Child Labour in India
Child Labour
Child labour is a human rights issue that is widespread all over the
world. The term is used for illegal constant employment of children beneath the
age defined by law. For the most countries including India this limit is set to
the age of 14.
According to the Indian government there are 20 million working
children in the country, which makes India home to the largest number of child
labourers in the world.
Causes
The situation is mostly an effect of the extreme poverty several
Indian communities are afflicted with and of the country’s over population.
There being so many inhabitants and at the same time insufficient employment
opportunities puts a lot of families in a difficult financial place. The
additional income they gain from sending their children to work is needed in
order to just pull through. In India free education is limited. Parents can`t
afford a proper education for their children and in addition the adults are
often illiterate themselves which makes it hard for them to realise the
importance of learning at school.
Furthermore the industrial revolution has had a bad impact on the
problem of child employment. Besides the fact that the industrial revolution
enforced circumstances, which encourage child labour, children are the cheaper
workers in comparison to adults.
Bonded Labour
The most problematic way of child labour is
the form of prohibited bonded labour. Parents mortgage their kids to loaners in
order to get debts paid off. But often those parents will never be able to pay
the money back which means that the pact extends for a lifetime and children
will never be able to work for their own good.
Problems
It is an obvious fact that children who
work all day can`t get a proper education and they will therefore barely have a
chance to ever escape from the life in poverty, which might force their future
children to become child labourers themselves.
Then, the working conditions for children
are very bad. The working day is started early in the morning and continued
until the evening hours. The work done by children is mostly physical labour,
carried out in dirty, unhygienic and hazardous places such as firework
factories or glass blowing units. These unbearable circumstances cause a lot of
sickness and physical disorders among the workers.
Psychical harms are further outcome of
child labour. The children get browbeat by their families as well as by their
employers.
Child Labour can cause
physical disorders at an early age
Measures/Reactions
Child labour doesn’t help India to escape poverty, it rather worsens
the situation. The first governmental measure against child labour, the “Child
Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act” was enacted in 1986. The committee
that enacted the law found that, as long as poverty occurred on such a high
level, child labour couldn’t be eliminated completely. Instead they tried to
improve the situation by prohibiting employment of children in certain
hazardous occupations. In accordance with the above Act the “National Policy on
Child Labour” was phrased in 1987. The aim of this policy is the enforcement of
the “Child Labour Act” and other labour laws. Since poverty is the root cause
of child labour the policy is on top of that focusing on general developmental
programs such as ones that help covering the needs of the children and their
families. The third part of the policy, the “Project Based Plan of Action”,
started projects such a special schools in areas where the child labour rate is
especially high.
But not only the Indian government is trying to tackle the problem
of child employment. Various help organisations like “UNICEF” or “terre des
homes” get involved with child labourers to save their childhood
Child
Labour displays a vicious circle for the country
Video
To hear Anil`s story and learn more about the daily life of a child
labourer, feel free to follow the link below:
References