Child Labour
By Faisal Magray
According to the ILO, there are around 12.9 million Indian children engaged in work between the ages of 7 to 17 years old. When children are employed or doing unpaid work, they are less likely to attend school or attend only intermittingly, trapping them in the cycle of poverty. Millions of Indian girls and boys are going to work every day in quarries and factories, or collecting garbage on the street.
Many child labourers in India are working for starvation wages in textile factories, helping with the processing of carpets, or doing back breaking work in brick making factories and quarries. Other child labourers work selling cigarettes, called "Bidis", on the street for the tobacco industry. Children are also used for cheap labour in industries such as steel extraction, gem polishing and carpet manufacturing. A staggering number of girls are victims of child trafficking in India, whether through traditional bondage or through organized crime. The commercial sexual exploitation of children is among the worst forms of child labour and in India there are around 1.2 million children involved in prostitution.
The Indian Government enacted a law against child labour in 1993 prohibiting dangerous work or activities that could harm the mental, spiritual, moral or social development of girls and boys under the age of 18. However, child labour continues for a number of reasons, for example people exploit loopholes in the law which allows the employment of children if the work is part of a family business. Thus, having children sell cigarettes on the street could be considered legal if it is part of a family business. In addition, numerous business leaders, such as mine owners, hold political office and have considerable influence. Companies may not be interested in banishing the cheap labour from within their business operations.
In 2006 and again in 2016, the laws against child labour were tightened to ensure that children under the age of 14 were prohibited from working as domestic help or service staff in restaurants and hotels.
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