India has completed 50 years of Independence. Today, the country has an estimated 70-80 million child labourers. In other words, there are 70-80 million children prematurely leading adult lives.

This is despite the Constitution's Articles 24, 39 and 45, which prohibit children under fourteen years of age from working or being exposed to hazardous equipment. The articles also protect children from exploitation and moral and material abandonment, and guarantee them free and compulsory education. 70-80 million children are losing their freedom to be children as they work with or without wages, in the organized or informal sectors, within or outside their families. 70-80 million children are working under conditions which are damaging to their physical, social, emotional and spiritual development. 70-80 million children are subsidizing India's economy as their basic rights to education, health, leisure are violated.

India is a significant exception to the global trend towards the removal of children from the labour force and the establishment of compulsory, universal, primary school education. Many countries of Africa with income levels lower than India, such as Zambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Libya and Zimbabwe, have done better in these matters. ( The Child and the State in India, Myron Weiner, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1991)
The situation of 14 �year-old Mylappa is typical of many child labourers in India. He is bonded to a landlord who grows jowar, ragi and sunflower in his fields. Mylappa's father has taken a loan from him to rebuild his house wall, which had collapsed in the rains. Mylappa's tasks include cotton plucking, ploughing, watering and tending the landlord's cattle. His day begins at 5 am and ends at 8 pm He has lunch at the landlord's house, but is made to sit outside because he is a Dalit. He has never been to school. Mylappa hopes one day to cultivate his own plot; his family's two acres were mortgaged long ago.

Pomabhai Solanki, an 11-year-old Adivasi boy from Gujarat, provides another example. He earns 14 rupees or 30 cents (US) a day. He works from 8 am to 5 pm, carrying heavy marble slabs back and forth in a quarry, over a distance of half a kilometer. He suffers from constant headaches and his legs and arms ache with the strain of lifting the heavy slabs. His parents till a hilly piece of land which yields little, making it difficult to survive. States Pomabhai, "I don't like to work, but what can I do? I am forced to work. All children should go to school offering higher classes. So I slowly moved into working."

Here are some myths and facts about child labour:
MYTH
Employers are obligating children by employing them.
FACT
Employers are only concerned about profit, and child labour can be exploited at no cost to them. Many sectors rely heavily on child labour because children are willing to work for little or no wage and for long hours, without complaining. Industries such as bead making, glass making, carpets, gem and stone polishing, matches, and fireworks have thrived purely on the strength of child labourers. Some of these industries (namely, gem and jewelry, carpets, brass artwork, handlooms, and tea) are India�s major export earners, and child labourers provide the competitive edge. There is a selfish interest in the recruitment of child labourers, because of the sheer economics that supports it.
"The owners and the management [carpet industry of Kashimir] refused to give me a job. They openly say that the young children suit them better. Low wages are the chief reason. To cap that children are not the ones who would grumble against the bad working conditions or organize a protest rally." Bashir Batt

MYTH
Poverty is the single major cause of child labour.

FACT
"Poverty has many dimensions to it. Low earnings and low level of skill earning ability, lack of assets and access to training or education are accompanied by poor health, malnutrition, absence of shelter and food insecurity. The characteristics associated with poverty thus extend well beyond low incomes."
(4th World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995, Country Paper, India, (A Draft), Government of India 1994.

Poverty reflects social and cultural marginalization. This is indicated by studies of many of the industries where there is a substantial presence of child labour, like the carpet industry, the match industry, brassware, glass, bangle and lock making, slate, gem polishing industries and the tea plantations. These show that the overwhelming majority of children working in these industries come from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Castes and Muslim communities. These communities also constitute the bulk of small and marginal peasantry, landless and agricultural labourers and artisan groups. The fact that most of India's child labourers come from communities whose work largely involves manual labor reveals the wider, complex social factors that contribute to the phenomenon of child labour. These communities are the victims of a social system characterized by unequal access to the principal productive resources and assets. These communities often migrate to the cities to join the burgeoning informal sector.
While it is true that child labourers come from impoverished families, it should be noted that child labour also perpetuates poverty, since the child labourer who survives the harsh conditions becomes an unskilled, debilitated adult who is not employed even in the industry that exploited him or her earlier. Furthermore, child labourers receive a low, negligible income and often no wages at all. Child labour also depresses adult wages and keeps adults unemployed.

MYTH
If children do not work, they and their families will starve.

FACT
Starvation persists even when families and their children are working. Starvation is the result of a combination of factors, including price policy, low income, low purchasing power, income disparity, unequal food distribution, poor availability of food, lack of access to food production and unequal land ownership patterns.
The inequitable land distribution pattern is evident in the fact that "between 1961-1991, the proportion of cultivators declined while that of agricultural labourers increased, indicating that a vast section of the population, including tribal, are getting alienated from the land." Child labour trends reflect this change. "There has been a shift in number from children working on their own farm to children employed on the farms of others."

Alienated from their land and means of livelihood, the rural poor migrate to urban centers. Food subsidy through the Public Distribution System (PDS) becomes inaccessible to them because proofs of residence are required for obtaining the ration card. The Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) and the New Economic Policies have worsened the situation. For instance, under SAP, the PDS outlets have been scaled down. Another example is the emphasis on exports. "A hike in cotton yarn prices and steady export of cotton yarn resulted in abnormal prices which had to be borne by the weavers and their co-operatives. Starvation deaths were reported from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as small units shut down."

Pointing to Gandhi's pictures on his T-shirt, 13-year-old Mani remarks, "He got freedom for India, but it makes no difference for children like me who must slog 12 hours a day to earn a livelihood." Mani is one among the thousands of children working in the knitwear industry in Tirupur, which produces nearly 5000 crores in foreign exchange by way of exports. Mani was in his first year of school in Ayikoundan Palayam village in Tamil Nadu when his parents discontinued his education. They are agricultural labourers who find work only in the cultivating season. After completing four years of school, Mani's sister dropped out to take charge of the household. Mani criticizes the politicians whom he holds responsible for the high rate of inflation. "Powerless workers in my neighbouring village of Sevurur are selling off their kidneys to clear their debts," he points out angrily.

MYTH
Child labour is the result of the poor having more children than they can provide for.

FACT
The wealth of a nation is its people. The tendency, however, is to view people not in terms of their potential, but by their sheer numbers. When it is said that high population growth is the cause of child labour, the focus remains on the numerical strength of families, while their basic rights are ignored. Another example of this can be seen in the way the poverty index measures "calorific consumption and not what people are denied in education, health and other issues." Child labour, therefore, cannot be attributed solely to population growth. This is confirmed by the fact that while "the growth of the child population has declined since 1971 and a continuation of this trend will result in a decrease of the child population for 2001 for India as a whole, the interstate variation will continue to be enormous."

Kerala, for instance, has the lowest incidence of child labour in India. This is because it has "invested in human beings, in political commitment, in radical change in the countryside, in land reform, in a strong working panchayat."

MYTH
Parents would rather send their children to work than to school.

FACT
A National Consultation on the Rights of the Child concluded that "the withdrawal of children from the labour market through mass enrollment by NGOs effectively disproves the �poverty argument� very often used to justify the continuance of child labour."

"The idea that some children have no alternative than to work is so universally entrenched that even social workers attached to agencies implementing direct support programs were initially reluctant to persuade parents of working children to enroll them in formal schools. They feared that families of child labourers would not accept the idea of full-time formal schools, nor will they absorb or accept the fall in family income. Individual and community acceptance of education as an alternative to work did not turn out to be as difficult as it was generally feared to be. More difficult than parental resistance to formal schooling for their children, was the difficulty in satisfying the administrative requirements for admission. Documentary evidence of date of birth, and transfer from a previous school (in the case of children who are being re-integrated into schools) were greater barriers in enrolling children into schools."
( "Problems of Universal Elementary Education", Poromesh Acharya, Economic and Political Weekly, December 3, 1994.)

MYTH
Children themselves want to work.

FACT
When children express their preference for work, it is because of their inability to conceive of an alternative. Children are compelled to work by the non-availability or lack of access to school, an irrelevant school curriculum and physical abuse from teachers. For children, earning enhances their feeling of self-worth. Therefore, their demands center on the improvement of working conditions and dignity of labour. However, the issue of an enabling work environment should be dealt with separately, without obscuring the realization of children's rights.
Gunnysack in hand, 12-year-old Rupali Kamble from Pune, Maharashtra begins her round at 5 am each morning, picking up paper, cardboard, glass, tin, bottles, metal, plastic, and milk sachets. Rupali contends that all children work out of compulsion and feels that adults should be paid more, "because things are so expensive. If they have money, they can send children to school, buy books, clothes. They may spend it on alcohol and such things and they have to be made to understand." Rupali is happiest when reading and would like to study. "The government should build a school near my house and a playground", she states firmly.

MYTH
There is nothing wrong in allowing children to work in non-hazardous occupations.

FACT
The work "hazardous" is a debatable point because we are not referring to the inherent hazardous nature of any industry. The reference is to what is hazardous to the child. In this respect, even jobs which are not inherently hazardous become hazardous for children, if they are made to do the job for long periods and if they are being denied their rights to development, education, medical care, recreation, leisure and play. The differentiation between hazardous and non-hazardous comes from the vocabulary of industrial occupations, and refers to adult employment. To apply it to child labour is to ignore the violation of children's basic rights and restrict action on child labour to the formal, organized sector. Every child labourer is a priority, regardless of the nature of work they do. Child labourers in so-called "non-hazardous" employment, such as the service sector's tea-stalls and restaurants, and domestic sectors like household work, are vulnerable to physical, mental and sexual abuse. Poor working environments like closed, dark and ill-ventilated rooms damage a child�s development. The continuous hours of work can result in exhaustion and even death.

According to Sheela Barse, what is often ignored is the psychological trauma children face, wherein "they get conditioned to perceive and accept oppression and slavery as normal." (Children of those Lesser Guardians', The Times of India, August 12, 1995)

MYTH
If children work, they become equipped with skills for the future.

FACT
The tasks given to child labourers, such as labeling, filling, rolling, fetching and carrying, are simple and repetitive. By performing these tasks, children are not developing a skill so much as being subjected to exhausting, monotonous work.
Moreover, the work done by child labourers actually endangers their futures. Exposure to the elements, dust, toxic fumes, and chemical solutions damages children's health, shortening their life span and impairing their development. For instance, "in the match factory, the association of passivity with females leads to girls being expected to sit continually in the same posture. It causes menstrual disorders and uterine problems which girls are conditioned to surpress." (G. Shantha, CACL, 1994). In the gem polishing industry, vision declines before the age of thirty.

MYTH
Child labour is necessary to preserve traditional arts and crafts.

FACT
The argument of preserving traditional arts often hides the reality of children bonded to families, or who are hired labourers who are never taught the actual craft. Arts and crafts can be passed on within children�s families, as a part of their socialization, or integrated with their education.
In addition, "skills previously the preserve of a few families are now widely available in the labour market because of state - sponsored training programs which cover industries like pottery, carpet, gem-polishing, and the lock industry. Moreover, new technology has rendered many of these skills irrelevant. The artisan has been transformed into a factory worker by the large-scale nature of production."

"You can't sacrifice your family for work. It is bad enough that one son has not been educated and therefore has to work at this job (coloring a brass plate). But this little one will study. He can always learn the craft. After all, he belongs to a family of artisans. In any case, education will only improve his ability to work."
Sayeedbhai, a painter in the Moradabad brassware industry.

MYTH
Children work faster and have nimble fingers needed in certain types of work, especially knotting carpets.

FACT
"A carpet manufacturer, V.R. Sharma admitted in an interview that 'it is a myth that child labour is essential and the children are capable of weaving better carpets than adults,� ( Indian Express, 16 June 1987).
A study conducted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies for the Government of India also disproved the 'nimble fingers' argument. The study examined the match manufacture industry, where children were supposedly employed in simple tasks for which they had a special aptitude lost to adults. In fact, not only were adults employed in all these operations, but they out-numbered children in the surveyed units. Also, their rate of physical production was more than that of the children. There is no reason, therefore, to accept the 'nimble fingers' argument either on the grounds of adults' inability to work or due to their allegedly lower pace of work.

MYTH
Industry will collapse if child labour is not available.

FACT
"The International Labour Organization held a workshop to present the findings of studies that have been conducted on the profitability to an industry if child labour was replaced with adult labour. The industries examined included carpet, brassware, gem polishing, and match industries. It was found that, looking only at the economic implications, the increase in the cost of a product caused by replacing children with adults is only marginal, and can be largely absorbed by the industry. Or, if passed on to the consumer, the increase in the sale of the final product would also be marginal."
"It is possible to alter the structure of industries in a manner whereby the small-scale or informal units (which have a large concentration of child labour, making them very competitive) can be made viable without having to take recourse to the super-exploitation of women and children. One of the problems in the carpet industry is the large number of intermediaries between the manufacturer/ exporter and the weaver/ master craftsman. Co-operatives of the small loom owners/ weavers, with these having direct access to the market, need to be considered."

MYTH
A global ban on child labour products will force the elimination of the practice of child labour and protect children's rights.

FACT
The proposals for a global ban come from the developed nations and focus on exports. Child labour is essentially a domestic problem; only about 8% of India's child labour force is engaged in the export sector. Linking the concerns of human rights to trade only serves the interests of the developed countries. These social clauses and blanket boycotts make no commitment to the rehabilitation of child labourers.

MYTH
Legislation prohibiting child labour is sufficient to resolve the problem.

FACT
Legislation prohibiting child labour may end up compounding the problem by legitimizing child labour. For instance, the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, is in violation of Article 14, 21, 23 and 24 of the Constitution. This legislation removes the protection given by these Articles to children against employment in all hazardous work and against exploitation and injustice by not prescribing a minimum age and prohibiting employment of children only in certified occupations and processes.

Furthermore, "having enacted so many Acts, little attention has been given towards enforcement. In the absence of enforcement, the legislative measures are easily flouted. Between 1990-1993, at the central level only 537 inspections were undertaken under the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986; a total of 1203 irregularities were detected, but only 7 prosecutions were launched. At the state levels, while 60,717 inspections were launched, only 5,060 violations were observed, out of which 772 were convicted...�

The problem of child labour cannot be resolved if there is a lack of political will and enforcement. Finally, there is total failure of the Government in the area of compulsory education of children up to the age of 14 (Article 45). �Several states have made commendable efforts in the direction of providing education facilities, but none has been able to do anything to check the phenomenon of high drop-outs."

12-year- old Chintamani Acharya has been working since the age of seven in a garage in Bhubaneshwar. "Actually, I used to go to school but I never liked studying. It was boring. I would keep my bag in school and then run away. It was an older boy who introduced me to garage work. But now I don't want to work. The garage owner always beats me, my father beats me. I feel very sad. I never liked school because it used to be open for one day and shut for ten."

MYTH
Child labour cannot be abolished.

FACT
The task of eliminating child labour is large, but not impossible. It is time for us to rise to this challenge. �What has caused the problem of child labour to persist [in India] is really not a lack of resources, but lack of real zeal. Let this not continue.� (Supreme Court judgment on the Writ Petition No. 465 of M.C. Mehta v/s the State of Tamil Nadu and Others, '86).
"We must see the child as a human person in a holistic perspective... The time has come to recognize the primacy of the Rights of the Child and to take effective steps on the basis of that primacy to promote the cause of Child Development... That priority ought not to be allowed to become an empty verbiage or an occasional incantation. It should be reflected in our national policies, programs, budgeting and the design of public and private life." (Task Force on Implementation of the Child Labor Act and Action Plan)

Various potential solutions have been identified. For example:
"Elimination of child labour should be linked with issue of ration cards to the poor families." ( Velumani, INTUC, Elimination of Child labor, Report on second workshops, National Institute of Rural Dev., (Ed.) Dr. T. Haque, '96) "The example of Kerala and West Bengal, particularly to rural child labor, may suggest that basic agrarian reforms are more potent means of containing the problem of child labor." (Child Labor - A Worsening Situation, B.N. Juyal)

Eliminating child labour is putting solutions into practice, both through action, and through shifting the attitudes that contribute to the problem:
"There is a deeper malaise in our society, which impacts our young children. If we continue to value a few elite qualifications far more than real competence for doing useful things in life, and if the economic distance, between those who can manage to cross some academic hurdle and those who can't , continue to widen, we will probably continue to spend our effort in designing hurdles, instead of opportunities to learn with joy." (Yashpal Commission Report on ways and means to reduce the academic burden on school students, one factor responsible for the high drop-out rate)

The Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) believes that, in agreement with the Constitution's prohibition of child labour, no child below the age of 14 must engage in labour. An official policy must be geared towards the abolition of child labour. Certain sectors and conditions of work need to be targeted for immediate eradication, such as child prostitution and children working in conditions of bondage.

The first necessary alternative is the implementation of free, relevant, quality, compulsory education for all children under 14 years of age. This, if implemented, would prevent children from being drawn in the work force. This does not mean that children should wait to go to school until the entire system is improved. Children must be enrolled in school and be provided with all possibilities for education immediately. The task of restructuring the education system and universalizing elementary education is extremely valuable.

Initiatives to eliminate child labour must be combined with ongoing community development and social mobilization. A comprehensive, integrated approach is required to address sector specific issues, along with those that apply to rural, urban and tribal areas. This requires the active participation of civil society, and an agreement between the various government programs which are dealing separately with the various aspects of child labour. Strict implementation of existing laws backed by political will can serve as an important preventive measure.
The final goal should not be to regulate or legitimize child labour under any conditions, but to abolish it completely.

Fact Sheet prepared by Madhuri Kamat, YUVA.
Campaign Against Child Labor (CACL), was initiated in November 1992. Its goal is the eradication of child labor. CACL is active in 12 states across India, with 700 members that include children's organizations, women's groups, trade unions, academic institutions, eminent citizens and volunteers.

Adapted from:
Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK)
D-1 Shivdham, 62, Link Road,
Malad (W), Mumbai 400 064

For more information visit:
http://www.freethechildren.org/youthinaction/child_labour_facts_myths.htm