The Project provides technical assistance to support the MOLE in establishing its Convergence-based Model. This will be a new project and not a second phase to the joint GOI-USDOL-ILO INDUS Project but may build on the foundation created by this and other innovative child labour projects, as well as the specific needs of the five states identified by MOLE to pilot the model. Four of the states are among the seven identified by the UN system in India as states where the challenges to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the greatest, and where deprivation is clearly visible. These are Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa.

Since child labour is a complex problem, mainstreaming it in policy documents and programmes is critical, but not sufficient. To be able to replicate effective approaches on a sufficiently large scale to address the child labour problem in India and maintain them over time has required a significant shift in how child labour efforts are organized. Convergence isthe governing strategy in this project because there has been a move towards the integration or mainstreaming of child labour concerns in the programmes and budgets of other concerned agencies.

The convergence approach will be operating with ILO technical cooperation at three levels: District, State, and national. At District level, the focus is on refining methods of identifying, removing, and educating children working in hazardous child labour, and preventing children at risk from being recruited. The target is the child labourer but within the context of her/his family and community. At State level, the focus is on strengthening the enabling environment including the capacities of governmental agencies and other institutions and organizations such as trade unions that operate at that level, as well as the linkages between them. At national level, the focus is on replication and policy so that the experiences generated at District and State level can be extended beyond the five target states. This will be done through building the knowledge base and facilitating mainstreaming of child labour issues in national development plans, as well as the DWCP and UNDAF efforts.

The convergence model, as conceived in this project, has two main principles:

• Coordination amongst governmental agencies and amongst other partners, such that their policies, goals, action and operations are coherent with respect to children involved in or at-risk of hazardous child labour and their families and deployed so as to make maximum use of the comparative advantage of each;

• Concentration (focusing) of the major government initiatives and programmes relevant to child labour – poverty alleviation, education/training, enforcement, and social protection -- on child labour-affected families and children such that all major factors that generate and sustain the demand and/or supply of child labour are addressed.

In terms of actual project operations, convergence will be achieved in the following ways:

• Linkages among district, State, and national levels. Not simply a matter of keeping various levels of authority informed, the linkages between each level might be described as a system of feedback loops which are going to be essential for the refinement and subsequent replication of the convergence model.

• Linkages among operations at the same level. Implementing agencies, partners, and local authorities at, say, the District level can learn from each other while the project is underway. Effective convergence will also require institutional structures that include all stakeholders. The project encourages, adapting or adding on to existing structures rather than establishing new ones. Joint decisions are needed in terms of: the selection of geographical areas, implementing partners, delivery systems. Joint work will facilitate prompt identification of children at risk, the efficient sequencing of (1) registration (2) service delivery (3) follow-up, and problem-solving.

• Coordination structures among workers’ and employers’ groups and associations. The participation of the social partners (employers’ and workers’ organizations) in this process will require specific and carefully-planned support from the project. The basic strategy is two-fold: on the one hand, it will assist the workers and employers to create unified structures to deal with child labour, based on the models created in Andhra Pradesh. On the other hand, the workers’ and employers’ organizations, which in India are no longer confined to merely awareness-raising activities, will play their specific roles in the direct implementation in the project districts, in particular in dealing with the older children. With much of child labour in the informal sector, also feeding into supply chains, there are opportunities emerging to upgrade both products and production techniques. The associations representing employers, in particular, will have a strong and positive role to fulfil vis-à-vis their members—both those in the formal as well as the informal establishments.