Child labour generates Rs 1.2 lakh crore black money every year in India

Amid a heated debate over bringing back unaccounted money stashed abroad, a child rights outfit has claimed that child labour generates Rs 1.2 lakh crore of black money every year in India.

According to a report 'Capital Corruption: Child Labour in India' prepared by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), the figure was arrived at by calculating the number of child labourers, the income earned by them and the illicit profits being generated by employers by not appointing adult workers.

"The greed for maximisation of profit fuels the demand for child labour, with children as cheapest form of labour. Child labour, corruption and flow of black money, fuel and sustain each other in an illicit nexus that only profits the employers and the middlemen," the study said.

On arriving at the figure, the study said there were around six crore child labourers in the country who assumingly work for approximately 200 days in a year on an average cost of Rs 15 per child per day.

"The amount so calculated is Rs18,000 crore in a year. Now, if these six crore child labourers can be substituted with the six crore adults with an average floor wage of Rs 115 per day, one labourer would generate Rs 1,38,000 crore. The difference between these two amount amounts to Rs 1.20 lakh crore," the study claimed.

It said this amount should have been paid by the employers to the workers but they instead employed underpaid and overworked child labourers. "The employer also did not report any income to the government, evaded taxes, making Rs 1.2 lakh crore illegal money in the country," it said.