In India.

Really.

They form part of what is the bonded child labor. An euphemism for slavery. For they are treated like slaves. Working for long hours in inhuman and often abusive conditions at wages that are a fraction of minimum wages (Rs. 3-10 per day).

And just like slaves, they do not have the option of leaving. Of getting out. For they are bound to the employers. As security for a loan that their parents may have taken. Or their grandparents.

Loans of Rs. 500 or maybe Rs. 1500. And they will be bound to this employer till their parents pay back the whole amount.

Sometimes part of their pay may be used to pay the interest of the loan. Very rarely is it used to pay of the principle. But it does not matter, for their parents will rarely pay off the entire amount. And so they continue to be slaves for 2 years – maybe four years – for this measly amount. An amount that would be easily paid off, within a couple of months, by the fare wage (as defined by law) for their work.

This is how there exist children who are effectively slaves.

You do not believe me? The government of India did not either. For quite a while.

Now it accepts that there are bonded children – but only a few. Very few. Maybe a few hundred thousands, at the most. Surely, not a million.

NGOs disagree. Indian groups working on Human Rights disagree. They estimate that there are about 15 million children working as bonded laborers.

And by the way, there are between 60 and 120 million child laborers in India.

And just in case you are wondering, employers are not helping the children or their families economically or otherwise by employing them. They are exploiting them by making them work long hours with almost no pay. The employers increase their profits by not having to pay higher wages to an older person. The family gains little from the child’s labor – the wages are so small that it does not usually add much to the family’s income.

The child is bonded to labor in some local industry, sometimes run by the moneylender, often run by a group that is connected to the money lender. He or she works in inhuman conditions and is often abused. Children working in the quarry industry often injure themselves and have little or no medical help. Children working in the silver industry use their bare hands to pick silver from pails of sulfuric acid. The leather industry uses another toxic and corrosive chemical – chromium. Kids working in beedi, silk or carpet industries sit in crouched positions for 8-10 hours a day, for 6-7 days of the week and often experience atrophying of muscles, and stunted growth.

Child labor is not a result of the poor having more children than they can take care of either. In fact, while the rate of growth in population has fallen since 1971 (the 2001 census shows a decrease in the population of children), there has been an increase in the number of children in the labor force.

Neither do parents want to make their children work as opposed to going to school. 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 children themselves do not want to work – they would rather go to school, learn, play and be children.

Child labor is a result of industries and communities inhumanely exploiting the poorest and the weakest sections of our society to profit. It is no different than slavery.

That it is exploitation of the weakest and most marginalized sections of India is reflected in the fact that a very large fraction of children in bonded labor come from scheduled caste & scheduled tribes.

There are laws. Numerous laws. Some have loopholes but there are others that are very strong laws. But enforcement is almost unheard of. As of 1996, there had been no one conviction in India with regards to bonded child labor. Not one case of justice for over 15 million children.

That sets you wondering, “Why are these laws not enforced? Does the government not care?”

The Government of India has made some efforts to address the issue of child labor; the Congress government headed by P. V. Narasimha Rao declared that it would free 1 million children from bonded labor. There seems to be no official follow up with respect to this initiative. We have no numbers of how many children were freed and what has happened to them since.

The United Front government promised to end bonded child labor. However, it could not last its term – and we have heard little about the initiative since.

By signing on to treaties by the International Labor Organization, the government of India is also party to a number of laws to guarantee rights of children that are violated through bonded child labor. These include:
• Convention on the Suppression of Slave Trade and Slavery, 1926 and its supplement
• Forced Labour Convention, 1930
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966
• Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989

The primary responsibility of addressing bonded child labor rests with the District Magistrate (also called District Collector) – besides all other activities that he or she must take care of – who is to be advised by a Vigilance Committee formed by a Government of India ruling. There is no active Vigilance Committee known to exist.

In addition, labor inspectors were also asked to monitor bonded labor; however, there is no uniformity in the laws they apply. In addition, rampant corruption has resulted in almost no enforcement.

It is also important to note that these industries have very powerful lobbies and mafias that have effectively muzzled any enforcement. Non Government Organizations have been thwarted (often violently) from working with such children. There have been instances of children trying to break out of bonded labor being murdered.

It is under such conditions that local NGOs and Human Rights Watch groups are operating. International Agencies have proposed international ban of commodities made by bonded child labor. NGOs and local groups have argued that such bans are non effective; only 8% of children in the bonded labor are involved in such commodities (carpets, silk, leather). Most industries including such labor are for domestic markets (beedis, quarries, fireworks, silver, agricultural goods, etc). In addition, such bans are largely used to hurt international trade without helping rehabilitation of these children.

What, then, needs to happen?

There is a large body of evidence that enforcing compulsory education is closely related to reduction of bonded child labor.

However, that is not enough.

It is critical that laws be enforced.

Given that the absence of access to small loans is one big reason that children are given to bonded labor, efforts in livelihood generation and creation of small credit groups also become significant.

These are some avenues that campaigns to end bonded child labor needs to take.

Related Articles:
Molested School Girls and the Mystery of Skewed Literacy Ratios
HRW Report on Bonded Child Labor in India
Campaign Against Child Labor
South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude