1. What is Child Labour?

Article 24 of Indian Constitution has defined child as person up to 14 years while employing the children in hazardous occupations. The Child labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act (CLPRA) 1986 has defined child as person up to 14 years for both hazardous and non-hazardous activities

One of the objectives of the Child Labour ( Prohibition & Regulation ) Act, 1986 was to obtain uniformity in the definition of the child in the related laws because the legislative definition of child varies in different laws aiming at protecting children from hazardous and exploitative employments.

2. Main reasons for employing children,

• The practice of teaching children the traditional family-trade;
• The economic condition of the children’s families;
• Non-implementation of compulsory education up to 14 years of age ;
• Unattractive methods of imparting education;
• Illiteracy among the parents;
• Ignorance of the consequences of child labour;
• Adult unemployment;
• Under payment of wages;
• Ineffective implementation of child labour laws;
• Lack of political will;

3. Why do parents send their children to work

• The parents of the working children assume that there will be sufficient income to meet the basic essential needs of their family, if the children work. Hence, they send their children to work.
• The parents think that their children will become very skillful when they grow up if they begin to work at an early age.
• The parents do not see any advantage in spending money on their children’s education. They get discouraged when they find educated persons remaining unemployed. Lack of resources to invest on education coupled with prevalence of educated unemployment, the parents have no inclination to send their children to schools.
• Unemployment, uncertainty of employment and seasonal employment of parents and under payment of wages. These reasons force the parents to send their children to work to supplement the family income.
• Inability of parents to think of long term benefits of education. They stake their children’s future for the sake of insignificant immediate need.

4. Why do employers prefer to employ children

• The children can be employed at lower wages and help in bringing down the cost of production.
• Children compared to adults can be controlled and supervised and be made to work for long hours to complete the work speedily within the minimum time.
• Children have the capacity to learn and pick up the work quickly, employers take advantage of this.
• The children can be made to perform monotonous work.
• Children can be hired and thrown out of work as and when the employers wish.
• Children are vulnerable to exploitation and are dependant. They have no bargaining strength. They cannot form their own association and union.
• Employers justify that by providing work to the child they are saving the child labour family from starvation.
• Owing to immaturity, children perform even the most dangerous job which adult laboures do not readily undertake

5. What are the forms of child labour

According to the Census Report the Child Labour can be broadly classified into Full Time child labourers, Marginal Child Labourers and Nowhere children. However, the category of nowhere children is no more the part of Census data.

Full time child labourers are those children whose main activity is economic and children who have spent more than half of the year ( 183 days or more ) in economic activity.Marginal Child Labour are children who are engaged in economic activities , but whose main activity is not economic and children who have been engaged in economic activities for less than half (183 days ) a year.

Nowhere children are those children who are neither at school nor engaged in economic activity like fulltime or marginal workers. They are either doing nothing or performing household work not classified as economic activity or on the fringe and have not been recorded in either of the above economically active categories can be called child labour.