Child labour continues to pose a challenge in India, though the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, has been in place for decades. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and UNICEF’s report titled “Child Labour: Global Estimates 2020, Trends and the Road Forward”, the efforts to end child labour hit the wall as the number rose to 160 million worldwide (an increase of 8.4 million children) in just four years after recording a fall of 94 million during the 2000-2016 period. As per Census 2011, there were more than 10 million children working as ‘main worker’ or ‘marginal worker’ in India, showing a decrease of 2.6 million during the previous decade (between 2001 and 2011). The decrease in the incidence of child labour in the country is encouraging, but eradicating it will take time and requires concerted effort from all quarters, as it manifests in various forms and disguises, many of which remain unaccounted for. For instance, most child labour in Nagaland comes in the form of domestic help. Children working at construction sites, small hotels and roadside dhabas are a common sight, but people rarely talk about them. The issue of children working as domestic help, which is the most common form of child labour in the state, becomes a topic of discussion only when incidents of physical abuse come to public light. Even such incidents usually don’t go beyond condemnations from civil society organisations and things fall back to square one in a few days. The reason being, in Nagaland, it is rampant with many officers, influential people and well-to-do families exploiting children and robbing their childhood in the guise of providing them quality education, knowingly at that. They say that it is difficult to wake up people pretending to be asleep, so a knock in the head is required to curb this issue. It’s time to wake from the slumbers and do away with this menace in our society.
To effectively tackle the problem of child labour in India, it is pertinent to address factors like poverty, deprivation of quality education, lack of awareness, etc., that push children from poor families to work in order to help their families. Considering the far-reaching impact of child labour on young people, including the undermining of human rights, the government of India should frame a stringent law with stricter penalties for offenders. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, prohibits the engagement of children (below 14 years) in all occupations and adolescents (14 to 18 years) in hazardous occupations. It was a welcome move but not without loopholes, like only a few occupations being listed in the “hazardous” category and other rooms for exploitation of children in disguise, be it in the name of family enterprises, as domestic help or manipulation by government authorities. This needs to be fixed. Comprehensive government policies and active community participation are required to ensure the well-being of children and sustainable development of the country.
