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MANGALORE, April 2

WHILE disputes in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) may result in banning the export of Indian beedis because thousands of children earn a livelihood rolling beedis, it is globalisation itself that devastates the economic fabric of societies and breeds the kind of unemployment that results in the deprivation of basic rights to millions of children, according to the Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL), a Mysore-based organisation involving women's groups, trade unions, academic institutions, media agencies and other concerned groups.

According to CACL, which organised its third national convention of child labourers in Mysore recently to primarily focus attention on the plight of working girls, the advent of globalisation has `bypassed' all the basic tenets of the welfare state and the Government's new economic policy has prompted a drastic reduction in public expenditure in areas such as education, health, sanitation, housing and food security.

This phenomenon, according to CACL, has caused further unemployment in the country resulting in extreme poverty of which children are the direct victims. So while on the one hand MNCs claim they do not employ children, they end up creating an economic situation in which children are forced to go to work.

In the globalised era, says CACL, industrial units are being closed down and cottage industries are on the verge of extinction, as a result of which millions of workers have become unemployed. The children of these workers, says CACL, have joined the labour force and have got caught in the `web of economic and sexual exploitation' of a `greedy market economy'.

CACL, quoting a survey, points out that 10-20 per cent of working children are engaged in domestic work and 78-80 per cent of these are girls. This, says CACL, would put the number of working girls below the age of 14 at 19 million. While in rural areas most of the children work in the agricultural sector, the overall figure, however, does not taken into account the `invisible workforce' of children working as domestic help.

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