue against the mandate of the Constitution.

SOME IMPORTANT ACTS FORMULATED TO COMBAT THE PROBLEM OF CHILD LABOUR

a. Minimum Wages Act, 1948: It provides for fixation of minimum rate of wages by state government. It also includes the fixation of minimum price rate of wages, guaranteed time rates for wages for different occupations and localities or class of work and adult, adolescence, children and apprentices. The act is aimed at occupations, which are less well organised and more difficult to regulate…where there is much scope for exploitation of labour.

b. The Plantation Labour Act: The employment of children between the ages of 12 years is prohibited under the Act. However, the act permits the employment of child above 12 years only on a fitness certificate from the appointed surgeon.

c. The Mines Act, 1952: It states that no child shall be employed in any mines nor shall any child be allowed to be present in any part of mine, which is below ground, or in any open cast working in which any mining operations are being carried on.

d. The Merchant Shipping Act, 1958: The act prohibits employment of children below the age of 14 in a ship except a training ship, home ship or a ship where other family members work. It also prohibits employment of young persons below the age of 18 as trimmers and stokers except under certain specific conditions.

e. The Apprentice Act, 1961: It states that no person shall be qualified for being engaged as an apprentice to undergo apprenticeship training in any designated trade unless he is 14 years of age and satisfied such standards of education and physical fitness as may be prescribed.

LEGAL ACTIONS AND PLANS BY GOVERNMENT

The elimination or removal of child labour is a very difficult task, if not impossible. The problem of child labour is overlapped and inter connected adhesively with the world’s major problems such as population, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and others. Thus, for elimination of this evil, it requires concerned efforts from all sections of the society.

               However, the legislation is trying for the regulation of child labour in our country. The first attempt at child labour legislation was made by Factories Act 1881. Then in 1911, the Factories Act prohibited employment of children in dangerous occupations and working during night hours.

               The first convention of ILO compelled amendment of the act in 1922, to raise the minimum age of the children to work to 15 years. Children below 13 years were prohibited for employment. However, the age was raised to 13 years in 1935 under the Act.
The present Factories Act 1948 prescribes prohibitory actions for employment of children below 14 years of age in any factory. Indian Mines Act, 1951 prohibits employment of children below 16 years in any underground mines.

After the enactment of these acts, the main instrument for the regulation of child labour was launched by the legislature in the year 1986. This was the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986. It came into being due to the requirement of ILO convention and foreseeness of National Seminar on Employment of Children in 1975, to prevent exploitation of children. Indian government felt a need to enact a single law to deal with prohibition of Child Labour. In 1979, Gurupadswamy committee was setup to study the problem of child labour and evolve the measures to sort out this problem. This committee also agreed for the enactment of a single law to govern child labour. The Committee examined the problem in detail and made some far-reaching recommendations. It noted that any attempt to abolish it through legal recourse would not be a practical proposition. The Committee felt that in the circumstances, the only alternative left was to ban child labour in hazardous areas and to regulate and ameliorate the conditions of work in other areas. It recommended that a comprehensive policy approach was required in dealing with the problems of working children. Based on the recommendations of this committee, the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act was enacted in 1986. The Act prohibits employment of children in certain specified hazardous occupations and processes and regulates the working conditions in others.

               The list of hazardous occupations and processes is progressively being expanded on the recommendation of Child Labour Technical Advisory Committee constituted under the Act.

               The Conventions of the International Labour Organization, the 1926 and 1956 Slavery Conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are the major tools used for regulation of the child labour. The other instruments used for the eradication or regulation of child labour were: Article 32 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989): "State Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

CONVENTION 182 OF THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION (1999)

The main aim of Convention 182 is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour. It stresses that immediate action is needed to tackle the worst exploitation of children and that measures taken by the authorities should start as soon as the government is able following ratification.
Moreover, the Indian government has taken a step forward by enacting a law to ban domestic work and some other forms of labour by children under age 14. The new law covers restaurant and hotel work as well as domestic labour. However, it provides no protection for children aged 14 to 18, who also face exploitation and abuse by their employers.

               “This ban on child domestic labour is a welcome step, but changes on paper are not enough,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, senior researcher for the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “If the Indian authorities are serious about protecting children from hazardous labour, the state governments should start prosecuting abusive employers and rehabilitating child workers.”

               The major problem in front of the legislature and the government is to rehabilitate the children deprived from the works. As the work they were doing was the only source of their income, it is important for the government to take certain steps for rehabilitation of these children.

               The Government has been alive to the need for release of these children from hazardous work and for their rehabilitation – physical, emotional and economic- through education. With this end in view, the National Policy on Child Labour was formulated in August 1987. The National Child Labour projects were conceptualized and launched around the same time. Later on this was reinforced and strengthened for the total liberation of all children in the age group of 5 to 14 employed in hazardous work and for their physical and emotional rehabilitation through a composite package under the National Child Labour Projects which are to be administered by the District Child Labour Project Society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1960. Under the scheme 12 National Child Labour Projects (NCLP) were started in Andhra Pradesh (Jaggampet and Markapur), Bihar (Zarwah), Madhya Pradesh (Mandsaur), Maharashtra (Thane), Orissa (Sambalpur), Rajasthan (Jaipur), Tamil Nadu (Sivakasi) and Uttar Pradesh (Varanasi-Mirzapur-Bhadoi, Moradabad, Aligarh and Ferozabad)...........For the Tenth Plan period, the Planning Commission has allocated Rs.667.50 crore for child labour schemes.

               Many other organisations (both governmental and N.G.O.’s) are stepping forward for the upliftment of these children and regulation and eradication of child labour. Some of these institutions or organisations are CRY, Child Rights Information Network, Concerned for Working Children (CWC), Global march, International Organisation of Employers, Partnership for child development, etc.

               However, even after acting of these institutions only a fewer cases of child labour can be solved. The main problem being poverty and illiteracy. The number of children not getting primary education is very high, particularly in India. Thus to tackle the problem steps should be taken in more specialized manner. There is a need to impart education to the child workers. Though they cannot attend the normal schools during the usual school timings, the only alternative is to provide them with some agency of education at a time when they are free. For this purpose, however, various governmental as well as non-government organisations has set up certain night schools at various places. This system will definitely make them right conscious and realize the benefits, which are given to them by the government and legislature. An important step taken by the government is the well-known Sarva Sikhsha Abhijan, which aims at globalization elementary education that is education from 6-14 years.

               All the above policies seems to be useless when one founds that Government is itself involved in the practice of this evil. Many cases have been brought out which gives a clear evidence involvement of Government’s hand in this matter. In many of the small states, including the newly formed Chhattisgarh, and the older ones like Karnataka, Manipura, etc. India ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child on December 11, 1992. Children are often forced to take up arms in India after losing a close relative in the conflict.

               The other cause is of enforcement and implementation. The legislature makes the law efficiently but where we fail is the area of implementation and enforcement of these laws. There are various areas where even now a number of children are working as domestic workers, in restaurant and small dhabas. However, the society is responsible on the same line parallel to the government is. Without the help of the common people, no government can solve this heinous devil known as child labour.

SUPREME COURT DIRECTIONS ON CHILD LABOUR

The Supreme Court of India, in its judgement dated 10^th December, 1996 in Writ Petition (Civil) Number 465/1986, has given certain directions regarding the manner in which children working in the hazardous occupations are to be withdrawn from work and rehabilitated, and the manner in which the working conditions of children working in non-hazardous occupations are to be regulated and improved. The judgement of the Supreme Court envisages:

(a) Simultaneous action in all districts of the country;

(b) Survey for identification of working children;

(c) Withdrawal of children working in hazardous industries and ensuring their education in appropriate institutions;

(d) Contribution of Rs.20, 000 per child to be paid by the offending employers of children to welfare fund to be established for this purpose;

(e) Employment to one adult member of the family of the child so withdrawn from work, and if that is not possible a contribution of Rs.5000 to the welfare fund to be made by the State Government;

(f) Financial assistance to the families of the children so withdrawn to be paid out of the interest earnings on the corpus of Rs.20,,000/25,000.00 deposited in the welfare fund as long as the child is actually sent to the schools;

(g) Regulating hours of work for children working in non-hazardous occupations so that their working hours do not exceed six hours per day and education for at least two hours is ensured. The entire expenditure on education is to be borne by the concerned employer;

(h) Planning and preparedness on the part of Central and State Governments in terms of strengthening of the existing administrative/regulatory/enforcement frame-work (covering cost of additional manpower, training, mobility, computerization etc.) implying additional requirement of funds.

FOLLOWUP ACTIONS ON THE DIRECTIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT

As a follow up of the directions of the Supreme Court, all the State Governments were sent detailed guidelines on December 26, 1996 indicating the manner in which the directions of the Supreme Court were to be implemented. A meeting of the NAECL was convened on 31^st December 1996 to discuss the directions of the Supreme Court on child labour. It was decided in the meeting that the Ministry of Labour should immediately release funds to the State Governments so as to enable them to conduct surveys of working children before June 10, 1997. A conference of the Labour Ministers of State/Union Territories was convened on January 22, 1997 to finalize an action plan for the implementation of the directions of the Supreme Court on withdrawal and rehabilitation of working children. In the conference, all the participating States and Union Territories welcomed the judgement and demonstrated their political will to eliminate child labour. However, all the States pleaded for additional and liberal financial assistance from the Central Government for implementing the judgement of the Supreme Court. The following significant recommendations were made in the Conference:

• The survey envisaged in the judgement of the Supreme Court would be in two phases. In the first phase the survey would be conducted in all industries, establishments, shops, work places in urban and semi-urban catchment areas where hazardous processes will be identified. In the event of any child labour being found employed in any such process, simultaneous action would be taken to recover an amount of Rs. 20,000/- from the offending employer. Hazardous establishments in the rural areas would also be fully covered by the survey in the first phase. The door-to-door survey for the purpose of identification and enumeration of working children will be taken up in the second phase.

• While primarily it is the responsibility of the State Governments to provide necessary funds for taking up activities in compliance of the directions of the Supreme Court, funds for conducting the survey will be released by the Central Government to the agencies at the district level immediately. If the funds released for the first phase of survey fall short of the actual requirement in any district, the State Governments will provide the additional funds for this purpose. Since this first phase of the survey is concentrated on industrial establishments, the requirement of funds would be worked out by the Central Government and the same would be released immediately.

• Immediate action will be initiated by the State Governments for strengthening the enforcement machinery at various levels and for creation of a separate cell at the State level to monitor and coordinate the activities to be taken up in compliance of the directions of the Supreme Court. They will also send their requirements of funds in this regard, if any, to the Planning Commission at the earliest.

• If the State Governments are not in a position to complete the survey by 10^th June, they will appraise the Hon'ble Supreme Court about the reasons for delay and seek extension of time from the Hon'ble Supreme Court well in advance.

• If for some reason, the State Governments find it difficult to give effect to any one or more directions of the Supreme Court, they will seek necessary clarification/directions from the Hon'ble Supreme Court well in time.

As a follow-up of the decision taken in the State Labour Ministers' Conference, the Chief Secretaries of State and Union Territories have been sent detailed guidelines for carrying out the survey as per the directions of the Supreme Court. A copy of the child labour survey form has also been sent to the Governments of State and Union Territories. Funds have been released to all the State and Union Territories governments for the purpose of conducting the surveys. The Chief Secretaries were specifically instructed that if the State Governments could not complete the surveys in time, they should apprise the Supreme Court through an affidavit about the reasons for delay and seek extension of time from the Supreme Court well in advance.

ROLE OF NGOs

NGOs have an important role to play in the elimination of child labour. Government does not have the infrastructure to reach every section of the society and particularly the millions who work and live in remote areas. NGOs can act as a bridge between hard-to-reach areas and the government.

ROLE OF MEDIA

The role of media in elimination of child labour is one of the most important components of the process of total human development. The media should expose defaulting firms or business houses that clandestinely employ children and violate laws relating to child labour.       The government should give certain monetary or if need be non-monetary incentives to the families that live Below Poverty Line (BPL) to avoid child labour so that their children can be sent to school. Effective state intervention to eliminate inequities, including class and caste barriers to employment and other opportunities in areas such as health and education, will put an end to child labour.

CONCLUSION

Child labour is still a burning problem in India and we must be ready and, more importantly, willing to combat this evil which is spreading its wings larger day by day. However, the government is trying but without the concern of the people, this problem cannot be eradicated. The recently conducted surveys are telling that law enforcement leaves a lot to be desired. On the other hand if a child or his/her parents are unaware of the rights they are privileged with, it makes the task harder. If the family is poor and illiteracy resides in the houses, it becomes a very difficult matter, if not impossible, to eradicate this problem solely by the government itself. Therefore, if the society and the government work together hand in hand, it would be an able effort to regulate and eradicate this problem from our country and make it a better country of our dream. The Latin Maxim ‘boni judicis est ampliare juridictionem’(meaning law must keep pace with the society to retain its relevance, for if the society moves but law remains static, it shall be had for both. ) must be followed practically. “Children are our assets.” The common people should consider this quote and the children’s must utilize their potential for the welfare of the nation and to make our “DREAM NATION” the “TRUE NATION”.

               Prevention of child labour is a herculean task. It has to be seen that the tender age of children is not abused and the children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. It cannot be achieved by merely enacting laws; mere legislations cannot be used for the massive task of social engineering. As long as the social attitude and thinking remains deep rooted in the prevailing society and the law enforcement agencies remain silent, justice cannot be promoted by paper enactments.

               The laws enacted for the benefit and development of child labour should be supported and backed by public opinion. If progressive legislation lacks the support of public opinion it just becomes a dead law. It should be asserted that a social reform be done in consonant with social thinking, behaviour and after creation of strong public opinion as laws could be effective only if they are backed by a major selection of society.

               Apart from this, public awareness through education, media and other means, political will and commitment combined with efficient administrative support are needed to tackle the problem of children. Special government machinery should be set up for eradication of the problems related to child labour and protection of their rights so that we can give them better deal in life by providing them basic amenities of life so as to make them better citizens of our nation.

               It is an undisputable fact that the child of today is the future of our country. So the investment made on children is an asset for the future of our country. As a child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit, they should not be exploited by engaging them in employment in tender age but they should be given all necessary amenities and support so that they become responsible citizens of the nation and make the world a happier place to live in.