Action plans to eliminate child labour by das sir 8961556195

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Action Plans To Eliminate Child Labour By Das Sir 8961556195
The legislative apparatus by itself is unlikely to yield results as legal Action is only the first step
in a process. The crucial aspect, however, is the subsequent step in this process which involves
constructive rehabilitation of the child withdrawn from work. This, according to the government,
is provided in the second and third parts of the National Policy relating to General Development
Programmes for benefiting child labour and the project based Action Plan.
As far as the General Development Programmes are concerned, the Task Force that was formed
specifically to make an assessment commented that "First, the size of the total resources for
general development programmes remained the same and they have always been so meagre that
a small frAction out of those negligible resources could never be meaningful. Secondly, no
specific allocations were carved out or earmarked. No proportions or percentages were
prescribed. No weightage for child labour mandated."
Further, commenting on the Action Plan the Task Force remarked.... 'Broadly and briefly, we
feel that the Action Projects which were meant to be the testing ground for the implementation of
the Act and Policy have so far failed to yield any sizable worthwhile results.'
The reason why the views of the Task Force have been quoted here is that despite such strong
criticism from a committee appointed specifically to study the implementation of the Act and the
Action Plan, the Government of India has not in any way altered its approach. It is interesting to
note that whereas the Task Force submitted its report in 1989, its recommendations are said to be
still 'under examination'. To compound matters the Government of India has brought out, as
already mentioned, a fresh plan which is nothing but an extension of the earlier Action PLan.
The new scheme once again concentrates on areas of high incidence of child labour, in hazardous
occupations and involves withdrawing children from work, provision of training, education and
rehabilitation. The scheme, however, in no way answers the questions posed by the Task Force
in respect of the earlier Action Plan. Further, even accepting the official figure of 20 million
working children in hazardous occupations belong to families who have migrated from rural
areas. Lacunae of this nature are essentially the consequence of the Government's pre-occupation
with only a part of the child labour force and its restricted definition of what constitutes child
labour. Any comprehensive plan of actin would have to cover the entire range of working
children without making an artificial differentiation between those in hazardous occupations and
in other works.
A related area which has also been strongly influenced by the above mentioned assumptions
regarding child labour is that of education. The New Education Policy which was to be closely
coordinated with the Child Labour Policy incorporated a major effort to brig drop-outs and non
enrolled children into the education system through non-formal education (NFE). The NFE was
put in place with the key objective of providing education for working children. It was proposed
as a n alternative to the formal education stream as it was argued that improving the facilities of
primary schools would do little to help the poor who dropped out, whereas the system of non

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formal education was targeted to meet the needs of the working children. The intended clientele
includes drop-outs, children of weaker sections, girls in the age group of 6-14 years and boys and
girls who are employed in professions like carpet weaving and so on. The NFE is supposed to
have a flexible curriculum according to the needs of the working children and the youth. Classes
are to be held at hours taking into account the children's work schedule.
The NFE system has been the subject of much criticism in terms of its inherent limitations
because of its low paid, ill trained teachers, working in an atmosphere not particularly conductive
to learning for working children after a full day's work. What is of greater relevance however, is
that the NFE policy provides a clear example of the influence of accepting the poverty argument
of child labour on the Elementary Education Policy.
Thus, given the fact that the poor have to send their children to work, the NFE provides a
convenient framework of education which does not interfere with the child's work. In the
context of ARticle 32 what the NFE has done is that, in providing a solution to the problem of
child labour interfering with the child's education, it has provided a system of child education
which does not interfere with child labour.
The above arguments draw attention to the manner in which Government's policies in respect of
child labour and education have evolved and the factors which have influenced these policies.
Much of what has been stated above is widely known. However, despite the sustained criticism
of Government's policies from several quarters and their consistent failure to to provide any
solution to the problem of child labour, there has been no effort on the part of the Government to
modify its approach or to change the policies. In fact, policy makers have gone on e step further
an announced a further plan to "eliminate" child labour by 2000 A.D. on the same line as the
earlier Action plans. This situation obtains because the thought processed of those involved in
making the polices have got stuck in a narrow groove defined by the assumptions regarding child
labour. As long as these assumptions are held valid the policies and strategies will continue to
remain the same. It is only when they are abandoned and the problem is observed from a
different view point, that of the parent and the child, that a new strategy will emerge.
The starting point of any strategy dealing with the issue of child labour cannot lie in children
engaged in hazardous occupations alone. While this section of children does constitute the most
glaring example of the failure of our child labour and education policies they too are only results
of a larger phenomenon taking place in the countryside. 80% of the child labour and,
consequently, illiteracy exists in families engaged in agricultural work and we cannot afford to
ignore this fact. Further, a significant proportion of even those children engaged in hazardous
occupations in the urban areas belong to families who have migrated from the rural areas. With a
large reservoir of working children available in the rural areas any attempt to deal with the
problem of child labour only in specific industries and areas of concentration can at best yield
marginal results. In the long run it is the rural areas and in particular the agricultural sector to
which we have to ultimately turn. In other words, what is essentially required is to adopt ARticle
32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in its true spirit and recognize the fact that any
non school going child is na exploited child. In artificially categorizing some of children as

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'mere' child workers instead of exploited child workers it is often forgotten that it takes very little
to convert the former into the latter. Given these fact, any plan to deal with child labour has to
deal with the 90 million non-school going children.
It needs to be emphasized at this point that what is being suggested does not represent a very
great departure from existing policies. The Government has consistently been referring to
programmes for providing education for all, raising budgetary allocations for education to 6% of
GNP and elimination of child labour by the year 2000 AD. What is required is a change in
attitude in priorities rather than any radical change in the programmes themselves. It also calls
for a more effective co-ordination between the labour policies and education policies and a
proper appreciation of the fact that such ongoing programmes as Education for All are powerful
means to bring about a qualitative change in the child labour situation. The following sections
are based on the experience of the M.V. Foundation which has been working with rural child
labour utilizing the ongoing mainstream education programmes to withdraw children from
work.
The experience of M.V. Foundation shows that many of the government policies are based on
negative formulations. For instance, the assumption that parents are not willing to send their
children to schools; elimination of child labour is not possible nor is it possible to implement
compulsory education laws; the present school curriculum is not relevant or responsive to the
needs of the rural society and so on. The situation in eh field, however, indicates that these
negative formulations have much less to do with facts than with the State's reluctance to deal
with the problem in its entirety. This is not to say that these formulations ar totally incorrect, but
there is a certain convenience, that of not having to do anything, associate with accepting them
which makes them appear much more insurmountable than they actually are. In areas where
M.V. Foundation has been working there were innumerable instances of poor parents sending
their children to school. There were instances of children patiently waiting in makeshift class
rooms for teachers to arrive. There were also innumerable occasions when parents willingly
handled even extra work so that their children went to school. The fact is that there is
considerable demand even in the rural areas and even among the poor for education. That it has
not been articulated effectively is yet another instance of the weak not being able to extract what
they want.
The first step to an alternative policy hinges on abandoning the negative approach to the problem
of child labour. RAther than trying to explain why children are sent to work instead of school
one should try to understand why there are children still being sent to schools - the same run-
down school without adequate infrastructure and sometimes with just one teacher providing
socially irrelevant education. Instead of giving continued explanations for drop-out rates one
should attempt to understand why it is not even higher than it is, why it is that it is not always the
poorest who drop out first and why factors such as parent's educational status matter at all.
These are questions the answers to which are extremely relevant in understanding et strength of
the latent demand for education. Even for a parent who sends his child to school it is much easier
to explain why he should not do so (the answers have all been supplied by the government itself)
than why he actually does. But this inability on his part should not be construed as his wanting
this child to go to work. It should be clearly understood that acceptance of the premise that

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poverty compels parents to send their children to work is extremely convenient to those charged
with the responsibility of reducing, if not eliminating, children labour because in such a case,
improving the economic status of the parents becomes the focal point of attention. This is neither
the responsibility of the labour nor that of the education department and the buck can be passed
elsewhere. The 'poverty' argument and the argument that child labour has a major role in the
production process of an under-developed economy is a purely static description of the position
in the field. What this does not take into account is the dynamics of the evolution of society and
the consequent changes in the hopes and aspirations of parents in regard to their children.
Ultimately, therefore, unless the government machinery and policy makers accept the fact that
the existence of child labour has much more to do with the government's own inability, if not
reluctance, to provide adequate infrastructure and to motivate the parents through systematic
extension work than any desire or compulsion on the part of the parents to send their children to
work, a solution to the problem cannot be found.
When it is accepted that there is a demand for education and parents, even poor parents, are
willing to send their children to school, the onus of controlling child labour essentially shifts to
the education policy and regulation through labour acts becomes less relevant. But, as has
already been mentioned, the education policy of the government is heavily weighted towards
providing NFEs which far from mitigating the problem of child labour actually condones it. The
failure of the NFE programme lies no in its faulty execution. In fact, as has already been
mentioned, its greatest failure is in its assumption that working children cannot be withdrawn
from work, and therefore, have to be given the benefit of education outside working hours. The
fact that there is an unfulfilled demand for formal education even among the poor in the rural
areas has been totally denied in this attempt to expand primary education. There is a singular
lack of faith that people, even poor people, value education and learning and are prepared to
make sacrifices to provide it at least for their children. It is in this context that the issue of
compulsory education becomes important.
Before dealing with the issue of compulsory education, a brief examination of the outcome
which formal education in general is subject to would be in order. The formal education system
has often been described as being ill designed, not responsive to the needs of the working
children, irrelevant in terms of converting children to socially productive elements and a poor
alternative to children of families engaged in traditional crafts. It has been criticized on the
ground of creating a mass of educated illiterates who are neither willing nor able to perform
traditional family occupations and of contributing to the lumpenization of the rural society. It
had also been severely attacked as a major cause for the decline in traditional crafts.
In terms of child labour, however, the formal education system has an advantage unmatched by
another. It can never be accused of supporting child labour. This crucial positive aspect is what
makes the system most worthwhile to build upon. In fact, a closer look at the criticism against
the formal education system shows that is being found fault with precisely because it is inimical
to child labour. Thus, school timings are "ill designed" because they interfere with a child's daily

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or seasonal work and "irrelevant" because they do not teach him to be what his parents were i.e.
agriculture labourers or artisans. But, these are the very strengths of this system when viewed
from eh point of reducing child labour.
Formal education especially in the first 7-10 year of school is meant to be of a general nature,
since children in the age group 5-14 are very rarely in position to pick up skills. This is why,
vocational education and training n traditional crafts are quite irrelevant to this age group. The
argument that it is at this stage that an individual is most receptive to skill development has
nowhere been borne out by facts. On the other hand, time and again it has been proved that these
arguments are mere excuses to perpetuate child labour. The 'nimble finger' theory in respect of
carpet weaving children is a case in point. In fact, master craftsmen themselves often ensure that
their children are educated to least a minimum level before being put through training usually
after the age of 14 years. The fact that a child coming from a craftsman's family picks up the
craft better has more to do with the environment provided at home in terms of motivation and
support than to training per se. In the ultimate analysis, the advantage of having children take up
training in traditional crafts whether in the family environment or through vocational education
does not lie in either the economic benefit of the child/family, the improvement of the skill of the
child or the craft itself. Rather, it ensures availability of cheap and, more importantly, obedient
child labour to the employers.
Formal education, by not treating working and non-working children differently also provides in
the true spirit of Article 32, an opportunity to children to think in terms of an occupation by
choice. That an educated child of a labourer decides not to pursue agricultural labour has to be
seen as an expression of individuality rather than as suppression of a skill by the education
system. No society can be built on the logic that an illiterate child worker is better than a literate
unemployed one. This is not to suggest either that the formal education system is without serious
defects or that the system of training utilized traditionally has no merits at all especially for older
children. However, in condemning the formal education system we should not forget its extreme
relevance in eliminating child labour. If it is felt that they system requires improvements, it
should be done for the education systems as a whole and not just in isolated pockets through
special programmes meant for working children. The large number of intellectuals and policy
makers who have been recommending vocational and craft based education for working children
have never suggested its implementation across the board and to the schools catering to the urban
middle class. As a result, vocational and craft based education whenever adopted for older
children above 14 years has always ended up not only as being treated as a poor child's
educational programme but also being implemented as such. What is required, therefore, is to
draw on the advantages provided by the formal education system in regard to reduction of child
labour and address improvements to the educational system as a whole rather than just that part
which deals with working children.
The issue of compulsory education has always been something of an enigma. At the theoretical
level, very few find fault with the concept that all children should receive education, at least up
to the primary stage or with the fact that children should not work. In fact, the State has
committed itself not only to universalization of primary education but also to the abolition of
child labour through various pronouncements, no least of all the directive principles of State

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Policy, enshrined in the Constitution of India. This has been further strengthened by the fact that
the Convention on the Rights of the Child based on the UN General Assembly resolution
provides for a variety of rights to the child including the right to compulsory and free primary
education. Ins spite of all this, the general attitude of the policy planners has been that the
country cannot afford the distraction of a compulsory education norm. A number of reasons are
given for this, but two major objections are worth noting. The first questions the role of the State
in deterring the manner in which the children are to be educated. The second stresses the non-
implementability or such legislation which would remain only on paper.
As far as the first objection is concerned, in a society where the State has always been playing a
very large role in shaping the social behavior o the citizens through legislative means, it would
be difficult to question the desirability of the state's intervention through legislation in this matter
alone. When we talk about the Indian society today, we talk of a society which has seen
legislation on issues ranging from a minimum age of marriage to protection of civil rights and
abolition of untouchability. For the State to legislate on an issue concerning a child's right to
development, therefore, would not be something out of the ordinary.
The second objection, however, merits a more detailed examination. It has been observed that in
this country a large number of laws governing social issues have been passed which have never
really been implemented. Although the legislation set out to achieve laudable social goals, the
State has not been able to put them into effect. Any number of examples ranging from the SITA
to BLSA are cited to illustrate this. A legislation to provide compulsory education, therefore, is
most likely to meet a similar fate. Further, it is argued, as previous experience with legislation
governing compulsory education has shown, there is a greater likelihood of the act turning into
an instrument of harassment of parents.
These arguments view the issue from one perspective only, viz. that of the State apparatus. A
State apparatus whose understanding of the problem is flawed by its own limitations and to
whom compulsory legislation not only implies a large enforcement machinery helplessly
pursuing reluctant parents to ensure attendance in schools but also creation of, at heavy cost,
infrastructural facilities which at today's levels of demands cannot be utilized. The facto of the
matter, however is tat, notwithstanding the claims of the government that more than 97% of the
children have been provided access to schools, the established infrastructure cannot cater to the
full requirement of even the demand that exists. This is because development of infrastructure
has been a function of budgetary allocation rather than of demand. Once the logic of the harsh
reality of child labour is accepted, low allocation to the primary education sector especially in the
rural areas can always be rationalized as being a response to the low projected demand for
schools. Similarly, it is only when once accepts the absence of demand for education, legislation
are an instrument for forcing unwilling parents to send their children to school. Thus, any
assessment which assumes the reality of child labour, harsh or otherwise is bound to lead not
only to low per capita investment in the sector but also to the view that compulsory education
laws are unimplementable.
Legislation of this nature has for long played the role of compelling the State to take action. The
Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1976 (BLSA), for instance, has proved to be an extremely

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powerful weapon for institutions such as non-government organization to deal with the problem
of child bonded labour, in situation where the State has not been prepared to take action. Thus,
even though existence of a legislation does not automatically imply that is objectives would be
achieved, it creates an enabling provision whereby the State can be compelled to take action. At
the very least such legislation are assertions of the desire of the state to promote an ideal and a
progressive value system. More important, these legislation provide others working in the field
with a legitimacy which otherwise would not exist. The importance of this aspect would be fully
appreciated when on considers the number of occasions the state has been compelled to act
through the use of the BLSA to release bonded children. Thus, while administrators and
academicians may lament on their non-implementability the fact remains that legislations of this
nature have the power to compel the State to act. A legislation to provide for compulsory
education, therefore, would be of immense significance in situations where the State does
respond to the requirements of the people. It has already been seen that the government response
to the problem of illiteracy and child labour has been quite equivocal. On the other hand,
experience in the field has shown that there exists an enormous unrecognized demand for formal
education and that parents are willing to make sacrifices to utilize educational opportunities. As
long as the existing infrastructure can meet the demand, there is no crisis but the fact is that more
often than not the infrastructure is inadequate. Under the present circumstance, there is a
absolutely no way by which the State can be compelled to provide these facilities. A situation
thus exists where the same parents and children who have been written off as victims of the
'harsh reality' of socio-economic circumstances ,are demanding educational facilities and the
Sate is either unable or unwilling to respond. A legislation binding the Sate to provide
compulsory education therefore is absolutely essential.
To sum up, therefore, what has been put forward in the foregoing is a child labour policy which:
1. Defines the target group in the true spirit of Article 32. All non school going children (90
million) are child workers in one form or the other. Agricultural child labour constitutes
the core of the problem. Without tackling this issue, the more emotive issue of child
labour in hazardous occupations cannot be handled.
2. Recognizes the fact that a child going to a formal school is a child withdrawn from
labour. Child labour policies and education policies have to be formulated and be
operated in tandem and not independent of each other.
3. Adopts a more positive attitude towards child labour. Parents do want their children to be
educated and poverty as a limiting factor is highly over-rated. In particular, such a policy
recognizes the fact that even today there are 'poor' parents sending their children to
school instead of work. Motivation and availability of infrastructure rather than poverty
are the key factors. There is no other explanation as to why factors like parents'
educational status make a difference in the literacy level of children.
4. Realizes that the NFE system cannot be a solution to either the problem of illiteracy or
child labour. It is at best a temporary solution which has no relevance unless
simultaneously backed by adequate strengthening of the formal education structure.

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Action plans to eliminate child labour by das sir 8961556195

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