Sunday, February 2, 2003		Books

Examining the complex reality of child labour
B. B. Goel

Problems of Child Labour in India
edited by Raj Kumar Sen and Asis Dasgupta. Deep & Deep Publications, New Delhi. Pages XIII + 286. Rs 550.

CHILD welfare is a nebulous concept. The child, being the nation’s pride, mirror and a supremely important asset, has to be properly cared for and nurtured. However, spoken or written words lose identity and significance unless put into real action. Like most problems in India, child labour, in spite of rampant adult unemployment, is a by-product emerging out of the socio-economic structure of society. Whether the children are forced for economic considerations or otherwise, they frequently work under conditions detrimental to their health, welfare and development.

The assumption that child labour, a chronic and deep-rooted problem, is peculiar to developing countries, especially India, is a myth. It is a complex reality, a burning problem and a universal phenomenon. It is, in fact, a betrayal of child’s rights as a human being and an offence against civilisation. Child labour today figures to an astounding 250 million and India holds dubious distinction of harbouring the largest (44 to 100 million) in servitude. It persists in its most dehumanising form, especially in an unorganised sector. By and large, it is an employment of children (5 to 14 years) engaged in hazardous and other gainful occupations, which are injurious to their development.

The book under review, which is a compilation of 21 papers presented at the annual conference of the Indian Economic Association in Jammu, has been divided into three parts, which deal with general issues followed by regional/area specific and sectoral studies. The book focuses on high incidence of child labour bypassing carefree joys of childhood in a country like India wedded to the welfare principles and socialistic pattern of society. It flourishes for obvious reasons such as important source of cheap labour supply, vested interests of society, including poverty-stricken parents, managing child labour at work easy, comparatively lower wages, work for longer hours, less bargaining power and above all absence of any safety nets.

No single measure, however, laudable is adequate to curb menace of child labour. Constitutional provisions guaranteeing safety, security and personal development of child, celebration of International Year of Child (1979), completion of six decades of UN’s Children’s Rights of 1959, the unique Indian Policy for Children (1987), ILO Conventions and plethora of over 250 piecemeal ambitious central/state statutes have proved to be at best platitudes and at worst a mockery. The sole argument is that when a choice between starvation and exploitation is to be made, the child invariably succumbs to latter, as there is no formal security or protection against the former. Thus, widespread poverty and destitution seem to be the root cause of child labour.

A case study of the carpet industry in U.P. depicts startling revelations of child exploitation. The children (4 to 14 years), who work for 16 hours a day, are often beaten and underfed. Burning them with cigarette butts and hanging them upside down for minor faults are common punishments. In contrast, the same industry, in another study, is a witness to social-labelling reforms for their rehabilitation by strengthening primary education, health facilities and improving parents’ income, etc. The German-supported Delhi-based Rugmark initiative (1994) exerts pressure on exporters/suppliers to prohibit child labour in production of carpets and is fully convinced that the extra cost differential (2 to 3 per cent) can easily be mitigated by ensuring quality product mix and other strategies. In the wake of free market economy, the WTO agreement also envisages that goods manufactured by child labour must be made ineligible for exports.

Such a move is bound to curb child labour employment and open floodgates for teeming million of frustrated unemployed youths. Two more suggestions of the contributors, apart from general recommendations, also deserve to be mentioned. The first is constitution of Child Rights’ Commission and the second is compelling industries engaging child labour to pay child abolition cess for their ultimate development.

The editors of the book may be complimented for grooming young scholars to undertake field studies. The publishers, too, have not lagged in bringing out the volume with error-free printing. The book size, however, could have been restricted to one-third had the editors simply reviewed the version of paper presenters and avoided overlapping, at least within the same article. The editors could take the lead in providing conceptual framework of horrifying and pathetic conditions of child exploitation, to be followed by ground realities. Also, none of the contributors analysed success stories abroad and its replication in the countryside in curbing child exploitation. They also failed to examine intrinsic and extrinsic factors impinging upon speedy execution of existing legislative, administrative and judicial measures for progressively reducing this social evil.