Consequences of abolishing child labour in India

Despite planning welfare programmes, legislation and administrative ac­tion in the past few decades, a large majority of children of the age group of 5-14 years continue to remain in distress and turmoil.

Child labour are exploited, exposed to hazardous work con­ditions and paid a pittance for their long hours of work. They are forced to leave schooling, shoul­dering responsibilities far beyond their years.

But no one steps forward to stop this. On June 17, 1999, the member states of the ILO unanimously voted to adopt convention 182 on the World Fo­rum on child labour. It was recognized that end­ing the commercial exploitation of children must be one of the mankind's top priorities.

NGOs, Trade Unions and various social service organizations have launched innovative programmes to curb the problem of child labour.

The social and economic consequences can easily be understood if we understand the factors responsible for it. Child labour is a multi dimen­sional problem. The factors primarily responsible for it are poverty, caste tradition, size of the family, labour scarcity, illiteracy, ignorance, schooling fa­cilities etc.

Parents' view that more children mean more earning which induces for an increase in child labour. The low income of parents which is not adequate to meet the basic needs of the family, force the children to work and supplement the fam­ily income.

Poverty is a common feature of devel­oping countries wherein a considerable propor­tion of population lives below poverty line. In the rural areas the people has to sell the labour of their children to take out a bare subsistence.

Besides poverty one major factor, which has a strong relationship with child labour is caste. If one compared the child with the caste structure of the country, it would be evident that a compara­tively higher proportion of Scheduled Caste chil­dren work at a younger age for their own and their families. Lower caste children tend to be pushed in to child labour because of their family's poverty.

The combination of poverty and the lack of social security network is also responsible for bonded child labour. For the poor, there are few credit sources, and even if there are sources like co-operative loan, bank loan etc. available, only few poor families manage to satisfy the essential criteria related to access those. Here enters the local money lender with exorbitant high interest rates.

Most of the times it is not possible for the poor to return back those loans and the parents exchange their child's labour to local money lend­ers. Since, the earning of bonded child labours are less than the interest on the loan, these bonded children are forced to work, while interest on their loans goes on accumulating.

Even if bonded child labourers are released, the same condition of pov­erty that caused the initial debt cause to slip back into bondage. Lastly, but not the least, the atti­tudes of parents also contribute to child labour, some parents feel that children should work in order to develop skills useful in the job market, Instead of taking advantage of formal education.