Child Labor

Child Labor, a tern derogatory in its sense to all the years of innocence and the purity of the heart of a child which is possessed by the beloved soul, is none less then being a slave in its own way. The child looses all his gorgeous years of childhood and the age of fantasy where he lives in the world of dreams. Crashing comes his world at once, when the world should have opened up its arms to embrace him, for his fate has been decided by the few who tends to labor him on the field or for a matter of fact anywhere else – he is got to become a labor and labor all his life to earn the daily bread for him and his family.

A child below a certain age level brought down to work and labor in a factory, small scale industry, and cottage industry or even in a small shop etc. falls under the ambit of child labor. The age bar differs from country to country. However, in India the age specified is 14 years. The children in the age group of 1 to 14 are in no position to decide about what is good and what is bad for them, in other words do not have the capacity to take a decision for self. They need to be nourished and polished by providing them appropriate nutritious diet and a sound background in education. They need to be groomed into an individual on whose shoulders will rest the future progress of the nation. The mere exploitation of these children at such a tender age leads to the fall of his physical, mental as well as the spiritual growth. The child not only traverses on the path of uncertainty but also makes himself vulnerable to the evils of the society, a sheer loss, not just of the child but of the nation as well- for no nation can become great if its children are left to the mercy of the fate which is written by the few accumulators of wealth.

The problem of child labor affects the under developed, developing and the so called developed nations of the world and thus covers an entire spectrum. However, the intensity and the magnitude with which it impacts a nation differ. The case in hand for us is our own nation, India. All these years talk of growth being more inclusive has been at the bandwagons of the politician with media not standing far behind by giving these politicians damn lot of attention. How the hell the country is to be growing inclusively when the children of the nations have to take the burden of running it? The fact of the matter is numbers like GDP, per capita income is what people like us, the so called educated class, all care about. Oh! India projected to grow at 7% despite global slowdown is what we all care about and not how the children of our nations are being growing. What we care about is just numbers, numbers and numbers. The insatiable greed to chase the figures has led to backward spiral- forget about the trickle down effect of growth- of deteriorating our future assets; the want-to-be youth of the nation.

There are several causes for the emergence of problem of child labor and the primary among them are illiteracy and poverty. They are the twin problems and the two sides of the same coin, for one complement the other. The concoction of these two matrices/issues leads to the emergence of many other issues, one of which is child labor. A family where the head is illiterate and does not have enough source of finance to feed the little ones, to get the clothes for the wretched bodies and to get a shelter, the survival itself is in question. He does not care about or rather does not have the time to think or know whether his child is a labor or when his child will be 14 then will he allow him to labor. What he knows is that they will not last for their child to become 14, he knows that for his family he needs to labor himself and let his child help him in whatever way possible and he also knows that his child will get exploited but has no other option exist except to let him go and toil hard on the field to win a bread for him and his family without which they will extinct and no one will be there to sing a song for them. No parents want their child to sweat until their own sweat cannot lead them to survival. Thus, if one can see the whole issue of child labor at large in case of India emerges from one base i.e. poverty. The widespread poverty especially in the rural areas, not to forget the urban poor, are the dwelling place for birth of the unfortunate ones who are to be labeled by the society as a child labor in the years to come. The lack of literacy among these groups adds as a double whammy. The huge population under the BPL and the high illiteracy rate has made the issue to grow into a magnum. Moreover, the human greed for more makes the deployment of the child in industries and factories as a service to them and their family and not at all as exploitation. But behind the façade of service is the real face of exploitation of the young ones.
Child labor exist in both organize and unorganized setting, more so in case of unorganized market. To a certain level it can be checked in an organized setting such as an industry set up. However, the unorganized sector where most of the children, as in case of India, are exploited is a tough nut to crack. For instance a child working in a shop next door can always be claimed to be a relative and thus the law cannot tighten its screw on the exploiters. Moreover, the child also agrees to cooperate as he himself cannot see the light of the day. What he can see is the satisfaction of getting two square meals a day. The media can be one tool to expose the exploiters but nevertheless they are too busy with pleasing their own audience and have its own limitations. So what can be the solution to it? The government, its policies, the society and most importantly the shift in the mind set of We- the framer of our constitution.

There is necessary legislation in place such as free and compulsory education for the children below a certain age, laws banning child labor and the Constitution of India itself prohibits any such action which accomplice a child into becoming a labor and much worse into a bonded labor. Despite of all these child labor still exist, why? The reasons are leakages. Leakages in the government machinery to implement the laws with prudence, leakages in the society to accept these acts as a service and leakages in the mind set of the people who think they standing alone can not make any difference or fight for a cause. The call for the moment should not be on what and why but on how to remove the problem at an individual level. We should promise ourselves that we will not act in any manner which makes us a part of the inhuman act of killing the childhood of an infant and we will certainly see a child playing in the garden next to us.