How India Fails Its Future
While the West looks with sympathetic disdain at India for their overflowing and uncontrollable population, Indian business leaders find that this large population—mainly its impoverished young denizens—is the perfect solution to avoid rising labor costs. Despite legislation from international bodies being ratified by India, federal government leaders fail to apply these ideas in their municipal governments, and thereby fail the children of their country.
To provide global child labor regulation, the ruling body is the International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations. The ILO emphasizes that the appropriate age for a child to enter employment is when sufficient education is completed. This is also echoed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a treaty prohibiting the reach of child labor in protection of children’s right to youth. Article 32 of the UNCRC calls for the prohibition of any work by children that interferes with their education. Article 28 makes education a right for children and calls on member governments to mandate free primary school.[1] All aforementioned articles and conventions have been ratified by India.
However, despite this extensive international legislation existing on child labor, it is the municipal governments that fail to enforce such legislation. India even has its own legislation in place to shield children from laborious work. In 2020, the Indian government allocated funds for and proposed legislation to refute the reaches of child labor, such as codes stating the federal government has ultimate authority on employing children near dangerous machines, and a bill targeting child trafficking for labor. However, while adequate legislation has been proposed to,in
theory, eliminate child labor from India, local governments fail to enforce these laws.[2]
Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian anti-child-labor activist, explains how Indian child labor both stems from and feeds corrupt governments. Child labor employers factor a “substantial wage component” into their estimated production cost, but these wages do not go to their young workforce.[3] This money is used to pay off government officials to silence them for ongoing child labor. In turn, to gain even more money, these officials enact laws that are lax on child labor, or do not enforce the laws that exist, a cycle Satyarthi calls “chronic corruption.”[4] This can even be seen at the federal level, as the U. S. Department of Labor found that the Indian Parliament charges those found employing children with only minor fines under child labor, and not fraud or tax evasion despite their actions technically qualifying for such crimes. No illegal (by Indian legislation) shelter homes were shut down and government officials complicit in child labor were not prosecuted at all.
Additionally, India’s minimum age for work is 14, whereas the final age of compulsory education is 15, which may entice children to leave school to work before they complete their education, despite the harsh environment of garment production. The three types of education that are necessary for a child to develop consciously are mental education, bodily education, and technological education. Removing education from an adolescent keeps them confined in the working class, whereas comprehensive higher education would help the children of the working class advance from the confines of poverty and dangerous working environments.[5] Furthermore, the Physicians of Human Rights group observed child laborers in India, and saw that they earned merely 23 rupees for their work in a day, or $0.31 USD. The textile industry is the most demanding of child labor, and oftentimes the most dangerous due to machine operating,
but it still draws children away from education with the promise of bringing home earned wages.[6]
Though the present seems bleak for child labor, every day, progress is being made towards government recognition and aid towards resolving the matter of child labor. Lewis and Clark University student Modhurima Dasgupta notes the rise of public interest litigation that has caused the Indian Supreme Court to be more amenable to ruling against employers of child labor.[7] Their recent rulings have served as precedent that hazardous work for children 14 and under should be prohibited, and they have worked to encourage education as an alternative to dangerous labor. While there is much progress to be made for India to dismantle the cycle of chronic corruption and protect the next generation of young impoverished Indians from performing inhumane tasks for children, this litigation serves as an example of how the people can use the legal system to keep itself up with the times and ultimately provides hope that change is coming soon.
References
[1] Abebe, Tatek, et al. “Dominant Discourses, Debates and Silences on Child Labour in Africa and Asia.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4, May 2011, pp. 765–86. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2011.567007.
[2] “Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor - India: U.S. Department of Labor.” United States Department of Labor,
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/india
[3] Satyarthi, Kailash. “Capital Corruption: Child Labour Fuelling Black Money.” Mint, 9 Sept. 2011,
https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/ng3OC3ic3O4yjhVruosTEK/Capital-Corruption-Chil d-Labour-fuelling-Black-Money.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] Marx, Karl. “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council the Different Questions.” The International Workingmen's Association, Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1866/08/instructions.htm#04.
[6] “Child Labour in India: A Health and Human Rights Perspective.” Lancet, vol. 362, Dec. 2003, pp. 32–33. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(03)15067-2.
[7] Dasgupta, Modhurima. “Public Interest Litigation for Labour: How the Indian Supreme Court Protects the Rights of India’s Most Disadvantaged Workers.” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 16, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 159–70. EBSCOhost, doi.org/10.1080/09584930701733498.