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| Edited By: Amrita Madhukalya |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 14, 2016, 07:30 AM IST
It is a sleepy afternoon outside Kailash Satyarthi's Kalkaji residence. But the flurry of activities inside belie the quietude outside. Calls have just come in from Mumbai about a dozen children being left alone at a railway station, and the Nobel laureate's phone keeps ringing.
Think for a while, think about the power that about 100 million young people will wield. Of course, not everyone will join at one go, but several million will be on board initially. And, when this moral platform of global leaders get working, as the youth protest and appeal to their governments, pieces of legislation like the Child Labour Amendment Bill will not pass. The Bill has passed now, but several concerns plague almost all countries. It is our moral duty to stop that.
This was one of the reasons that motivated me to think in that direction. Creating a safer world for children it is not an idealism. I think it is equally important to influence political will through moral power, which is something lacking in the world today.
As far as the trafficking Bill is concerned, we have been working on it at the Bachpan Bachao Andolan. We are in close touch with the authorities and hope that this will be a good Bill. We have seen some progressive elements, like in the case of the Juvenile Justice Act, when we helped the government draft the model draft rules.
I know that the common man is facing a lot of difficulties with the demonetization drive in several ways. But, I will say that the drive will definitely help curb trafficking. It will create a lot of problems for the traffickers, the slave masters, and those employing child labourers.
I have spoken on black money with the previous government and the current one. When they talk of black money, the focus is on tax evasion. We have done some scientific studies, and we found that human trafficking, particularly child trafficking, prostitution and child labour, account for the largest segment of black money – much more than what the government estimates. Our estimate is that the trafficking trade in India is worth Rs 21 lakh crore, which includes the black money embedded in it.
Every single rupee generated out of a child labourer, whether it is because of the denial of daily wage, or the denial of contract labour, or the violation of child labour laws, trafficking laws and the like, becomes black money. When a girl is trafficked from Assam, usually for Rs 10,000- Rs 15,000, and brought to Delhi or Haryana to be sold as a child bride, Rs 1,00,000-Rs 1,50,000 change hands. If she has been brought in by placement agencies for domestic labour, she is sold for Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000. All of this is black money.
The government, while replying to a Lok Sabha question a few years ago, accepted that a child labourer earns Rs 20-25 a day, which means an employer spends Rs 20-25 on him or her every day. The floor wages of an adult labourer is Rs 120, even though the minimum wage across states is between Rs 175 and Rs 350.
The situation today has changed slightly. A child labourer earns around Rs 40 and an adult around Rs 240. An employer saves Rs 200 on every child he or she employs. They cannot show on paper that they are employing child labourers. So, they write in wage books that they are paying Rs 240 while they pay only Rs 40. This is black money. For every child, the employer is saving Rs 200 every day. If somebody is employing 50 children in a small workshop, that's Rs 3,00,000 every month.
The good outcome of demonetization is that it has hurt traffickers badly. Yet, in the long run, we need proper enforcement laws relating to the poor, especially those relating to children. Otherwise, the situation will not change. The money will remain, only the bank notes will change.
I spoke against the Bill till the last moment. There was nothing substantial in the Lok Sabha debate. The government did not have any strong point to support the amendment, and the Opposition's questions were not stinging enough.
For example, I could not gather from the discussion as to the need for child labour when there is such a large number of unemployed youth, adults and the elderly in the country. I have been pushing this argument for sometime now – globally, 170 million children are doing full-time jobs when 197 million adults are jobless. Most of the jobless are the very parents or elders who send children to work.
Children are preferred in labour-intensive industries as they are cheap, easy prey for tax evasion, and cannot speak on their behalf. Adults, on the other hand, demand more money and better living conditions.
The government should have given employment schemes to parents, instead. Most importantly, if the government's thought process is guided by the principles of disparity, discrimination and exclusion, children will continue to suffer. On the one hand, you are creating a club of elite young people whose aspirations touch the sky, and on the other, you are telling children in villages that our country is poor. Did these children create poverty? They are already suffering from poverty, and you tell them that this is the harsh reality. Why should children suffer? Educate them. The global economy owes everything to knowledge, information and technology. You are taking that away from the child in the village and asking him to drop out of school and help elders at home. That's because of the government's mental state of complacency. There's also a fair amount of vested interest.
There are a lot of social workers in the Parliament. If we look closely, social work is also, in the long run, a form of politics. Social workers may not actively pursue politics, but you are influencing the lives of people and that's what politics is all about.
Never in the history of India had a single day been devoted to child-related issues by the Parliament. Children may not be voters, but they are our future.
That's my appeal to the government and political parties today, on Children's Day. No party has ever demanded that in the 69 years of the country's parliamentary history. Every year, for dozens of days, the Parliament does not function, or business hours are wasted on frivolous issues. There has never been a demand by the parliamentarians to bring down the exploitation of girls even in the Capital. They will slur or fight, but not for children. Neither inside or outside the Parliament has it ever happened that leaders of national or regional parties have got together to discuss children's education, budgetary allocation, and laws. This shows a serious lack of political will among the political class. Prioritise children in your political decisions, in policies and their implementation. If you design schemes with children in mind, a whole generation will benefit. But if you will look only at votes, benefits will percolate only for the coming five years. Accountability in the polity, society and other spheres is lacking.
As far as child trafficking and child labour are concerned, the source areas have always been the eastern parts of the country -- Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. The metros – Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad etc. – make up for most of the destinations. These are the places which exploit children behind closed doors. Ten days ago, we carried out a big rescue operation and saved 45 children from a workshop in Delhi. We had to break this huge lock on an iron door, and it was complicated and messy. Some of us went in with the police. A lot of children were hidden inside, and many were sent to the terrace. They were hidden under gunny sacks, and they were terrified.
