Child labour: Enslaving innocence

On the face of it India may not have slavery, yet look around and you can see something close to it everywhere in the country. One of its worst manifestations of course is the over exceptionally huge number of children, who have had to give up their innocence and education to be a part of the labour force.

In India, the government itself in its most recent account estimates that 12.6 million children under the age of 14 are at work in various occupations including hazardous occupations. NGO estimates put the number of children employed in domestic work and roadside eateries alone at two million. Centre of Concern for Child Labour, estimates that there are nearly 70 million school-age going children in India who are out of schools. So the total number of working children in India is much higher than the government estimates.

As they quietly go about selling balloons, begging at traffic signals or working at the local tea stalls it is almost as if they become invisible. While there are campaigns launched to search and rehabilitate such children, the efforts largely remain piecemeal photo-ops. In fact in 2006 had under the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, the state government had said that by 2010, the state will be completely free of child labour.

The city sees lakhs of migrants come here in search of a better life and in the process their children too dragged into the rat race, often becoming hapless victims to the system looking for cheap labour. “The supply chain of cheap child labour can only be eradicated if its root causes are addressed — causes like social and economic marginalisation, poverty, displacement, migration, lack of a coherent policy towards quality education for all are the situations that force children into work,” says Puja Marwaha, CEO at Child Rights and You (CRY).

Despite claims by both NGOs and the government of their work in eradicating child labour, more and more children are still being sucked into this vortex of exploitation. The ugly face of child labour came was thrust into public glare yet again, recently  (November 22nd) when a 13-year-old was branded with a hot iron by her ‘well-educated’ employer for leaving it on.

“Though civil society knows that child labour is wrong, it continues to turn a blind eye because of our past. For ages we have had two sections of society — people with power and the powerless — and it’s still very much prevalent,” says Reena Agarwal, a sociology professor. After 63 years of Independence, the former still assume its their bounden right to subjugate the latter.

According to Agarwal, employers think that if they are paying the child, they own them. The social system which only gives power to the person on the top needs to change, as they, at least a few of them, try to abuse the privilege and power given to them, she avers. “The most common reason given for using children as domestic help is ‘they are better off here than on the streets’. But are they really taken care off?” she asks.

Christine Charles, of Pratham which works in the area of Child Rights agrees. “Many times children are brainwashed and told that if they work as domestic help or beg on the roads it will be better than going to schools which are boring,” says she.

Despite the Mid-day Meal Scheme and now the Right To Education (RTE) Act, there stills seems little light at the end of the tunnel for the children trapped in labour. “Education and work opportunities have to be given to all and especially in villages so that people don’t come to cities in search of money and end up on the roads,” says Priya Zutshi, CRY senior manager.

There are of course those who feel that despite the best laws in the world little is done by way implementation and this only emboldens offenders. “The loopholes in the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 help people who are caught go scot-free,” points out Charles who adds, “Society as a whole has to be more vigilant and report about people who employ or even entertain child labour. We must realise that these children too have a right to play and learn. And we have no right to steal their childhood from them.”

We agree.

Promised a better life, ended up being abused
Around five years ago when I moved into a rented flat, I met Gopal (Name changed) from Bihar who had come to Mumbai chasing a dream. Brought here from his village by my roommate, he was never treated like a human being, but a slave. Gopal was made to do all the household chores — cleaning, cooking, buying groceries etc. When the other roommates tried to get books for Gopal and tried to continue his education, he protested and said “Let him focus on my work. I’m the one who got him here.” He would even beat him up if he caught him napping, reading a book or watching TV. In short, it was like a master-slave relationship. Our objections led to fights and we were told to mind our own business. Few years later, when I shifted, I took Gopal with me. Today he has completed his basic education and works as a peon. However, there are many Gopals who are languishing like him. While the perpetrators are at fault, the so-called educated and cultured people looking away are the ones who need to introspect.   
—Deepak Rathod

Ensnared, cheated, abused and exploited
One day as I had chai, my heart went out to 12-year-old Shyam and I struck up a conversation. From a poor Azamgarh family in Uttar Pradesh, he was brought to work at a restaurant in Mumbai by a distant relative. 16-hour-long shifts at work and a daily diet of abuse and little food beca0me a part of his life. Expected to take orders from customers, clean, help out in the kitchen, he was made to do other chores as well. If he ever broke anything or mistook an orders, he was both physically and verbally abused. All this, without a salary at the end of the month. Scared he would escape, the owners locked him up with other child labourers at night and none of them were allowed to contact their parents. After suffering for a year, Shyam managed to escape. But the city was not friendly and he had no money to go back home, even if he knew how to. Having no money, he took up a job. When I heard his story, I was moved and I decided to sponsor his trip back home.
—Nishi Tiwari