Learning over Earning

The decision of International Labour Organioation (ILO) in 2002 to make June 12 every year as World Day against Child Labour ensures that the global community remains engaged and focused on abolishing child labour. ILO conventions 182 that effectively prohibits child labour, abuse and exploitation was unanimously adopted in 1999. But for India it took almost 19 years to ratify the ILO conventions that prohibit worst forms of child labour. If we talk about the new Act that is The Child and Adolescent (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, it puts a complete prohibition on employment of children, but at the same time it allows them to be employed in family enterprises/businesses. This new Amendment Act has also introduced the concept of ‘Adolescent Labour’ for the first time. An ‘adolescent’ has been defined as a person between the ages of 14-18 years. The amendment permits employment of adolescent labour except in hazardous process or occupation. According to the Law, domestic work is not hazardous and allows the employment of adolescent. Since most adolescent domestic workers are girls and as there is lack of public scrutiny, they are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitations. Rag-picking and scavenging is area which is not deemed hazardous as per the law. So we can say that the new Act that is the Child and Adolescent (Prohibition and Regulations) Amendment Act, 2016 is touted as “progressive” for it covers adolescent (up to age 18). But it lacks the national commitment to abolish child Labour in all forms, or in other words we can say that the new law banning child labour is ‘no ban at all’.
Data and the Stark Truth:
According to the recent report of International Labour Organisation (ILO), around 152 million children are trapped in child labour globally. India is home to 33 million child labourers in the age group of 0-18years (Census2011).
In the urban context, there are large number of adolescent in domestic work ranging from 4.2 million (officially) to 50 million (Data source: National Domestic Workers’ Movement Report), most of them are girls. These statistics proves that even after enactments of Act on this issue still millions of children work in homes as domestic helpers, in brick kilns, in quarries, picking rags, on farms…… from morning to night with no food, no play and at times no money. One more point here is very important to mention is about household chores. We don’t consider it as child labour sometimes. And yet so many girls drop out from school because of it. Most of the jobs done by child labourers are essentially regular jobs. No doubt there are jobs and there are unemployed adults but still millions of children are pushed into labour- Why? Simply, because children are the cheapest form of labour available. They are not aware of their rights and easily misled and are too young to speak against their conditions, but our laws permit employer to exploit these hapless souls.