The Hindu Business Line : Wasting nimble fingers

At a recent meeting on child labour in New Delhi, one of the participants said: “Parents, society and the State are the three main agencies that need to take care of children. If children are not taken care of by parents, society should do so; if society does not then the State should step in. But the presence of child labour is in fact a failure of all the three agencies, and sensitising them and making them responsible forms the crux of the solution to ending this malady.”

This is a good description of the terrain on which child labour flourishes today in India, the only problem being that all three aspects have been put on the same plane when in fact that should not be the case. Certainly, child labour is unwanted not only because it takes away from the life of a child everything that should be associated with a happy childhood. Child labour is unwanted because if stunts the future growth of the nation. This is because the future of Indian nationhood will to a large measure be determined by the way children are being brought up today.

This is common sense and can easily be cited as the prime reason why parents, the State and society should eradicate the scourge of child labour. But there is a complication, namely, that in a very large number of cases child labour plays an important economic role in shaping the economic status of a rural family, a factor which becomes difficult to handle in a cavalier fashion. Difficult because doing away with child labour in such circumstances would probably mean affecting adversely the economics of a family, an improvement in which should ordinarily be the target of State policy.

Tackling child labour

To say this is not to condone the practice of child labour in any way but merely to suggest that tackling it — especially in India which has a long tradition of rural families using nimble fingers to enhance their income — is a complicated problem, ultimately involving a much larger social and economic canvas than just working children.

One must, of course, assume that the far-reaching implications of any effort to fight child labour have been considered by those in the forefront of the campaign. The point being sought to be made here is that, given the very large canvas that ought to be considered in the course of the campaign, it is more than likely that progress in concrete terms will be distressingly slow, at times leading to abject exasperation with the whole project.

And yet, given the importance of the campaign from the point of view of India’s children qua children, and the unfortunate results the unrestricted practice of child labour can have on the future quality of the nation’s citizens, there can be no two views on the urgent need to do something to reduce the incidence of child labour in rural areas (both on the farms and in workshops).

Since nearly every child sent out to work enjoys the support of its parents — the support extended willingly or unwillingly — it is clear that, to start with, it is the minds of the elders that need to be worked upon as a first major salvo against the practice of child labour.

Radio and TV are two channels that could be used extensively in this initial campaign, to be backed up strongly by the presence of an army of volunteers going into the rural areas in person to impress on the minds of toiling mothers and fathers that their children would be far better off (and they themselves too as an extension) if the kids spent their formative years under a school shed instead of in the fields or in the workshops of carpet-weavers and fireworks-makers.

The hurdles ahead

This is, of course, easier said than done because, first, it goes against age-old practice in the rural areas of our country; second, it will hurt the family’s income; and, third, where are the school sheds to which the children are being asked to relocate?

The first is perhaps the easiest hurdle to cross because, even in the remotest parts of the country, there is a limit to which old-fashioned, regressive ideas can hold their own when confronted with the voice of reason and “tomorrow”, a phenomenon that is fast gaining ground thanks to the proliferation of audio-visual communication modes. But, then, nothing will be accomplished unless the second and the third obstacles are crossed, both of which require massive and effective contribution by society and the State in the form of organisation and resources.

Extending assistance

Without going into the obfuscating world of figures, the point can reliably be made that State assistance for rural economic activity, which alone can attempt to make up for the loss of income occasioned by the withdrawal of children from work, is currently woefully inadequate given the extent of the task in hand.

The reasons have been debated for years; the problem is to get cracking and extend the assistance meaningfully so that parents can find it easier to recall their kids from the field and factory-sheds.

To repeat a cliché once again, this is easier said than done which, for our argument here, makes the job of getting children out of earning-vocations difficult. Even if the withdrawal was affected, how would the children brought back home spend their time? Clearly, the withdrawal does not make sense unless the move is backed by a concomitant effort to set up primary schools in the interior, which could impart very basic education and give these young people a fair chance to become good citizens of the nation in the years to come.

Misplaced optimism

None of these ideas is new. Work has also begun in extending primary education facilities to villages and rural small-towns in regions where child labour has reached endemic proportions. Perhaps, more and more village-parents are coming to realise that their kids deserve a better life than what has been their lot, that is, they probably feel that a break with tradition is needed because “times have changed”.

If these changes have occurred, they are good signs. But progress has been excruciatingly slow, so much so that one wonders whether the dent that has been made is big enough to make the entire campaign sustainable in future. Hope is always preferable to a lack of it, but without more energetic intervention by the authorities concerned one is left with misplaced optimism, which is positively dangerous because it masks the true state of affairs and ultimately leads to a wastage of human energy and material resources.

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