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Child labour-The Human-treasure-wasted. Prof Javed Mughal 6/10/2011 8:21:04 PM Otherwise too we, the citizens of a nation with the royal background, are too unfortunate to respect our best constitution of the world but when we, particularly, come to the issue of child-exploitation in India, we find Article 39 of our constitution to have been thrown into the cold embrace of death. The matter of great anguish is that the heart-rending plight of these evil-starred creatures have, although prompted the Governments to enact certain laws in a customary fashion but could not invite their instinctive sympathy and move their feelings so far. Here lies the genesis of over-growing child labour even in the wake of 21st century. The official figure of child labourers worldwide is 13 million. But the actual number is much higher. Of the estimated 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are economically active, some 50 million to 60 million between the ages of 5 and 11 are engaged in intolerable forms of labour. Among the 10 to 14year-old children the working rate is 41.3 percent in Kenya, 31.4 percent in Senegal, 30.1 percent in Bangladesh, 25.8 percent in Nigeria, 24 percent in Turkey, 17.7 percent in Pakistan, 16.1 percent in Brazil, 14.4 percent in India and 11.6 percent in China. India has the dubious distinction of being the nation with the largest number of child labourers in the world. The child labourers endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and struggle much to feed themselves and their families. They do not go to school; more than half of them are unable to learn the barest skills of literacy. Poverty is one of the main reasons behind this phenomenon. The unrelenting poverty forces the parents to push their young children in all forms of hazardous occupations. Child labour is a source of income for poor families. They provide help in household enterprises or of household chores in order to free adult household members for economic activity elsewhere. In some cases, the study found that a child's income accounted for between 34 and 37 percent of the total household income. In India the emergence of child labour is also because of unsustainable systems of landholding in agricultural areas and the caste system in the rural areas. Bonded labour refers to the phenomenon of children working in conditions of servitude in order to pay their debts. The debt that binds them to their employer is incurred not by the children themselves but by their parent. The creditors cum employers offer these loans to destitute parents in an effort to secure the labour of these children. The arrangements between the parents and contracting agents are usually informal and unwritten. The number of years required to pay off such a loan is indeterminate. The lower castes such as Dalits and tribals make them vulnerable groups for exploitation. Whatever the reason may be we, in the world in general and India in particular, are wasting an extremely precious treasure of our nation due to our idiosyncrasy and futile pride of position. The major responsibility of this deplorable plight of millions of our children especially in India is to be imposed on the shoulders of our successive Governments who simply expressed their lip anguish in a customary fashion over the issue and enacted laws but did nothing to implement them in letter and spirit. Had our Governments been serious about it, they would have motivated this human-treasure to the great benefit of the nation. We should always keep in mind one thing that we are still a nation who in dire need of good brains and hence we can’t afford to waste the human-power in the shape of child labour or otherwise too. Many justify the existence of child labour on grounds of poverty, without realizing that child labour itself may become a cause of poverty. A sizeable number of India’s population lives in abject poverty; and their children have to work for the survival of their families. This situation deprives them of choice and increases the employers’ hold over them; enabling the employer to pay meager wages to these child workers. The rise in employment of children at low wages creates a cycle in which already inadequate adult wages are further depressed to a point where a single adult salary is not sufficient to sustain a family. Hence child labour leads adult under-employment and unemployment. This, coupled with the present scenario of growing urbanization, and its accompanying pattern of social transition, rapid population growth, resource constraints, commercialization of agriculture and growth of landless peasantry, traditional hesitation in educating females, unemployment of adults and low income makes our country one of the few countries in the world with child labour on the increase. The magnitude of the problem is immense due to the numbers involved, although the government, regardless of who is in power, always denies the magnitude of the problem, insisting that it is blown out of proportion. Child labour in India cannot be abolished by projects that cover only a few hundred child workers at a time. Something more concrete has to be done. Millions of child workers continue to suffer, while society and bureaucracy dwells on finding a solution to the problem. Employers believe that they are doing a favour to poor families by employing their children, saving them from starvation and deprivation. The truth is that children provide cheap and easily controlled labour with other advantages like flexibility in situations of fluctuating or unstable market forces. They take less space, are obedient and easy to exploit through fear. Widespread societal acceptance of child labour has obscured the fact that most of it is exploitative and that many of its forms place the child’s health and development in jeopardy. Child labour in India is found in innumerable occupations and patterns, classified into children working for wages and without any. The latter involves children working for parents, mostly in rural as well as urban areas. The agricultural sector continues to be the biggest employer of children. It is also known as pledging of children to landlords as workers for part repayment of loans taken by parents. The other category is of children working for wages which may involve children working as a part of family labour group in agricultural fields, or brick kilns, or as individual wage earners generally found in small establishments not covered by laws protecting children. This sector is the largest employer of children in the urban and semi urban areas. Hence the government will have to contemplate on this issue seriously lest we should come to the point of no-return. Let us reflect on what Swami Viveka Nanda often said, “ The prosperity of a nation does not depend on her economic treasures but primarily consists in its safety, education and progress of her youths”.   Share This News with Your Friends on Social Network     Comment on this Story

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