UP carpet loom is doom for kids

KNOT FOR CHILDREN

Though carpet weaving is spread over different parts of the country, the name 'carpet industry' has become synonymous with the Mirzapur-Bhadohi belt.

The region is fast gaining notoriety as the sweatshop in UP's dingy backyards that employs thousands of children under 13 years of age.

Almost 80 per cent of carpets exported from India come from this belt comprising of three core districts of Bhadohi, Mirzapur and Varanasi. The four adjacent districts of Allahabad, Koshambi, Jaunpur and Sonebhadra are also at the periphery.

There has recently been a shift of work from the core carpet belt to the adjoining districts of Bihar like Garhwa, Samastipur, Palamau, Madhubani and Saharsa in north Bihar.

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With 23 million child labourers, India is the sixth most unsafe country in the world for children. From cracker industry to weaving carpets to being exploited as domestic helps, the unfortunate face of childhood in India largely goes unnoticed.

Leading up to Children's Day on November 14, CNN-IBN brings a series of stories on such children in a special series Child, Interrupted!

Mirzapur: Uttar Pradesh's Mirzapur and Bhadohi districts are the two flashpoints in India’s carpet weaving belt, contributing crores to the nation’s economy.

However, behind the glitter of a thriving cottage industry and a booming local economy are young children who work day in and day out on looms, getting little or sometimes no wages at all.

Despite a 20-year-old ban, the children brave the heat, dust and the unhygienic conditions and continue to toil in the looms that dot the countryside.

“I work from seven in the morning to midnight and earn Rs 5 per day,” says a child worker Mukesh.

For the likes of Mukesh, even this paltry salary comes at a huge price. At least four to five children sit on the wooden planks of the looms, weaving carpets for about 10 hours everyday.

The dank, shack-like looms have very poor ventilation and no sign of electricity. As a result, most of these children suffer from poor eyesight and tend to fall ill often.

“I get blisters on my hands due to weaving and it pains a lot,” says another child worker in Mirzapur’s factory, Anil.

Shockingly, it’s not just the hazardous conditions that children have even been trained to survive, they have also been tutored to lie about their age by the looms.

The carpet factory owners and manufacturers are not just exploiting the children, they are also exploiting a glaring loophole in the Indian law.

Legally, children working at home or even in a hazardous industry like carpet weaving are not called “child labourers”. That’s a loophole in the law working to the advantage of these manufacturers.

Instead of setting up looms in factories and hiring adults, they contract work to families who then put children to work.

The minimum wage law, too, is broken with impunity. Contractors treat a family as a single laborer, even though it’s known that the whole family is involved.

“Everything is hand woven. This is the pity that I employ a person but if he makes a mistake, I cannot kick him out. How? In what law?” says the owner of East-West Trading Corp, Avinash Baranwal.

CNN-IBN Special Investigation Team shot extensively with a hidden camera in the area and found children working in almost every set up.

“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,” says child rights activist, Swami Agnivesh.,

The closer look at the economy of the carpet industry also throws up certain interesting details. A carpet that sells for over Rs 1 lakh in Europe, takes a family of three nearly four months to weave.

They get Rs 8,000 for the job - which is just 22 rupees a day - while the law sets a limit of Rs 120 per day.

The carpet export industry had a massive turnover of Rs 2,750 crore from handmade carpets last year, but deep at the root of this glittering facade lie the toil and tears of hundreds of children.

(With Mridu Bhandari and inputs from IBNLive.com)