Problems of Child Labour

A. INTRODUCTION

The so-called concept ‘the children of today are the citizens of tomorrow’ is vanishing day-by-day. Despite hectic planning, welfare programmes, legislation and administrative action in the past five decades a large majority of the Indian children continue to remain in distress and confusion. It is indeed pathetic to see that rapid growth of street children everyday. It is of no embarrassment to ask ourselves, to where are we heading to with all these social problems. The questions that can arise in our minds, as we focus our study on the conditions of street children are: are they not human beings? Don’t they have also the dignity as any other human beings have? We may not have any concrete answer to all these questions, because India has that much been headed in the rapid growth of street children. In most families the parents neglect them, caretakers batter them and in work places employees sexually abuse them. The public and the government are yet to recognize it as a serious problem. Public indignation and professional concern is yet to translated into positive and realistic action.

B. THE PROBLEM OF CHILD LABOR

Child laborers are exploited, exposed to hazardous work conditions and paid pittance for their long hours of work. These children are often forced to quit their schools due to economic instability in the family. Often the children do not know what childhood is, because by the age of eight or nine they are into working profession. Those conditions often break down the psychological dimensions of the child. The problem of child labor has almost reached its pinnacle, and due to which government is unable to do something for their upliftment. The studies prove that mostly the children end up themselves in child labor due to various reasons, such as lack of family support, death of parents, lack of care and affection from the parents and relatives, economic difficulties in the family and so on. All these factors lead them to lead a miserable life. The major problems faced by the child laborers are: they are not paid their due wages, often these people being forced to do what they may not be able to do, apart from all these they are even being sexually assaulted and abused, they often remain uneducated and become dolls in the hands of the rich and the educated.
C. NATURE OF CHILD LABOR

The majority of working children are concentrated in rural areas and about 60% of them are below the age of ten years. The number of children work in urban areas are employed mostly in canteen and restaurants, among the most unfortunate ones are those who are employed in the hazardous industries. For example, the fireworks and match box units in Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu employ forty five thousand children, where as about fifty thousand children are working with a total workforce of two lack workers in the glass industry of Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh. The surveys of the metropolitan and mega cities make shocking revelations. Mumbai has the largest number of child laborers. In Sahanpur, ten thousand child workers are engaged in the wood carving industry, working 14 hours a day and getting just seven to eight rupees a day. Child labor is inextricably linked to bonded labor. In Andhra Pradesh, 21 percentages of bonded laborers are under sixteen. Children are concealed from factory inspectors during inspection; their ages are raised arbitrarily to make them eligible for employment, or those eligible for adult wages are denied their legitimate share because the employers lower their age in the forms.

D. CAUSES OF CHILD LABOR

In a country like India where over 40 percent of the population is living in conditions of extreme poverty, child labor is a complex issue. A large number of children do not even have families or cannot count on them for support. In these circumstances, the alternative to work may idleness, destitution, or worse, crime. The employers of the justification for employing the children for different works is that, the works keep the children away from starvation, and also by employing these children are prevented from committing crimes which they would have indulged in if they had no jobs. The social scientists say that the main cause for child labor is poverty. The children either supplement their parents’ income or are the only wage earners in the family. The second reason is that, it is said that 29.9 percent of the total population of India or about 25 crore 23 lakh people live below the poverty line, because of which the children are being forced into child labor to support the family. The third reason for child labor is deliberately created by vested interests to get cheap labor. The forth reasons is for the existence of child labor is because it benefits the industries.

E. WORKING CONDITIONS OF CHILD LABORERS

Children work in dangerously polluted factories and they even handle dangerous chemicals like arsenic and potassium. They work in glass blowing units where the work exerts their lungs and creates diseases like tuberculosis. It is indeed sad to know that even the officials who are working for the betterment and well being of these children, themselves employ a child in their homes to do the domestic works. In NDTV, one of the leading news channels of India, they illustrated an incident of child labor which happened in Ahamadabad in AP, where a lady who is a general secretary to the children’s welfare association, herself had employed a 12 year old girl to do the domestic works, and often she was beaten up thoroughly, and she was paid only 1000 rupees per year for her service in the house. They are often in hazardous conditions and often become unemployed by the age of 20 due to ill health and so on and the authorities remain mum to this kind of social evil happening in the country.

F. SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSION

India was initially facing the problem of women, but with the rise of feminism, the status of women has gone up to a very good extent. Now India is facing with yet another threat to democracy that is none other than the problem of child labor. The number of street children and the child laborers are increasing rapidly day by day. It is a serious problem, which has started eating up the Indian society. A solution to this problem in fact is unpredictable. But still we have a ray of hope in our most democratic society. The initiative indeed has to come from the side of each citizens of India. It is the responsibility of the citizens to put an end to this kind of social evil rather than encouraging it. The authority also should enforce the laws regarding the rights of the children and protect them from all these injustice. The cooperation of all the citizens of India can create an awareness of caring for one another and also develop these children to be the efficient future citizens of India. That way we can bring into actualization the dream of many of our visionaries.