Child labour in India

Causes of child labour :-

• Poverty leads to child labour. Poor families with large numbers make their children work to keep the income steady.
• Children are cheap source of labor compared to adults. Therefore to cut the labour costs, children are being hired as workers.

Effects of Child labour :-

• Children are made to work in industries with hazardous chemicals, machines under harsh weather condition, result in in physical casualties and many severe diseases.
• Numbers of harassment and child abuse cases have drastically increased in last few years most of them are sexual abuse cases occur with the girls and boys aged below 15.
• Due to lack of education and proper guidance they get influenced by criminals and take shortcut to become rich and end up committing crimes at a tender age. The rates of juvenile crime cases are increasing day by day in India.

Present situation of child labour in India :-

According to International Labour Organization’s World Report on Child Labour 2015 and recent analysis of the Census 2011 by CRY.

• One in every 11 children in India is working.
• More than half of the 5 million working children in India are concentrated in five states—Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
• Adolescents between 15 and 17 years of age doing hazardous work form 62.8% of the overall child labour population.

Steps taken by Indian Government :-

• Indian government implemented innovative schemes like ‘midday meals‘ to encourage children to attend school instead of working.
• Indian government to overcome the child labour made factory act, Mines act, child labor act etc. to safeguard the future of the children.
• Many NGO’s are working in this field to support the child education and stop child labour ,spreading awareness with the help of government and media ,reaching to every house to minimize child labour.
• In 2016, Indian government introduced its first ever comprehensive human trafficking law and Helpline numbers to report child labour.

What still needs to be done :-

• As a responsible citizen we can report child labour and make sure that our society does not use child labour.
• The government should reduce unemployment, so elders can work and their children can study.

Best practices worldwide :-

• The IPEC project “Tackling child labour through education” (TACKLE) was launched in 2008 by ‘European Commission’ and ‘International Labour Organization’, The objective of the TACKLE project was to contribute to the withdrawal of children engaged in child labour and to prevent further entry of children into employment .
• Country level engagement and assistance to reduce child labour (CLEAR) Project by ILO focused on providing critically needed and technical guidance support in development and implementation of national action plans, and improved implementation of policies and social programs with an impact on child labour.

Conclusion:-

Childhood is the most important phase for the development of physical and emotional abilities. The problem of child labour is stealing childhood from many children. Mere making laws to prevent it doesn’t solve the problem. Implementation of the laws on a war footing is needed.

Afterwords :- What is your opinion on this topic? Express your thoughts in the comment section below.

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