Nobel Peace Prize laureate : Inside The world of Kailash Satyarthi

Photo: Reuters

Prabhat Singh |  Dipti Jain  live Mint 
13 Oct 2014
Here’s a look at 10 charts which show the herculean nature of the task the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has taken upon himself

The chhotus and munnis are ubiquitous in India, across metros and small towns, sweeping floors, fetching tea, crawling under cars, rolling bidis and making crackers, even lifting bricks at building sites. They are a shame to a society which has failed miserably at protecting their childhood while boasting of various rights and laws to prevent exploitation of children. It is to fill this breach that the likes of Kailash Satyarthi have stepped forward. Here’s a look at 10 charts which show the herculean nature of the task the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has taken upon himself.

A large number of working children

Two percent of Indian children between ages 5 and 14 are child labourers. That is 4.3 million working children, according to Census 2011. Moreover, the Census looks at only full-time workers. The United Nation’s State of World Children report has a more stringent criteria—5-11-year-olds who did at least one hour of economic activity or at least 28 hours of household chores in a week; more for 12-14-year-olds. By that definition, one in every eight Indian child is in work.

Still, we are better off than a decade ago

Only two out of every 100 children work now, compared to five at the beginning of this century. There may be no causal link here, but it is worth pointing out that the fall in child labour rates has taken place in a decade when school attendance rates shot up. Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh figure in the list of states with the worst child protection records. However, smaller states such as Manipur and Sikkim have notched up remarkable records in reducing child labour, with reductions of over 10 percentage points each.

The social background of working children

Expectedly, poor and uneducated families have the highest percentage of child labourers. Poverty often compels parents to take their children out of education and put them in professions where they might be exposed to great harm, for the sake of an often-unsustainable income. The iron grip of caste hierarchies reveals itself even in the data on child labour, with Scheduled Caste and SC and Scheduled Tribe families accounting for a considerably higher proportion of child labourers.

The reasons for hiring children

The International Labour Organization notes that there have been few studies on the demand-side pull of child labour, i.e., the role played by employers in the prevalence of child labour. An old survey from 1999 gives us a picture though, as shown in Chart 4A. All but the last parameter points to profit reasons, which means firms, besides the poverty of families, do indeed help perpetuate the vicious cycle of child labour. This is especially true of industries which require low skill labour, which means the ill-trained and relatively low productive children are highly sought after by unscrupulous employers. Across most industries that employ a considerable proportion of children, the child wages are about half of adult wages.

Where do these children work?

Agriculture is the largest employer of children, just as in the case of adult Indians. That is not surprising. One, this sector requires low-skill labour which means children can be made to work for comparatively lower wages without great loss of productivity. Second, almost the entire sector falls under the informal category, which means anti-child labour laws are easy to dodge.

While the proportion of children employed in other sectors is relatively low, they are often dangerous. According to Census 2001, one out of every 10 child worker is employed by the so-called hazardous industries. Of these, the tobacco industry employed the highest number of children—over 250,000.

Rehabilitation efforts are minimal

India has several laws for the protection of children. It also has schemes such as the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) for rescue and rehabilitation of children. While it is a step in the right direction, the track record is not exemplary. As Chart 6A shows, the NCLP has rehabilitated 895,000 children since 1988. Over the same period, Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andalon alone has rescued 83,000 children.

Secondly, enforcement of laws in this space is abysmal. Inspections against possible offenders of the Child Labour Act have dropped by three-fourths in the four years to 2011. The good news is that the rate of conviction of offenders has climbed sharply, from five out of 100 prosecutions in 2007 to 17 out of 100 in 2011.

Clearly, India has still a long way to go before it can claim to be a child-friendly country.