A128187: Life ReVoLve AroUnd Me

Though the 1986 Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act forbids child labor, this act does not have jurisdiction over the employment practices of the cottage industries. Therefore, these employers often circumvent the law and continue to exploit children all over India. Examples: Fireworks and match industries, Tamil Nadu where an average of 33,000 children in the (6–14 year age) are employed.

Between 1980 and 1995, the World Bank provided approximately $380 million to various silk industries in India to support and modernize the sericulture, production, and quality of the silk products.

India’s poor do not have easy access to health care subsidies, and India is among the top five worst countries in terms of what they offer as poor health subsidies in the public sector. Each year, thousands of new formulations are seen in the pesticide and fertilizer sectors, with over a million synthetic chemicals being used in these products to increase food grain production, which later leading to illnesses in children.

They work an average of 10 hours a day, and some at night and suffer from various skin diseases and infections.

Most of the rural  Indian  mothers  already  suffer  from  anemia  and  malnutrition,  and the growth of children and fetuses is also impaired by exposure to chemicals, pesticides, and environmental contaminants.

In the silk industry, the child workers are frequently scalded, burned, or blistered from having to dip silk threads into boiling water, they cut their hands and fingers on the threads, they are exposed to the risk of infection from handling the dead silk worms, and they also breathe in machine-generated toxic fumes and smoke that cause lung and other infectious diseases.

The nonunionized and unorganized working sector in India, though it represents the bulk of the country’s workforce (90.6%), suffers from lack of health and safety regulations because OHS is not seen as a priority.

The Indian agricultural sector: Employs 80% of the country’s child workers and accounts for 70% of working children globally.

In India, 28.6% of the population lived below the national poverty line in 2000, lower levels of educational attainment are tied to a higher incidence of poverty, and poverty in turn leads to denial or prevention of educational opportunities.

Moreover, the literacy rate in India is 76% for males and 54% for females. Approximately, half of India’s 220 million children, aged 6–14 years, are out of school, and 60% of them are girls. Indian illiteracy rates for women and children are higher than those of men and boys. Women’s high illiteracy rates further add to the problems of child labor and poverty: Lack of education predicts a future life of poverty.

Indian children are also environmental victims and suffer from malnutrition, resulting in diarrhea and respiratory infections

Girls at age 9-13 years are paid less than the boys, work longer hours, and are often more compliant than boys. Multinational and national companies prefer girl (female) employees, citing reasons such as better physical dexterity, the males and boys in the respective households withdraw from the family and financial responsibilities, leaving them to the female children.

These companies(agricultural based) are aware of their employment of child laborers, who earn wages ranging from 18 to 20 rupees per day and are exposed to poisonous pesticides like Endosulphan during their work, yet claim that they are unaware of the related health problems of these child workers. 

The working children in fireworks and match factories earn an average of 20–30 rupees per working day, which begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 6:30 p.m.

The children’s parents are paid an advance loan amount of about 1500 rupees per child, who are made to work an average of 13 hours a day from 5 a.m. until 7 p.m. and make 30% less wages than an adult female and 55% less than the adult wage market rate. In addition, after the children are done with field work for the day, some are also expected to do chores around the employer’s house.

India, with an estimated 155 million child workers aged 5–14 years, has the third largest labor force of child workers. In underdeveloped countries, children are used as primary and secondary sources of family income. Some adults simply exploit the children in pursuit of financial gains. These children are paid as children but treated as adults, work long hours, and engage in physical labor. They are denied educational and growth opportunities, and without education or vocational training, they are unable to compete in the work force as adults, and are thus confined to being victims and to endless life of poverty.

The first generation of child employment is attributed to

However,  the  deplorable  state  of  child  labor  continues  unabated  all  over India. Despite international and Indian laws prohibiting the trafficking and exploitation of children, some of these child laborers are still being sold into debt-bondage at home and in far distant countries to work excruciatingly long hours to pay off their parental or ancestral debts.

Example of child labor in India: