BY:

Khushboo Chauhan
CHILD LABOUR IN INDIA
Child is Treasure of our Society …

Child is a pylon of our society. They are

future of any developing as well as
developed country, so literally they are
treasure of society.
During the Industrial Revolution,
children as young as four were
employed in production factories with
dangerous, and often fatal, working
conditions. The children of the poor
were expected to help towards the
family budget, often working long hours
in dangerous jobs and low wages. In
England and Scotland in 1788, two-
thirds of the workers in 143 water-
powered cotton mills were described
as children.
By 1900, there were 1.7 million child
labourers reported in American industry
under the age of fifteen. The number of
children under the age of 15 who
worked in industrial jobs for wages
climbed to 2 million in 1910.
 Who is child labour?
ILO defines child labour as :
“child labour means work done by
children under fifteen. Exception is
made of work done by children with
their parents at home is so far an aid in
the latter’s work is concerned and child
is not deprived of the possibility of
going to school”
 Who is child labour?
Convention on Right of the child under
Article 32 of UN convention Define
child labour as:
“ any economic exploitation or the work
that is likely to be hazardous or which
interferes with the child’s education or
is harmful to the child’s health or
physical, mental, spiritual, moral or
social development ”
Way back in 1979, Government formed the first committee called Gurupadaswamy
Committee to study the issue of child labour and to suggest measures to tackle it

In consonance with the above approach, a National Policy on Child Labour was formulated
in 1987.

The Action Plan outlined in the Policy for tackling this problem is as follows:
Legislative Action Plan for strict enforcement of Child Labour Act and other labour laws to
ensure that children are not employed in hazardous employments.
 Focusing of General Developmental Programmes for Benefiting Child Labour - This
action plan emphasizes the need to cover these children and their families also under various
poverty alleviation and employment generation schemes of the Government.

Project Based Plan of Action: Envisages starting of projects in areas of high

concentration of child labour. Pursuant to this, in 1988, the National Child Labour Project
(NCLP) Scheme was launched in 9 districts of high child labour endemicity in the country.
 Did You Know
India has the highest number of child labourers
in the world

According to the National Sample Survey

Organisation, nearly 16.4 million Indian
children aged 5-15 are engaged in various works

As per ILO 90% of child labourers are

employed in Agriculture Sector alone
SITUATION IN INDIA
Child labor in India is a human right issue
for the whole world. It is a serious and
extensive problem, with many children
under the age of fourteen working in
carpet making factories, glass blowing
units and making fireworks with bare little
hands. According to the statistics given by
Indian government there are 20 million
child laborers in the country, while other
agencies claim that it is 50 million.
OVER POPULATION: Limited resources
and more mouths to feed
ILLITERACY : Illiterate parents do not
realize the need for a proper physical,
emotional and cognitive development of a
child.
POVERTY: Many a time poverty forces
parents to send their children to
hazardous jobs.
URBANIZATION:MNC's and export
industries in the developing world employ
child workers.
UNEMPLOYMENT OF ELDERS: Elders
often find it difficult to get jobs. The
industrialists and factory owners find it
profitable to employ children.
 Is all work is bad for
children?
Some child workers
themselves think that illegal
work should not be
considered in the definition
of "child labor." The reason:
These child workers would
like to be respected for their
legal work, because they
feel they have no other
choice but to work.
On the outskirts of Dhaka, children heat and
mix rubber in a barrel at a balloon factory.
 A boy works in a tea stall in a
small village in Nepal. Nepal
is one of the world's poorest
countries, forcing huge
numbers of children to do
hard labor. For a majority of
children in Nepal, education
is a luxury.

A young Pakistani girl carries a load of

wool down a street in a poor section of
Peshawar. Pakistan has laws that limit
child labor, but the laws are often
ignored. An estimated 11 million
children work in Pakistan's factories.
 A young Burmese boy climbs
on top of piles of teak wood in
a government-run lumberyard
in Pyin Ma Bin. The boy's job
is to label the teak wood. The
wood is common in Myanmar
and is in high demand in
Japan and most of Asia.

Sakina, 9, and Javed,

6, work on a carpet
loom at a small
workshop in Kabul.
Afghanistan's deep
poverty forces many
children to work in
adult jobs.
This 9-year-old girl used
to work long hours
weaving rugs in a carpet
factory. Today, she is
enrolled in a Rugmark
school in India. Rugmark
is an organization
working to end child labor
and provide educational
opportunities for children.
For child laborers all over
the world, education is
the ticket to a better
future.
The Menace called CHILD
LABOUR
 Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu state,
about 45,000-50,000 children
working in the fireworks industry

 Children earn about 15-18 rupees a

day on piece-rates

 When an inspector visits a factory,

child workers are bundled into
store-rooms and sheds
 When asked if the long hours
derived her of the pleasures of
childhood, 12-year-old Kavitha
gave a resigned look.
 When asked if she would like to go
to school like other girls, she shot
back: "Who will feed me, then?"
Beedi Industry
 Over 1.7 million children work as
laborers in India’s beedi-rolling
industry.

 Children are engaged as their

nimble fingers are more adept at
rolling beedis.

 Children are made to work up to

14 hours a day with no breaks or
holidays.

 Earning is as little as Rs.30 per

1,000 beedis on an average and
the children hardly get anything.

 Suffer from tuberculosis, postural

and eye problems, anemia, lung
and skin diseases.
 Some times children are abandoned
by their parents or sold to factory
owners
 70-80% of the 8,000 to 50,000
children work in the glass industry in
Ferozabad.
 The two hazardous types of furnaces
used are the Pot furnaces the Tank
furnaces
 One of the most dangerous
industries, where many deaths and
mishaps occur on a regular basis,
makes it imperative for the
employers to hire mafia gangs to
hush up the occurrence of such
incidents.
Carpet Industry
 300,000 children employed in
this industry.
 Low wages and docile
acceptance.
 Work for 10-16 hours a day in
terrible conditions.
 Vast majority of migrant child
workers sleep alongside of
their loom, further inviting
sickness and poor health.
 Eyesight is damaged and lung
diseases are common as a
result of the dust and fluff
from the wool.
Silk Industry
 Over 50,000 children between the
ages of 5 and 13 slog it out in the silk-
weaving industry in Kancheepuram
and Tiruvannamalai districts of Tamil
Nadu.
 Many work seven days a week round
the year.
 Average monthly income ranges from
Rs.80 to Rs.250.
 Require to dip hands in boiling hot
water causing blisters.
 Handle dead worms breeding
infections.
 Twist thread injuring their fingers .
CHILD LABOR IN
ENTERTAINMENT
INDUSTRY
INCONSPICUOUS FORM OF CHILD LABOUR
Why is it a Form of Child Labor?
 No Bar of Age Limit

 More than 12 hours of work

 Education Suffers

 Parent’s force their children to go for talent search

programmes
 The programmes in question are
'Chotta Packet Bada Dhamaka' and
'Maayka' on ZEE TV, 'Chotte Ustad',
'Balika Vadhu', 'Jai Krishna' and
'Utaran' on Colors

 Producers of nine Indian television

shows, who hired child actors, are to
be dragged to court.

 Under the Act, offenders face simple

imprisonment of six months or a fine
of Rs. 10,000, or both.
Pati Patni Aur Woh…
 The show is testing child-rearing skills of celebrities and for
that purpose kids of 4-5 years are shown

 It is a cause of great concern that kids’ parents are willful

accomplices in this crime
How can we contribute to
eradicate child labour?

Ponder…
 Your mission
 To analyse causes for child labour in
your village
 Find solution to eradicate child labour
 Develop plan of action
 Create awareness to local people on
the importance of education and
child’s right to education
 Persuade local audience and rope in
their support to combat child labour
problem by mobilising opinion
Your Role
 You will be working as
agents of International
Labour Organisation
 How do you go about?
 Collect the database of school drop-outs
 Interview and collect data
 Analyse reasons for child labour in your village
 Research on Internet referring to the list of
websites to gather information on child labour
and strategies adopted by other countries to
combat the problem
 Suggest strategies and find solution to the local
problem
 Share your ideas on a blog
 How do you go about? Contd…
 Develop plan of action to address child
labour problem
 Organise an awareness rally to create
awareness to local people on the
importance of education and child’s right
to education
 Persuade local audience and rope in their
support to combat child labour problem
by mobilising opinion
Child labour has been among and with us in
the very society we live in. But we have rarely
paid heed to them. And we have tried to look
at them we have turned our back because we
have been guilty at the heart somewhere..

The question is not–”Who is to be held

responsible for the situation ?”; Decades have
been lost over it and yet no fruitful step has
yielded out, the question should be “Are we
ready to change their lives for the better?” ,if
not then it is high time for all of us to reach
out our helping hands to them and get them
out of this inferno at the earliest, lest our
future is CONDEMNED………
 It’s up to us all..

 It’s the ILO

 It’s Member States
 It’s Workers
 It’s Employers
 It’s NGOs
 And it’s us – you and me.
 Together we can reach the goal – an end to
child labour in our time
THANK YOU