Expert Talk: Loopholes in child labour law

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That has been the biggest, most important mandate of our Constitution – in terms of growth and economic development. It is the most important thing to start with.

Any developing country cannot afford to neglect education for all its children. You have to provide for the resources and infrastructure and then only you can think of economic development of a country as a whole. Otherwise you are catering only for the rich, for the haves and the upper castes. The governments since our independence have abdicated completely in a criminal way their major responsibility to provide good quality, equal opportunities in terms of education to the children of the nation.

No amount of policy, court directions or punishment is going to work. The simple and the best thing, which works automatically, is to provide good quality education to all the children on the basis of equity and justice.

In order to do that, the Government should take a call. The Prime Minister should initiate this and say the whole country should pool their moral and material resources because children are our biggest wealth. They’re the future. Not just future, they’re the today.

If all children will be in school, the vicious cycle of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and population explosion will be broken. All these are interlinked. If you have millions of children who are of school-going age but are not in school and are being exploited as child labour, it also means that we have an equal number of adults who are unemployed.

These children will grow up as illiterates and unskilled labours. They will not be able to get good wages and in order to feed their own family, they will send their own children to work somewhere. So it’s a vicious cycle.

The Central Government should take upon itself the task of imparting good quality education to all the nation’s children and then ask states to participate, religions to participate, civil society, business, commerce industry and everybody to participate. The media should also be geared to create a campaign around it. Everybody should join this nation-building exercise and the topmost priority should be given to education.

Children are being paid a pittance and they’re as young as eight-10-12 years. They’re forced to work for long hours – 12-14 hours a day, crammed in small rooms. You can hardly move there. They have to sleep in those rooms and no facilities of sanitation, toilets are available. It is in awful, appalling, inhuman conditions. All this is happening very close to police stations.

Everybody knows what’s happening, we don’t have to go and tell the authorities. They know about it. Child labour can be stamped out and guilty can be punished, if the district officers, the collector, the magistrate and the labour officer are made responsible. They must give an undertaking that they will make sure that there’s not a single child being exploited in any way in their areas. If they fail in their responsibility, they should lose their job.

The citizens have tremendous power. The civil society has to gear up and say that no we will not put up with it. If in your own house you are exploiting a child, stop that. If in your neighbourhood somebody else is exploiting a child, raise your voice. Bring that to the notice of the authorities. If the authorities are not acting then you do something about it. You are so agitated about your illegal buildings and shops, and you can protest against the Supreme Court, why can’t you protest about this abominable practice of child labour?

The civil society has tremendous power but they think everything should be done by the Government. Government means bureaucracy. Bureaucracy has no accountability. Even if every law is being violated in their area, the job of the deputy collector or the commissioner is secure. No officer has even been suspended for a day for the gross violations taking place in his or her jurisdiction. Why? Each of these laws must have a provision. It should clearly state who would be responsible for the implementation? There’s no accountability whatsoever.

The biggest culprits are our bureaucrats and nobody is raising a finger. If tomorrow you make them responsible for the implementation of the act, you will see a sea change…a drastic change.

Swami Agnivesh is a women and child rights activist. He is the chairperson of the Bandhua Mukti Morcha (Bonded Labour Liberation Front) and a member of the International Peace Council.