India

World Day Against Child Labor Begs Increased Attention in India

Publication Date

World Day Against Child Labor Begs Increased Attention in India

Publication Date

BANGALORE, INDIA – At 11:30 a.m., children are making loud and happy noises as they run around the playground at Bangalore Oniyavara Seva Coota Mane, a shelter for boys in Bangalore, a city in southern India.

It’s a special day at the shelter: the 10th anniversary of its child helpline. The children and staff celebrate with cake.

Boys 15 and younger live in the shelter and also receive an informal education here. One of these boys is Deepu, who is from Gauribidanur, a town in Karnataka state.

When addressed in Hindi or English, Deepu, who speaks Telugu, just stares. His friend Suleman, another resident of the shelter, is happy to act as a translator.

The boys, neither of whom has a last name, often pause and scratch their heads before responding, as if figuring out how to formulate their experiences into words.

Deepu says the shelter is his first time attending school. Before, he had to work in order to help support his family.

“We are poor, so I used to assist my father in making and selling chips,” Deepu says with a shy smile.

He says he was sent to the shelter while he was working one day.

“Once while selling chips in train, I fell asleep,” he says. “When I woke up, I realized it was Bangalore station. A lady ticket checker caught me without ticket and questioned me and informed some people, and that is how I came here.”

Many children from impoverished backgrounds become child laborers in India. The government and nongovernmental organizations are working together to shelter and educate vulnerable children. As yesterday marked World Day Against Child Labor, children’s rights advocates say more can be done. But they cite various challenges. Still, nongovernmental organizations and the government say they are doing what they can to eradicate child labor.

India has the highest number of child laborers in the world, according to the government’s current five-year plan. The number of child laborers in India increased from 11.28 million in 1991 to 12.59 million in 2001.

Like Deepu, other children had also never been to school or had dropped out. Kavita, a staff member at the shelter, says that all the kids there came from impoverished backgrounds. They are either orphans, or their parents couldn’t support them.

As a result, many children were also child laborers, says the Rev. George Kollashany, the founder of Bangalore Oniyavara Seva Coota. As he talks, many boys pass by his office, greeting him with wide smiles.

“Child labor is a complex problem, and its root cause is poverty,” he says. “The law is weak, as it states that the child can work in nonhazardous area.”

He says that even if a case is filed, the process is not easy.

“If a case is booked against the employers, the procedure is lengthy,” he says, disappointed. 

There are no separate courts for cases regarding children, so they are filed along with all other cases in the court, Kollashany says. The child has to stay in the government shelter during this time, which he says can sometimes be worse than the environments where the children were working.

Some employers insist they are helping the children.

“Sometimes, the employers say that they have done a favor [for] the children by providing them food and shelter, as the poor children had none,” he says.

Sometimes, children also resist leaving these jobs.

“Many times, we face resistance during rescue,” he says. “The child often supports the employers and says that he is happy as he gets food and shelter.”

Kollashany says the government should abolish the 1986 Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act because it is not child-friendly and has never been revised.

The government and nongovernmental organizations are working together to place children without suitable living environments in shelters.

“There is a 24-hours child helpline – 1098 – and it is toll-free,” says Sucheta Monteiro, counselor at the shelter for boys. “We receive call[s] from all over Karnataka state, and we respond to every call. We reach the spot of incidence within one hour. But if that place is not within an hour reach, then we refer the case to other NGOs in the nearby areas.”

As she takes a break from the hectic day celebrating the helpline’s anniversary at the shelter, she says that cases vary.

“We receive call[s] of missing children, abandon[ed] babies and child labor,” she says. “After the child is rescued, they are brought to the shelter.”

She says that governmental Child Welfare Committees decide where to place the children.

“The girl and boy child are placed in different shelters,” she says.

Bangalore Oniyavara Seva Coota Navajeevan is a shelter in Bangalore for girls, with 35 girls currently living there. Akshata Gowda, 23, a counselor at the shelter, is at the Child Welfare Committee office in Bangalore with six girls. The committee is deciding which schools and hostels to place them in.

“Our shelter is for girls in the age group of 6 to 14 years,” she says. “We keep the girls in our center for one year. During this time, they are given basic education, as most of them [are] illiterate, along with awareness, hygiene and medical treatment.”

In addition to these duties, Kollashany says that the organization running the shelters recently started a foster parent program for the children. Although he is optimistic about the work the staff is doing, his tone changes.

“A lot more can be done, but can’t be done,” he says. “Because if child labor is completely eradicated, then where to place the children? Do we have school? And how to support their families? On one side, the child works, and on other side, there is no mechanism in place.”

Because children don’t have a voice as minors, Kollashany says that adults must do more to advocate for them.

“Lots of awareness must be created,” he says. “There should be strict and immediate punishment for the employer, speedy judicial procedure for the child, active involvement of the Department of Labour, monitoring mechanism to identify child labor, family support for the child, special schools for them, as most of them are totally illiterate or differently able.”

Kollashany says that it’s a chain. The children of child laborers tend to become laborers as well. He says this chain needs to be cut, which relies on education.

But education is one of the challenges that the shelters face.

“Sometimes, we have children of around 10 years old who are completely illiterate,” Monteiro says, “and we cannot place them in lower class [with] other younger kids, as they will make fun of them. So these children are offered bridge course before they can be enrolled in normal schools.”

Another challenge is funding. Kollashany says that support is inconsistent.

“Sometimes, the help from corporate is tailor-cut,” he says, adding that some companies only want to fund what they want instead of what the shelter needs. “They would have budget of helping only 10 children, where we have 64 children. They would insist on medical camp when we already had medical camp recently.”

But he also voices gratitude for the many companies that do provide consistent support.

“However, genuine help has come from many companies,” he says, mentioning various Internet technology companies as examples. “Like Capgemini has taken the responsibility of teaching 50 children for a longer duration. Microsoft has also taken up few events.”

Monteiro says that uncooperative parents are another challenge.

“Sometimes, the children will not give correct information purposely,” she says. “Sometimes, they do not speak and understand the same language, and sometimes, they pretend to be deaf and dumb.”

Gowda says the shelter for girls faces similar obstacles.

“This girl was difficult to handle as she suffered from drug abuse,” she says, pointing to one girl. “She would get violent, and it would be difficult to control her.”

Other times, parents of the girls come to the center and fight with the staff because they want to take their children back. Gowda says some parents want to make the child work or beg in order to earn money for them.

“But some parents are happy to see their children transformed positively at the center,” she says, smiling.

Other nongovernmental organizations are also involved in the fight against child labor.

Sam A. Chelladurai has been working with nongovernmental organizations for more than 25 years. He currently serves as the secretary of Anekal Rehabilitation Education and Development Centre, a charitable society that works with the poor in southern India.

He says that poverty sets off a chain of events that gets children into trouble.

“Children from smaller cities are sold to agent, and they are made to work or beg morning to evening,” he says. “In the evening, when the begging children return without much money, then they are not given any food. This leads them to steal in future.”

Instead of selling their children to earn a profit, other parents make their children work to add to the family’s income.

He says the organization has rescued various children, from a girl recently working in power looms in southern Bangalore to tsunami victims in 2004.

“I had visited Tamil Nadu after the tsunami, and I saw more hundreds of child[ren] had become either orphan or were left with very old grandparents,” he says. “I met a 12-year-old girl who had lost her parents and was working as child labor[er] to provide for herself and her two younger sibling[s] of age[s] 7 and 8.”

Chelladurai says that the organization aims to rescue children as well as whole families trapped in slave labor.

“We have rescued around 2,500 bonded labor families across India,” he says.

Still, he says that eliminating child labor requires a group effort.

“Only NGOs can’t stop child labor,” he says. “We need police, law and department of anti-[child] labor to work together.”

J.T. Jinkalappa, joint labor commissioner of Karnataka, says that the government has 19 departments involved in combating this issue. The number of child laborers in the state is decreasing every year, he says.

"Karnataka was the first state to implement the child labor policy, which was introduced in 2001," he says. "The vision of Karnataka state is to declare itself a child-labor-free state." 

He adds that apart from rescuing child laborers, the government also educates them and provides their families with economic empowerment opportunities.

The government’s 11th Plan, which spanned from 2007 to 2012, launched an Integrated Child Protection Scheme, including creating a network of services at community level and providing professional child protection services at all levels.

But the resolution of child labor requires efforts by all sections of society because it’s a socio-economic problem linked to poverty and illiteracy, according to the Ministry of Labour and Employment website.