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Child Labour: Problem and
Policy Implications
The book conceptualises child labour from the socio-economic perspective and explains its grave situation in the Indian context. The fact of child labour being a worldwide phenomenon and existing in almost all the countries is well supported by the author who citing various facts and figures through the latest Census, UNESCO and ILO reports. It also discusses the development of child labour laws in India as well of other countries like Britain, America and Russia. At the outset, the writer reviews the views of some other well-known authors to create relevance for his own studies and outlines genuine objectives to capture circumstances leading to the entrapment of children into the vicious circle of child labour. The author throws light on the fact that the prosperity of the state of Punjab today stands retarded due the high prevalence of child labour, which solely is an outcome of factors pertaining to the high rate of illiteracy and urbanisation and lack of industrialisation. The author has adopted a quantitative approach and has collected data by drawing a selective sample from hawkers, households, dhabas, shops, brick kilns, agricultural and carpet-weaving sectors from both rural and urban areas of Punjab. The state has been appropriately divided into three geographical zones and a rational selection of cities and villages are made for data collection. The study gives a descriptive statistical analysis and results of the magnitude and degree of the problem of child labour in the state. Using a number of tables and charts, the author has examined several dimensions associated with child labour in form of the numbers of children employed in both rural and urban areas, categorisation of work, gender classification, dropout rate from school, wage patterns, family size and liabilities. The most important part of research findings is that it gives a wide and lucid knowledge to its reader that how various socio-economic attributes breed child labourers in our society. The empirical results also reveal that how inbuilt factors like poverty, indebtness, over dependency on agriculture, costly education pushes the poor child into labour and the harshest being bonded labor. He is further subjected to physical abuse and all forms of economic exploitation at the hands of his employer. The book exposes the cruelty and harshness of general professions like that of carpet industry, jobs on brick kilns and manual jobs in agricultural fields. The mode of wage payments, working hours and the conditions under which poor children strive for their survival are also well explained in subsequent chapters. The author calls for the effective policy mechanism in form of the strong legal system and provision of social security measures to tackle the problem. The book breaks new ground in investigating the problem of child labour in Punjab and can be highly useful not only for various academicians, teachers and research scholars from the disciplines of sociology and economics. It is a vital source of information to a layman.
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THE problem of child labour
has assumed alarming proportions in India. S.S. Chinna has
rightly brought out harsh truths and facts regarding economic
exploitation of children in form of child labour through his wide
empirical study of Punjab.