By IANS
Hyderabad : India has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of child labour in the world. And child rights activists feel it is time that people recognise that demand for “cheap labour” and not “poverty” is what fuels child labour.
“It is time India recognized that demand for cheap labour is the reason why large number of India’s children are at work and not poverty,” said activist Ashok Khandelwal said at a recently held workshop in Hyderabad on ‘Child Labour and Education’, sponsored by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
One reason for differing definitions of the ‘child’ and the work a child can do is the plethora of laws in India regarding children. And the fight against child labour has traditionally been driven by having more stringent laws against it.
Not everyone who is below 18 years is technically a “child” in India. The minimum age for certain kinds of labour is 14 years and this includes working in garages and the merchant navy; many courts have ruled 15-year-olds are not children.
The Indian Mines Act is of 1901 vintage, followed by the Ports Act (1931) and the Emigration Act, all defining the child differently.
There are also the bidi workers act, the shops act, and finally the bonded labour prevention act, all spelling out the minimum age at which someone can be employed.
“For us, the most important law in stopping child labour has been the Minimum Wages Act. The difference in employing a child in place of an adult is Rs.50 a day and can go up to Rs.110 a day,” explains Satish Chandra, the labour commissioner of Andhra Pradesh.
The act stipulates minimum wages of Rs.80 to Rs.120 for a day’s work.
“People will stop employing children if the state governments enforce the minimum wages act across the country, forcing employers to cough up the same wage for children and adults,” he said.
“Under provisions of this act, we first ask the employer using child labour to pay a mandatory Rs.20,000 fine. He can then go to court, prove that he/she is not guilty and get the refund,” Chandra said.
Between June October 2007, the Andhra Pradesh government identified 9,329 cases of child labour under provisions of the act.
In five months, the government’s labour department managed to recover from employers Rs.13.4 million as wages due to children for 4,732 of the claims, which the government placed in fixed deposits in the name of each child.
“It is pertinent to note that the entire child labour stock comes scheduled caste and schedule tribes in India,” Khandelwal pointed out.
Despite a host of national laws, he noted, the Left-ruled state of West Bengal still prescribes different wage rates for a child, an adolescent and an adult, “thus legitimising child labour once again”.
Left-ruled Kerala, on the other hand, has no child labour because minimum wages for all, child and women’s labour included, is fixed as same as that of the an adult male, he said.
“The biggest stumbling block in eliminating child labour is the attitude of the state and the lack of political will to enforce the minimum wage for work,” said Khandelwal.