Introduction
For many years, child labour has headed the list of one of the largest impediments to social development. It is a challenge and long-term goal in many countries to abolish all forms of child labour. Especially in developing countries, it is considered as one of the serious issues these days. Child labour refers to children missing their childhood and is it able to have basic amenities which a child should have. The International Labour Organization recently estimated there are around 215 million children between ages five to further who work worldwide. This often sees them being mistreated and working for long hours in very bad conditions that may affect them physically and otherwise. The children have no rights to the basics like school and healthcare.
According to the ILO, 2013, the largest numbers of child labourers work in hazardous work, and the total number of children at work is increasing, even as it is forbidden by law. These children are susceptible to illness, and they face continuous physical and mental torment. The fundamental reason that drives children into labor is poverty. These children work to survive and for their families as well. According to some studies like Dessay and pallage,2013, there is not all the work that the child does, which is injurious or barbarous. Some work may offer effective learning opportunities, such as babysitting or newspaper delivery jobs, but not when the work exposes them to psychological stress like human trafficking, prostitution, and pornographic activities.
International organizations have done much to eliminate child labor all over the world. Many countries have enforced legislation to prohibit child labor; nevertheless, the practice of child labor spreads all over the world. This is not an easy task to achieve a ban on child labor in developing countries like India.
Definition of child labour is not as simple and straight forward as it may appear because it encompasses three difficult to define concepts “child”, “work” and “labour”
In the context of child labour, a working definition of a “child” may be a person below the general limit of fifteen years or in special circumstances fourteen years, set by the Minimum Age Convention. 1973 (No.138), According to ILO(1983), “child labour includes children prematurely leading adulteries, working long hours for low wages under conditions damaging to their health and to their physical and mental development, sometimes separated from there families, frequently deprived of meaningful education and training opportunities that would open for them a better future
Contemporary Definitions Of Child Labour
Child Labour is both a cause and a consequence of poverty.There are numerous definitions for the term child labour attributed to different scholars. According to Sudo, 3011, the term child labour refers to when children are working in any type of work that is dangerous and harmful to children’s health or the work hinders their education. For Mayi, 2011, child labour refers to low wages, long hours, and physical and sexual abuse. According to Edmonds and Pavcnik, 2005 child labour is considered as a form of child labour abuse, when children work in bad conditions and hazardous occupations. In most cases, the term ‘child labor’ is interpreted to mean all cases where children are exposed to harm at work, whether or not children are less than 14 years old or less, according to UNICEF in 2005, p.10. However, meanings and implications of child labour have been highly dependent on social, cultural and economic contexts as well as missions, strategies, and objectives of organization (Post & Sakurai, 2001; post, 2001a) cach working
Those who favor the “child labor” and “child laborer” terminology include trade unions, consumer groups, and the International Labour Organisation, which at least by implication maintains that children should not be allowed in the workforce until they have at least reached a minimum working age, based on evidence that these organizations historically tended to protect and secure adult labor markets. Or in other words, protection of adult employment and wages was the prime concern of the ILO, and the idea that “children’s economic freedom. should be abridged to protect the economic welfare of adults” has been reiterated implicitly in various forms of child labor legislation. Conversely, UNICEF and UNICEF-affiliated NGOs referred to “child labor” accordingly, in article 32 of the Conventions on the Rights of the Child, in which child labor includes any economic activities impeding or hindering the child’s full development or education. This UNICEF tradition continues, us these organizations often describe child labour as “working children” (www.unicef.org). The term “child labour, defined as work that that deprives children of their childhood, their dignity, and that is hazardous to physical and mental development. It refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children, or work whose schedule interferes with their ability to attend regular school, or work that affects in any manner their ability to focus during war and boutros, school or experience a healthy childhood.
Types Of Child Labour
The term child labour needs to be unpacked: it cannot be used in sweeping fashion but covers a range and variety of circumstances in which children work. Child labourers engaged in the following forms of works are:
- Child Labour: those children who are doing paid or unpaid work in factories, workshops, establishment, mines, and in the service sector, such as domestic labour. The Ministry of Labour. The Government of India has used the term ‘child labour’ only in the context of children doing ‘hazardous’ work. That means, by implication, children who are not doing “hazardous” work are not considered to be child labourers and it is said they are doing child work.
- Street Children: They are children who stay on and off the streets such as shoeshine boys, rag pickers, newspaper-vendors, beggars etc. Most children have some sort of home to which they return in the evening or nights- while street children are completely alone and at the mercy of their employers. They live on the pavements, in the bus stations and railway stations.
- Bonded children: Children who have either been pledged by their parents for paltry sums of money or those working to pay off the inherited debts of their fathers. Bonded children are in many ways the most difficult to assist because they are inaccessible. If the carpet owner has bought them, they cannot escape. If the middle-class housewife has paid for them, they cannot run away. If they are owned by the village landlord, then their whole life will be that of servitude until they get married and, in turn, are able to sell their children.
- Working children include children who work as part of family labour in agriculture and in home-based work: Children work along with their parents 12-14 hours a day, and their situation is the same as that of children working for other employers, at the cost of their education. In fact, taking on work burdens in complete disproportion to their strength and ability is what parents expect from children, especially girls. This is the largest category of children out of school and at work full time, and it is here that we find the largest percentage of girls working at the cost of education.
- Sexual exploitation of children: Tens of thousands of young girls and boys serve the insatiable sexual appetites of men from all walks of life and at every socio-economic level. Direct links between the commercial sexual exploitation of children and other forms of exploitative child labor abound. Factories, workshops, street corners, railway stations, bus stops and homes where children work are common sites of sexual exploitation. Children are rendered particularly helpless against abuse by employers whether as agents or principals. Commercial sexual exploitation causes physical and psychosocial damage hence it is one of the most dangerous kinds of child labor.
- Migrant children:– “Distress seasonal migration” is a gigantic challenge before India. Millions of families are compelled to leave their homes and villages year after year for months on end in search of livelihoods. These migrations mean that families are forced to drop out of schools, something that closes up the only available opportunity to break the vicious cycle generation after generation. At worksites migrant children are inevitably put to work. Many industrial and agro-industrial sectors like brick-making, salt manufacture, sugar cane harvesting, stone quarrying, construction, fisheries, plantations, rice mills and so on run largely on migrant labour.
- Children engaged in household activities: Apart from children who are employed for wages (either bonded or otherwise) as domestic help, there are a large number of children (especially girls) who are working in their own houses, engaged in what is not normally seen as “economic activity”. These children are engaged in taking care of younger siblings, cooking, cleaning and other such household activities. As remarked in the literature on women’s work, such activities should be recognized as ‘labor’. Again, if such children remain uneducated they will be inducted into the work force, sooner or later, as one of the varieties of child labor mentioned above.
Conclusion
In 2015, India is a country with the largest number of children working illicitly in various industrial sectors. Agriculture in India is the largest sector where many children work at early ages to help support their family. Most of these children are allowed to work at a very young age because of many family factors such as unemployment, a large number of family members, poverty, and lack of parental education. This often forms the major cause of the high rate of child labor in India. Indian social scientists, along with the Non- Governmental Organization until recently, have done thorough research on numeric figures of child labour found in India, and came to the final conclusion that India contributes one-third of Asia’s child labour and one-fourth of the world’s child labour. Since too many children were in illegal employment, the State of India took extensive measures for decreasing the hand count of children at work and focusing on the proper growth and development of children. Whereas in 2001-2011, the number of child labour diminished by 65 percent because of increased regulations and legal restrictions. While that is a great decline in the nation of India, there are still a tremendous amount of children working in the rural areas of India. While this is good, considering that 85 percent of the child labor occurs in rural areas and 15 percent in urban areas, there are still major concerns within this country of India.
References
- Bass.L.E., “Child labour in Sub-Saharan Africa Lynne”: Reiner Publisher, 2004.
- Basu, k. “Child labor: consequences, and cure, with Remarks on International labor Standards” journal of Economic Literature, vol. XXXVII.U, 1999. .
- Basu,k. And P.H.Van, “The Economic of Child Labor.” American Economic Review, 88, 1998, 412-427
- Das, Saswati, “Incidence of child labor and child schooling in India: Pattern and Determinants,” ISRN Economics. Vol.2, 2012.
- Dash, Vishnu Mohan, “Factors contributing the incidence of child labor in Small Scale Commercial Establishment: A study in Delhi”, OIDA International Journal of Sustainable development, Vol.05, No.12, 2013, pp.41-58.
- Dessy, Sylvain and Pallage. Stephane,” A Theory of the Worst Forms of Child labor”The EconomicJournal 115(500), 2003
Authored by Nandini Achhra (Vivekananda institute of professional studies Delhi)
