CHILD LABOUR: Neccesity or Suicide

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             1. Do you think Child labor is a big problem in India?

•       Yes. Around 10 million children are involved in child labor. This impairs the growth of a child and deprives him of his childhood. Makes the girls more vulnerable and also develops criminal tendency in the mind of a child as he grows with adults from an early age.

·           2. What are the reasons for the child labor?  

•            Poverty is both the cause and consequence of child labor.   Combined with this, the irrelevance of school curriculum is an added factor. In today's education, till class 10th there is no scope for utilitarian education and parents are not ready to waste 10 years of their child.

  
3. Don't you think education has its own impact of broadening the World view and has intrinsic value of its own? 

• Yes, it has. But, for those people who are fighting for bread and butter on daily basis will first  think of basic necessities first. Also, 10 years is a long time for them. Instead, they are happy if their child earns and contributes to the well being of family.

4. In which areas and how much is child labor in your district?

• In my district, child labor is there in brick making, tourism sector, restaurants, etc

5  Which sections and areas are the worst affected by the child labor?

•  55% of child labor is concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra and UP. 
•  Most of the child labor comes from deprived sections of society such as SC, ST and Muslims.

·         6. How can you reduce the child labor?

• Provide employment to the parents of child labor. Its a long term solution.
• We should make our education employment centric.
• Make it less elitist. Provide education in local language, train local teachers among themselves.   Use culture and nature to teach the students. 
•  Properly implement the laws against child labor. Also, strengthen the mechanism of Child labor rehabilitation committees for proper integration of child labor with society.
• But, law can only provide a partial solution to the problem. We need community awareness and mobilization to put an end to child labor. 
•  Also, the MNC's must label their products as child labor free along with people's rejection of products manufactured by child labor.

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·        7.   How can child labor be brought back into the mainstream education? 

•             For children working in hazardous activities should be rescued, rehabilitated through National Child Labor projects and makes sure that they don’t end up being child labor again. 
•            For children working in non-hazardous activities should attend schools along with the work they are      doing. For that special evening schools need to be set up and run by the community members. Again it comes down to the motivation. 
•            For children above 14-15 years of age, they must be given vocational education and must be enrolled in it. But, we don’t have enough ITIs. Solution to every problem creates another problem. It is very complex.

8. Is it advisable to even end the child labor? Can we end it?

• If we end child labor without ending poverty then it will be dysfunctional. Because then children of the poorest families will be sold, exploited and enter into the area of bonded labor.So, this problem is linked with overall level of development of economy. That’s why the child labor is more in developing countries than in developed countries.
• Also, there is no political will to end child labor as
  1. Children are cheap source of labor and that adds to profit.2. They are not politically significant as they are not the voters.
  Therefore, we can’t end the child labor but efforts must be made to educate them the relevant things along with their work.