Child labour is almost endemic in India—the 2011 census found over 4.35 million children aged 5-14 years employed either part- or full-time—thanks to poor socio-economic conditions forcing many families to offer their children for employment quite early. In this backdrop, allowing for exceptions for employment of children is concerning, especially in occupations that are not explicitly deemed hazardous, could have damaging social implications. For instance, in the carpet-weaving industry, as per a Harvard University study, nearly 20% of the labour consists of children, many of whom are from debt-bonded, poor Muslim families. With much of the carpet-weaving work occurring in a disaggregated manner—with weavers’ homes functioning as manufacturing units—it is difficult to distinguish exploitative employment from working in family enterprises. Besides enforcing desired labour conditions in family enterprises could prove to be a challenge for monitoring. At the same time, forcing out child labour will remain a Herculean task. For poor families that use their children’s labour to supplement household income, there is very little incentive to send children to school instead. The government would be better able to tackle the problem if skills training or vocational education was made a compulsory part of school education instead of providing for exceptions to the laws against child labour.
For Updates Check Editorials and Columns; follow us on Facebook and Twitter
