“EDUCATION IS THEIR BIRTHRIGHT SO AGAINST CHILD LABOUR WE MUST FIGHT”
Children are the best gift to humanity and hold our country’s longer-term in their little hands. It’s horrifying that one out of each seven children around the world today may be a child laborer. In India, child labor and slavery are still pernicious problems to reckon with. Many youngsters add factories, sew our clothes, cobble our shoes, clean our toilets, dig a mine, and fight wars. And these are just a couple of occupations that expose children to homely environments a day. Under extreme socio-economic pressure, parents force their children to figure from an early age at their Education and childhood expense. A shocking number of innocent children are trapped in poverty with absolutely no hope for escape and denied the fundamental right to a healthy, happy childhood. As per the last survey conducted by the National Sample Survey organization (NASSO) in 2009, 4.9 million young children in India are bonded in labour with a touch different from the previous years. For many years, we’ve employed these little ones as servants, slaves, and caretakers without considering their present or future. It’s a despondent scene that child labour continues to exist in India because we don’t care enough about who makes our cheap products or poor parents struggling to afford school fees for their children. Global demand for low cost manufactured products might be among the explanations strongly liable for child labour existing today. Since young children are cheap labour by factories, they’re employed at meager wages and sometimes for free. Children are the only vulnerable groups of our society; they deserve the utmost care. We want to guard them against any exploitation and supply them with a nurturing environment to grow and develop their potential. To provide a secure and healthy future for the youngsters in our country, CAF India works rigorously on the bottom to implement successful programs through our CSR initiatives and Give-As-You-Earn (GAYE) interventions. Our programs not only specialize in providing nutritional food to children but also bringing down school dropout rates and creating awareness on the importance of teaching them. Alongside our NGO partners – Save the youngsters, Deepalaya, Udayan Care, Salaam Baalak Trust, Mobile Crèches – we strive to ensure the physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development of youngsters. Slowly but surely, we’ll help free India from the curse of kid labour.
One in every ten workers in India may be a child, a toddler who is guaranteed protections under the Indian Law, and secured an education and mid-day meals until 14.
The sight of a chotu running to fetch you a chai on the train platform or at your local tea stall isn’t much of India’s presence. One could almost say that the chotu has become so ubiquitous that he is not there would be a touch confusing for a few regulars. It’s been normalized and has become an internalized personality trait of the larger Indian society, which tacitly continues to support the chotu culture at the tea stall and within the house.
It’s become so natural that when engaging with a number of our more conscientious friends, both chotu and we know the routine to tug off. You casually ask chotu how old he’s as he cleans your table, and he, with a pail the dimensions of his torso, responds saying he’s 18. His gangly limbs and prepubescent face are a dead giveaway, but now that he’s said he’s 18, there’s not much you’ll do, is there? Consistent with UNICEF, there are about 10.1 million children employed in child labour in India today. That amounts to approximately 13% of our workforce. In other words, 1 in every ten workers in India may be a child, a toddler who is guaranteed protections under the Indian Law, and secured an education and mid-day meals until 14. India has been trying to combat this blight since before it became a republic, with the passing of the youngsters’ Act, 1938. While primitive, it had been evident that even under an extractive colonial regime, it had been understood that the utilization of youngsters within the production process was anathema. Post-independence, the Factories Act, 1948, and the Mines Act, 1952, banned using children below the age of 14 and 18 in their respective production processes.
This set the tone for the kid Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986, which prevents the utilization of the youngsters below the age of 14 years in the life-threatening occupation identified during a list by the law and eventually the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) of youngsters Act of 2000 made the utilization of youngsters a punishable offence.
The JJ Act came into force shortly after India ratified the Convention on the Rights of the kid (CRC) in 1992 and made the offence punishable with imprisonment for three months to 1 year or with a fine no less than INR 10,000 to 20,000 or both.
The Right to Education Act, passed in 2009, was alleged to transcend punishing people for child labour to make a conducive environment for building all Indian children’s capabilities. They might have an entire education and enter the workforce out of choice and not compulsion. However, even, in any case, child labour continues to be the norm during many industries.
Ratification of two fundamental conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), PENCIL scheme, Kailash Sathyarthi’s campaigns, and recently, ILO and UNICEF are developing a simulation model to seem at the impact of COVID-19 on child labor globally.
Constitutional Provisions:
- As per Article 21(A) and Article 45, the kid has the proper to Education i.e., the state shall provide compulsory and free education to the youngsters age six to 14 years.
- In Article 24, there’s a provision that a toddler below the age of 14 years can’t be employed in any mine, factory, or hazardous workplace.
- As per Article 39(f), the child’s youth and childhood are to be protected against moral and material abandonment and exploitation.
To stop child labour in India, we’ll need first to change our own thinking. We’ve to make sure that we don’t keep any child at adding our house or office. We’ve to recollect that we aren’t doing any favor to children of tender age by paying them money to exchange their labour, but we are instead twiddling with their future. We also got to spread awareness about child labour in India to understand that child labour is messing with the longer term of the country. They’re going to need to realize that there’s no future for India if its children are weakened mentally and physically through the practice of kid labour. The commoner should take up a resolution that he won’t buy any items from the shops where a toddler is used as labour. Also, if we encounter such instances, we should always complain to the police or other agencies about it. The ordinary citizen should prevent child labour from happening in society. In this way, the general public can help with the prevention of kid labour in India. Differently to prevent child labour in India is to eliminate or rein in unemployment. Due to inadequate employment, many families cannot afford to satisfy all their expenses. If employment opportunities are increased, they will be ready to let their children read and write and become worthy citizens.
Author(s) Name: Kanak Patidar (Symbiosis Law School, Nagpur)
