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Child Labour in India

641 / ~3½ sternsternsternstern_0.5stern_0.3 Beate H. . 2012
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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

 


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