Child Labor Ban - Your Views

Received this message from the CRY mailing list recently. I’m not entirely sure how CRY plans to use these views and opinions, but its still an opportunity to participate so here’s the message:

The Labour ministry’s notification, imposing a ban on employing children aged under 14, as domestic helps or at ‘dhabas’ and
eateries, comes into force from October 10, 2006.

What do you think?
1. It may be ideal to ban child labour, but in India children need to work to support themselves and their poor families. At least as domestic helps, children get food to eat and money to send back to their homes. We cannot just ban child labour but we should regulate the work of children.

2. Banning child labour in domestic households will only make the problem more invisible as it will not address the root causes of the problem. We need to address larger issues like poverty, adult unemployment, migration, availability of schools, quality of education etc.

3. Employing children in hazardous industries and in mines is already banned but it still continues. Even the present ban is eyewash and just another political gimmick.

4. The ban is a step in the `right’ direction. Children must not work. All children must be in school. If the `right to education’ is a fundamental right for all children aged 6 14 years, then a partial ban on child labour is non-constitutional.

Please write to lara.shankar@crymail.org with your response and comments. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards
Lara


Personally, I find the need to handle the ‘greys’ in this area, which can only happen if there’s purpose and a strong sense of will. The latter is conspicuous by its absence in the Indian political space, so any law or regulation becomes not just eye-wash but more dangerous, another door for corruption. Having said this, indifference is the only evil that’s bigger than corruption, so its necessary to take a position and state it.

So as I see it, while the regulations relating to child labor are a step in the proper direction, the government (and NGOs) need to address the very real issue of livelihood of an enormous segment of our population - which compels the children to work. A thought that comes to mind is a hybrid of vocational training centers that are oriented around commercial objectives, i.e. they produce items for commercial sale, which gets put back as stipends for the youngsters who are producing these, while also learning a range of vocational subjects mixed with the required general education. Yes, I’m sure there would be a number of entities that may be trying this model, in more evolved and sophisticated forms - my question, why doesn’t the government participate, engage and commit into this route of providing education to youngsters?

Which takes me to the closely linked aspect of accountability and monitoring of the various bodies involved in such activities - I feel uneasy about donating money primarily because there doesn’t seem to be any systematic and detailed monitoring and feedback that these agencies commit to - I don’t know if CRY has a mechanism where I could delve into the details of a child who I may sponsor, in a convenient and timely manner. Which is puzzling, given the power of the Internet and WWW.

And thus a food-chain gets set up - an auditing agency to monitor NGOs, which itself needs to have its source of funds. Then what? Someone to audit the auditors? A rating agency for NGOs? But now I’m way off the primary purpose of this posting. Please do send your views to CRY if you will.

And in case you know of NGO monitoring systems, sites, information, anything, please do point me at these as I’m hoping to build a micro-site on these and micro-financing.

Thanks in advance! :o)

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Published:
10.10.06 / 9am
Category:
NewsWatch