Child Labour-a Blot on The Face of Democracy: Civil Services Mentor Magazine January 2013

“India is the largest child labour force market in the world. The problem of child labour is its roots of colossal proportions. The notion that children are being exploited and forced into labour, while not receiving education crucial to development, concerns many people. India is the largest example plagued by the problem of child labour”.

Current figures of the number of children engaged in child labour in India are not available. This difficulty is attributed to the fact that the Indian Government “has been negligent in its refusal to collect and analyze current and relevant data regarding the brutal incidence of child labour. As of 1996, official figures continue to be based on 1981 census figures”. The 1981 Indian census reports that there were 13.6 million child labourers in India. Indian government extrapolations of 1981 data place the current number of child labourers at between seventeen and twenty million (Human Rights Watch 1996). This extrapolation seems highly unlikely as “The Official National Sample Survey of 1983 reports 17.4 million child labourers, while a study sponsored by the Labour Ministry, concluded that the child-labour force was 44 million”. UNICEF “cites figures ranging from seventy-five to ninety million child labourers under the age of fourteen”. A universal difficulty in obtaining accurate data maybe that individuals fail to report child labour participation during surveys for fear of persecution.

The figure for the number of child labourers varies a lot, they are all significantly high when considering that the Child Economic Activity rate for 1980-1991 was 13.5% for males and 10.3% for females. In comparison, other developing countries such as Sri Lanka and Malaysia, have lower activity rates: 5.2% for males and 4.7% for females in Sri Lanka, and 8.9% for males and 6.6% for females in Malaysia. Historical census data shows an overall child work participation rate of 12.69% in 1961 and 7.13% in 1971 . This data is misleading because the definitions of child labour are different in the two censuses , thus a comparison cannot be completely valid The data shows that in a span of twenty years (1961-1981), the proportion of children has not changed significantly.

Child labour support the source of income of the poor. A study conducted by the ILO Bureau of Statistics found that “Children’s work was considered essential in maintaining the economic level of households, either in the form of work for wages, of help in house hold enter prises or of house hold chores in order to free adult household members for economic activity elsewhere”. In some cases, the study found that a child’s income accounted for between 34 and 37 percent of the total household income. This study concludes that a child labourer’s income is important to the livelihood of a poor family. The fact that child labourers are being exploited for the same type of work, studies show they are paid less than their adult counterparts. Although 39.5% of employers said that child workers earn wages equal to adults, if the percentage of employers admitting that wages are lower for children are added up, a figure of 35.9% is found. The percentage of the population of India living in poverty is quite high. Poverty has an obvious relationship with child labour, and studies have revealed a positive correlation as such. Poor families need money to survive, and children are a source of additional income.