Parliament has passed a law that bans employment of children up to the age of 14 in any commercial enterprise and stipulates that children aged between 14 and 18 cannot be employed in hazardous occupations. The earlier law allowed employment of children
below the age of 14 only in non-hazardous occupations. On the face of it, the ban seems like a law that will remove children from the workforce and put them in school, where
they belong. In reality, the situation could get worse for families below the poverty line and experts believe the ban would not have any effect on the number of children in the work force, but would depress their wages since it is now illegal. Child labour is a complex problem that countries in Europe and the US faced at some time in their
history. Each nation took a different route to eradicate this problem.
And there is enough empirical data to show that bans do not
work. More often than not, they tend to complicate the problem
and force it under ground because the factors that push
children into the workforce remain unchanged.
The child labour ban seems to be based on the flawed belief
that parents of poor children value education less than their
richer counterparts. This is far from the truth. Poor parents
love their children as much as anyone else, but are compelled
to make their children work because they live at the subsistence
level where every extra rupee
earned could make the difference
between having a meal or going
hungry. It is only when poor parents
overcome the daily grind and
move above the subsistence level
that they send their children to
school. So unless more money is
put in their hands to overcome the
loss of income from their children, this law could make them
more vulnerable.
In the decade between 2001 and 2011, the number of child labourers
in the country dropped from 12.6 million to 4.5 million.
This happened when no ban on child labour was in place. This
was also the decade when the country started to reap benefits
from liberalization that started in the early 1990s. The lesson
to be learnt is clear: economic growth automatically pulls
children out of the workforce. Goa itself is a shining example
where the labour class is paid well enough to afford an English
education for their children in kindergarten schools. And with
free primary education also available in English, first-time
learners are moving up the social and economic ladder.
So while the effort to put children back in school is laudable,
a law to ban child labour without putting extra money in the
hands of vulnerable families, is half-an-effort.
