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.
