The Underage Breadwinners - Child Labor in India

(Source:National Geographic)

The Indian government-affiliated V.V. Giri Labour Institute estimates there are 12.5 million children younger than 14 working in India. UNICEF puts the figure at somewhere between 75 and 90 million. Why are so many of our children working?

It is obvious most children are working under some form of compulsion. The compulsion is most often related to economic necessity or expectations attached to their caste.

But the important aspect of child labor is to understand that without a market for it, it would not exist. The carpet and rug industry is known to be the major employer of children. Their employment tactic is based on the fallacy that children's fingers are more nimble and adept at making the fine furnishings. Other industries and households employ children for the ease with which they can be trained, admonished and controlled.

Every day parents introduce their children to the labor market where they are readily absorbed and recruited. In a recent news report the UK daily "The Observer" exposed to the world a sweatshop in south Delhi contracted by the global retailer "Gap". Children rescued from the shop told reporters of how they were aggressively recruited and ill-treated. One child described how his parents succumbed to the lure of higher returns from a working child; "The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won't have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me, and I was brought down with 40 other children."

With the kind of poverty seen in India, parents are often left with the heart wrenching choice of starving, loosing their dwellings or having their children work. The employers send paychecks to the parents and the children most often work for food and shelter. The economic necessity is far too great a defence of their action for them to see much wrong in it. Besides in a caste ridden country where lower castes are expected to live a life of labor and in a society that has traditionally employed children, child labor is not a clear wrongdoing.

The worst form of child labor that is unfortunately the most rampant is "bonded" child labor. The children work like slaves and the debt that binds them to their employer is incurred not by the children themselves, but by their relatives or guardians, usually a parent. Children work several hours without food or drink. They are given corporal punishment when they need to be disciplined and live in deplorable conditions.

India does not have an outright ban on child labor, Indian law only prohibits the employment of children under the age of 14 in occupations deemed hazardous. The list was recently expanded to includes domestic, hotel and restaurant work. When the government first moved to ban child labor, employers and even some children's rights activists pointed out that millions of children worked in order to survive. Out of work they would have no one to feed them and no where to go with the absence of facilities to absorb them. Some even conceded that at least some employers treated their child-workers better than their own parents could.

Unfortunately "this notion of benevolence often masks the exploitation and the long-term harm for children" as Shantha Sinha, an anti-child labor activist and 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award recipient rightly points out. It is true that the government has done little to provide for the rehabilitation of the children or alternatives for income the children bring in that parents heavily depend on.

But legislation is a necessary starting point that will lead to a change in mindsets, social policy and the availability of alternatives. These changes are not necessarily natural phenomenon, it will take a very proactive society and government to bring about.

Society's major role is to remedy the conditions that encourage subservience and subjugation, especially the caste system and to oppose and report all forms of child labor.

The Government has had legislation in place for years but without enforcement, success is a distant dream. There is a lack of recognition of consequence and respect for law that creates the absence of self-limitation and compliance. With stricter enforcement and punishment for the offense some of that compliance can be achieved. Financial incentives such as tax benefits for employers that do not employ children in sectors where child labor is common would also help. Right to education must not only be enforced but also shown to ultimately provide superior benefits. The availability of better paying and decent opportunities for the educated youth will be a compulsion for parents to send their children to school rather than off to work. As far as alternatives to work for the children are concerned there is some good news; India's Ministry of Labour reports that the number of children withdrawn from hazardous jobs and enrolled in special schools under the National Child Labour Project has more than doubled in the last three years.

As long as labor is equated with survival, no matter how deplorable the working conditions are parents and children will prefer employment to unemployment. They will support child labor employers and find ways to subvert the law. Pulling them out of this extreme economic necessity will require further bolstering of economic policies that are poor and rural driven. The National employment Garuntee scheme needs a massive overhaul to be rid of the corruption and the diversion of funds into the wrong hands.

The child labor situation in India is grim. We cannot allow our children to grow up under these circumstances. We have a responsibility to show them that they have been born in to a world that cares for them and one that is willing to protect them.

Resources and References:

Govt. Of India Ministry of Labour (PIB Press Release)

"Child sweatshop shame threatens Gap's ethical image" , The Observer

Save the Child Foundation (Bachpan Bachao Andolan) Pictures from National Geographic

International Labour Foundation - Statistics and Databases "India's latest move to stop child labor", Anuj Chopra, Christian Science Monitor

"Child slavery: India's perpetuating dilema", Natasa Kocevic, Harvard Interantionl Review

Indians hungrier than most of the developing world- Global Hunger Index 2007

US based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) released a 60-page report, titled "The Challenge of Hunger 2007", that uses a measurement tool known as the Global Hunger Index to rank 118 countries on their progress towards meeting the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG); reducing extreme poverty and hunger by 50 percent and the fourth reducing child mortality by two-thirds. (There are 8 MDGs)

Global Hunger Index 2007 ranks India 94th of the 118 countries behind China and Pakistan. Nine of the ten countries with the highest levels of hunger are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although India has fared poorly on the index, it is expected to reach the two MDG goals by 2015.

This index provides a particularly comprehensive measure of global hunger because it ranks countries on three leading indicators and combines them into one. The three indicators are: child malnutrition, child mortality, and estimates of the proportion of people who are calorie deficient. By combining these indicators, the index considers the food supply situation of the total population. It takes into account the special vulnerability of children to nutritional deprivation including its most tragic consequence; death.

The report claims that the slow progress on alleviating hunger and poverty are in part due to the lagging economic growth in the Indian agricultural sector and discrimination towards lower castes and ethnic minorities that have provided them with less educational and labor opportunities. Interestingly it attributes the practice in some parts of India where the male family members eat first and women make do with the leftovers as one of the cultural habits contributing to malnutrition. (Children of undernourished and anaemic mothers have a higher risk of being born underweight)

The United Nations' World Food Program claims that "nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry live in India, a low-income, food-deficit country. Around 35 percent of India's population is considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements."

What causes the persistence of food deprivation in the country that shows tremendous growth and surplus food stockpiles? Either the food production and/or availability are failing the people (Food Security) or the people that are hungry cannot afford to the buy the food that is available (Financial Security).

If it can be argued that these are the root causes of hunger, then a society that ensures minimal financial security and provides food security through a well governed public distribution system, hunger could possibly be eradicated.

Read more on how I think the present system in India can be fixed or changed to be able to feed India's hungry at "India Indeed - Indepth"

Creating humanitarians out of computer consumers - THE XO LAPTOP

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Foundation is based on its belief that a computer in the hands of children would allow them the chance to explore the world and delve into the Web's vast resources. It would give them a huge dose of "illimitable knowledge" from their seats in lesser developed countries.

But why a computer, how about money for schools, teachers and educational supplies? OLPC sees itself as supplemental to the efforts that are already ongoing to improve education in these countries. It sees the computer as the window to the world and a means for impoverished children to feel less isolated within their own countries and the world.

The laptop (XO) that hopes to sit on the lap of a deserving child is designed to be distinctive, rugged, efficient but most of all cheap. Initially pegged as the "100$ Laptop", manufacturing and other ancillary costs have the computer priced at about twice that. Initial reports about the computer have been mostly positive and rather complimentary.

With mass production about to begin the foundation recently announced the "Give 1 Get 1" initiative. The initiative calls for the sale of two computers for $400 in America. The purchaser gets to keep one while the other will be added to a pool for donations. Apart from creating a ready pool for donations, the foundation also hopes to create enough buzz to encourage private donations and governments to place large orders. There has been some talk about a luke warm response from governments that initially showed a lot of interest.

Initially OLPC will distribute computers in countries whose governments have made "commitments for the funding and program support required to ensure that all of their children own and can effectively use a laptop."

The Give 1 Get 1 program starts November 12th, until then you can sign on for an email reminder when the the initiative is officially launched.

Hopefully the program will set a trend in helping reach the many other supplies and necessities badly needed in many of the same countries.

The "Outcastes" and how they try to make it out of the caste system

Recently, The Wall Street Journal ran an article (In India Dalits convert to Christianity and face extra bias - Yaroslav Trofimov) rightfully critical of the caste system but also calling the absence of extended protection to Christian Dalit converts as a double bias against them. In that I found my inspiration for this article.

Dalits are finding Christianity and Islam especially attractive. They are converting in droves to escape their branding as Dalits.

But Christian and Islam Dalit converts stand to lose not just their name tags but any benefit they received while they were legally Dalits. As such many Dalits shroud their conversion in secrecy. Recently there have been increasing calls from non-Hindu and social advocacy groups for the government to continue affirmative action for Dalit converts.

But by bringing an extended family of Dalits and ex-Dalits under the umbrella of special protection are we diluting the efficacy on those that need it the most, Dalits who remain Dalits?

To read more on what the defines the Caste System, the Dalits, affirmative action in their favor and how religious conversion is playing a major role in their lives, click here - The Outcastes

India's hungry can be fed

With billions in reserves (In 2001 India had a national stockpile of around 60 million tons of rice and wheat) and a robust economy India still suffers from a malnourishment epidemic and persistent hunger among many of its people. The United Nations' World Food Program claims that "nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry live in India, a low-income, food-deficit country. Around 35 percent of India's population is considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements."

What causes the persistence of food deprivation in the country? Either the food production and/or availability are failing the people (Food Security) or the people that are hungry cannot afford to the buy the food that is available (Financial Security).

If it can be argued that these are the root causes of hunger then a society that ensures all its people minimal financial security along with steady food security through a well governed public distribution system, then hunger could possibly be eradicated.

Read more on how I think the present system in India can be fixed or changed to be able to feed India's hungry at "India Indeed - Indepth"

Poor Math!

In a previous post "Is India's boom trapped in the malls?", I referred to the Government of India's poverty figures and how their method of calculation is highly debatable. A blog I came across lists poverty figures quoted by various sources. The disparity just shows how the numbers are played around with to either suit someone's story or agenda.