The Hindu Business Line : A child at work, not play

"All the worst forms of child labour" should be eliminated by 2016 and, towards this end, appropriate time-barred measures should be in place by 2008."

The good news is that progress has been made principally in checking the practice of engaging children in hazardous work which, to the international community led by the International Labour Office, is the foremost task in the general effort to make the lives of young people more promising.

The next time you want to engage a child to help out with domestic chores think hard because what you may be doing in fact is violating international child labour guidelines as also going against the spirit of the Indian Constitution itself.

Certainly, these are very big issues specially when one compares it with a practice which is not only very common in Indian society but which one has seen as an everyday occurrence during one's own childhood.

And yet, any conscientious citizen today cannot afford to ignore the point if only for the reason that the issue is certain to crop up with tiring regularity in the years to come.

The Constitution

Let us take the Constitution aspect first because that is where the laws of our land are codified and which contains in essence the guidelines pertaining to our democratic secular and federal existence since 1950. Apparently, if the Constitution, as it was framed by our Founding Fathers, is considered, employing a child for assistance with household work is not something which is to be frowned on provided, of course, the sort of work the child in question is given is not what is described as `hazardous'.

Thus, in the Constitution as it was originally signed and sealed, Article 24 says that "No child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment".

But a child is essentially a growing citizen of the republic, and a growing citizen needs educational nourishment and guidance if he or she is to develop into a responsible adult being able to contribute his mite to the growth of the republic.

What, therefore, does the Constitution have to say on a child's education? In 1950, Article 45 (falling within the Chapter on Directive principles of State Policy) said clearly: "The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years".

So the child servant or domestic help should at least be more than 14 years old if the 1950 Constitution's preference is to be acceded to.

In recent years, however, this intention expressed in the Constitution is being sought to be transformed into a fundamental right of children, so much so that there is now in existence a Bill to that effect.

Among other things, the Bill stipulates that children between six and 14 will enjoy the fundamental right to free education, that the State will ensure that within a period of three years every child will have a school in his or her neighbourhood, and that it is the responsibility of parents or guardians to enroll children in school as soon as they attain the age of six.

The reality

Sceptics suggest that while the intention is generally acceptable though not faultless, the reality on the ground may turn out to be an impossible nut to crack when it comes to effective implementation of the Bill's stipulations.

Thus, among a host of other difficult facts and figures, it has been pointed out that only 53 per cent of all habitations have a primary school and that, on an average, an upper primary school is three km away in 22 per cent of the habitations. Further, while more than 50 per cent of girls do not enroll in schools at all, more than 35 million children in the 6-14 age group are out of school altogether.

What all this suggests is that, given the magnitude of the task involved at the grassroots level, there is every possibility that the current effort to improve the lot of the nation's children (all children up to the age of 18 and not just the 6-14 grouping) may remain confined to paper. But this is not all.

There is a body of opinion which strongly feels that withdrawing all children under 18 from the economic activity they are engaged in now (excluding hazardous work) would result in severe disruption in the economic schedules of millions of poor families living in the rural areas, which would not stand the national economy in good stead.

In other words, the current, justified pre-occupation with controlling the growth of child labour will most certainly go against traditional production practices in Village India (nine out of 10 working children are said to do so within a family setting), a divergence which needs to be studied in detail and eventually overcome in the interests of a future, prosperous India.

The good news is that progress has been made in recent times principally in checking the practice of engaging children in hazardous work which, to the international community led by the International Labour Office, is the foremost task in the general effort to make the lives of young people more promising than they have been till now.

Indeed, this is the finding of a new global report brought out by the ILO which says "the number of child labourers globally fell by 11 per cent over the last four years, while that of children in hazardous work decreased by 26 per cent".

The report continues that for the age group 5-14 years, the decline in hazardous work has been even steeper — by 33 per cent.

The conclusion: "The global picture that emerges is that child work is declining, and the more harmful the work and the more vulnerable the children involved, the faster the decline".

Buoyed by these findings, the global report has proposed that "all the worst forms of child labour" should be eliminated by 2016 and that, towards this end, appropriate time-barred measures should be in place by 2008.

One would expect India to fall into line and be able to meet the target despite the fact that it would imply a total reworking of production methods in certain sectors such as cottonseeds, etc.

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