Child labor is a malaise that has grown in proportion to the population with each passing day adding some vulnerable person under fourteen to the labor force. The issue has been tried to be dealt with from various quarters, using both policy and action, but it gets back to us, in a larger form. If we start with the question of why bring up this issue to discussion would be doing ourselves morally wrong. If the circumstances in our society have created a demand for cheap labor in the form of child labor force, then there is every reason to raise the voice against it, time and again. The question to be asked is-how powerful is this voice and who controls this voice.
So what do the statistics say- According to 2001 census figures, there were 12.6 million working children in the age group of 5-14 as compared to a total child population of 252 million. The 2011 national census of India found the total number of child labor, aged 5–14, to be at 4.35 million and the total child population to be 259.64 million in that age group.
In terms of statutory legislation, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 outlines where and how children can work. The act defines a child as any person who has not completed his fourteenth year of age. Part II of the act prohibits children from working in any occupation listed in Part A of the Schedule. The act also prohibits children from working in places where certain processes are being undertaken, as listed in Part B of the Schedule. According to Part III of the Act, children are not permitted to work for more than three hour stretches and must receive an hour break after the three hours. Children are not permitted to work for more than six hour stretches including their break interval and can not work between the hours of 7 p.m. and 8 a.m. No child is allowed to work overtime or work in more than one place in a given day. A child must receive a holiday from work every week. The employer of the child is required to send a notification to an inspector about a child working in their establishment and keep a register of all children being employed for inspection.
Having established the official statistics on the extent of child laborers and the associated legislation, lets move ahead to establishing the real truth. Truth to be told, child labor is a part of an entire process, a cog in the giant wheel of astute poverty and deprivation. Deprivation of all kinds-lack of command over resources, lack of buying power, lack of means towards development. This triple deprivation cripples down the people at the lowest rung of the ladder. The situation compels your to exploit all that is available at disposal and that fore mostly and primarily is extra labor income for the family by making the child work. Children working in bangle-making, carpet weaving, agriculture, brassware, construction, etc are some of the prominent and glaring examples of how the chimneys keep running on the exploits of adolescent labor. What is also newsworthy are the rescues conducted by various voluntary/civil society organizations at these work-sites to put an immediate end to ill-practice. What however, remains in hindsight forever is what happens to the children once they are pulled out of these working conditions? What becomes of their future when they're rehabilitated with their family and social surroundings? Who are the real “culprits" of this organized crime (if common parlance demands so)?
It is in this context the 'voice' as introduced in this passage becomes relevant. This voice is me, you, every individual who has argued and given force to the movement against child labor. How free is this voice in arguing-or is it really free. Vested interests do exists, even when it is in the larger interest of society. Every rational individual is guided by self-motive and when one considers the motives of the society as a whole, it is merely a summation of individual motives. So when we say, lets put an end to child labor, it is not entirely out of social morality. The vested interests create a make believe situation, where I'm working for a cause and lending my voice, free, argumentative and rational to fight against this stigma on society. What is forgotten in due course of time is that there is no actual difference being made in the lives of the children.
A rescue is conducted, children are taken into custody, rehabilitated back to their place of origin and placed with their kins and relatives. The employer (s) and trafficker (s) ( trafficking for slavery is rampant in child labour) will undergo the designated legal course of action and compensation amount to be provided to the victim's family. At the most, we 'enlightened' individuals working as Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) /Civil Society Organizations (CSO) will bridge the beneficiary with the intended government service/scheme. There were news reports about a rescue operation in Hyderabad in January, in which 340 children were rescued from bangle-making units, majority of the victims being from Bihar. After the initial hubbub in media, it died a quiet death. No more probing into the lives of those children, where they are now, are any voluntary organizations engaged in rehabilitating programs and support services, no noise. So there lies a possibility of those children being trafficked again, to say so, or they might even join such small scale working units voluntarily. If such possibility exists, and which does so to a large extent, then it also leads to the event of another rescue being conducted and another 'number' showing up in media. Ultimately, it all boils down to numbers-how many.
This overarching argument controls the power of our voices-how many can be rescued. That is what the vested interests is concerned about. The more numbers can be shown, the better are the prospects of putting up a good show of charity. There's only a limit to which an NGO can operate in the space of social responsibility because ultimately it is the mandate of the state. We're just operating as franchises to the parent company. And to think that we're the demigods who can transform social landscape overnight is outright naive. There's aspiration failure among a wide spectrum of masses along with deprivation of all kinds (economical, social, mental and emotional). Development strategy has always been one-sided and biased and it continues to be so. There are state-sponsored schemes and services which fail to reach the intended beneficiaries either due to lack of knowledge, lack of supportive mechanism, lack of required human and physical resources or a combination of all the three. In such scenarios, there is no real offender, everyone is making the best of the worst situation he/she is present in. the real culprit is us who create the bunk of hope and then exit the situation, believing that things will turn for the better. That is not a powerful voice; is reflects abjectness. Such a voice cannot fight because it lakes a cause of its own. To put it simply, social causes in corporate bodies will do no good.
