CHILD LABOR

Child Labor is very common, and can be factory work, mining, prostitution or quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's own small business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as: assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labor occurs in the informal sector, "selling many things on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses — far from the reach of official labor inspectors and from media scrutiny." And all the work that they did was done in all types of weather; and was also done for minimal pay.


Some common causes of child labor are poverty, parental illiteracy, social apathy, ignorance, lack of education and exposure, exploitation of cheap and unorganized labor. The family practice to inculcate traditional skills in children also pulls little ones inexorably in the trap of child labor, as they never get the opportunity to learn anything else.

Poverty and over population have been identified as the two main causes of the child labor. Parents are forced to send little children into hazardous jobs for reasons of survival, even when they know it is wrong. Monetary constraints and the need for food shelter and clothing drive their children in the trap of premature labor. Over population in some regions creates paucity of resources. When there are limited means and more mouths to feed children are driven to commercial activities and not provided for their development needs. This is the case in most Asian and African countries.

Adult unemployment and urbanization also causes child labor. Adults often find it difficult to find jobs because factory owners find it more beneficial to employ children at cheap rates. This exploitation is particularly visible in garment factories of urban areas. Adult exploitation of children is also seen in many places. Elders relax at home and live on the labor of poor helpless children. The industrial revolution has also had a negative effect by giving rise to circumstances which encourages child labor. Sometimes multinationals prefer to employ child workers in the developing countries. This is so because they can be recruited for less pay, more work can be extracted from them and there is no union problem with them. This attitude also makes it difficult for adults to find jobs in factories, forcing them to drive their little ones to work to keep the fire burning their homes. The incidence of child labor would diminish considerably even in the face of poverty, if there are no parties willing to exploits them. Strict implementation of child labor laws and practical and healthy alternatives to replace this evil can go a long way to solve the problem of child labor. Children who are born out of wedlock, orphaned or abandoned are especially vulnerable to exploitation. They are forced to work for survival when there are no adults and relatives to support them. Livelihood considerations can also drive a child into the dirtiest forms of child labor like child prostitution and organized begging.


The future of a community is in the well being of its children. The above fact is beautifully expressed by Wordsworth in his famous lines “child is father of the man”. So it becomes imperative for the health of a nation to protect its children from premature labor which is hazardous to their mental, physical, educational and spiritual development needs. It is urgently required to save children from the murderous clutches of social injustice and educational deprivation, and ensure that they are given opportunities for healthy, normal and happy growth.

Hundreds and thousands of children are toiling as bonded labor in India’s silk industry and the government is not able to do anything to protect their rights. Those children who are working in India’s silk industry are virtually slaves. Children who work in silk factories are kept behind covers by being pushed into individual homes. Tamil Nadu in South India is the home of the largest number of bonded children. However more attention has been paid to rehabilitate children working on match and fireworks manufacture, compared to silk factories.



Indian sweet shops function quietly and illegally as household industries making little children toil for long hours on very low wages before huge cauldrons of burning fat. Many children working in Indian sweet shops remain unpaid or poorly paid, are scolded, ill treated and underfed. Studies of children toiling in Indian sweet shops show that they mainly hail from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Nepal. These children sometimes also double up as domestic help for the owners of the sweet shops and their families.


Child labor – 2 will be continued…..