While addressing a two-day national conference on labour last month at Bhubaneswar, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik unpacked a surprise declaration that the State has vowed to mitigate child labour system by 2025. He explained how Odisha has formulated the “State Action Plan for Elimination of Child labour” to stop perpetuation of the social evil and promised favorable sectoral allocation in the State budget.
He further added that the action plan focuses on rescue, rehabilitation, education and skill development of the rescued minors and action against the offending employers. The vision of a child labour free Odisha in nine years from now is obviously a praiseworthy mission of the State Government. It shall be possible when suitable civic mobilisation and inter-sectoral convergence is achieved at the district levels as each district has a unique portfolio of child employment arising out specific socioeconomic realities.
To regulate child labour in India, the Union Government had enacted the Child labour Prohibition and Regulation Act in the year 1986. The Act has been amended by Parliament this year. The Act has been renamed as the Child and Adolescent labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act.
The Act defines “child” as a person who has not completed his fourteenth year of age or such age as may be specified in the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, whichever is more. Therefore, persons below 14 years of age are considered as children in India and they are protected from becoming child labourers.
As per the Act, no child shall be employed or permitted to work in any occupation or process except when he or she helps his/her ‘family” or “family enterprise”, which is other than any “hazardous occupations or processes” prescribed in the Act, after his “school hours” or” during vacations”. The amended Act permits a child to work as an artist in an audio-visual entertainment industry, including advertisement, films, television serials or any such other entertainment or sports activities except the circus, subject to such conditions and safety measures, as may be prescribed. As education has become a fundamental right of the child, the Act permits work in family enterprise only when such work does not affect the school education of the child. There is also provision in the Act for rescue and rehabilitation of the child labour.
There has been no study on the prevalence of child labour in India after the Child labour Act was amended. As per 2001 Census, India had 126,66,377 child laboureres. This figure dropped to 43,53,247 as per 2011 Census, a noticeable decline of nearly 82 lakh in spite of increase in child population over 10 years. The decline offered a hope for the abolition of the ugly system. 2011 Census also showed that there are five States which are India’s biggest child labour employers such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharastra, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh among which UP scored the highest.
The number of working children in Odisha, identified through the first of its kind survey conducted by State labour Department in pursuance of the directions of the Supreme Court in MC Mehta vs State of Tamil Nadu case on 10.12.96, was 2,15,222. The study showed that Nabaragnpur district had highest number of child labourers, followed by Mayurbhanj and Koraput. Amongst the coastal districts, Baleswar topped the list. As per 2011 Census, the number of child laboueres in Odisha was 92,087.
It has been found that 75 per cent of child labourers are found in agriculture and allied sector, followed by 15 per cent in manufacturing sector. The rest are distributed in other sectors like beedi rolling, hotels and dhabas, domestic help, collection of charcoal and coal, motor garage mechanic, worker in brick kilns, workers in stone quarries and stone crushing units, weaving and dying, rag picking, transport operations, loading and unloading in mining areas, building and construction operations and fishery etc.
There is a distinct district character and rural-urban character of child labour. There is dispute over the number of child labourers. In absence of regular survey by the labour department, the out- of-school children data of the School and Mass Education department is treated as child labour data.
For example in 2007-2008, the Department of School and Mass Education (SME) conducted a survey by the Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan and indicated the number of out- of- school children at 2.70 lakh. It can be safely inferred that these children are child labourers. But the praiseworthy child-tracking system has not been effectively followed up by OPEPA every month.
Currently, the SME is conducting a door–to-door survey to locate the out–of-school children while the State labour department is doing the same to know the child labourers. Both the departments should work together to come to a common data platform regarding the out-of-school children or child labourers in each Gram Panchayat. The labour department has to use the amended criteria of child labour to locate the victims. As the children employed in family enterprise outside the school hours shall not be treated as child labourers, there shall be drastic drop in the number of rural child labourers in every State.
In this situation, the SME department data shall be the real list of child labouers. If SME uses its dynamic child-tracking-system every six months, it will help the labour department to identify child labourers. In fact, the labour department has no role further in combating child labour as it has been taken over by the SME through RTE Act. However, the labour department can take punitive actions against the child employer offenders. But in Odisha, the labour department has poor track record of punishing the offenders and therefore, it will have no impact on minising child labour system.
As primary school system has emerged as the new crusader of the child labour system, the success of the child labour elimination mission-2025 shall depend on the ability of the schools to zero down out- of-school children. labour migration has become worse cause of child labour in Odisha especially in districts like Bolangir, Nuapada and so on. The State Government has set up a few residential school facilities for the children of the migrant laboueres in the districts like Bolangir. But this facility has to be enhanced by the labour department. The State Government has taken decision to set up Odisha Help Desks in five States namely Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Delhi. The Odisha Government should direct these help desks to take up responsibility of registering children of the migrant labourers and facilitate their rehabilitation, treating them as child labouers. The migrant labourers should be registered under the Odisha Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare schemes to check their migration.
The Gram Panchayat and the UlB wards should be the target units of mitigating child labour. The PRIs and urban bodies should be linked to the 2025 Child labour Mission which will have a minimum two registers, one for the migrant / missing children and the other for the out-of-school children. The registers of PRI/UlB and schools should be verified annually to cross-check out-of-school data. The labour department has to work with Panchayati Raj, Urban Development and SME departments to zero down child labour in Odisha. There must be a mission spirit of the labour department and the labour Commissioner should be given full responsibility of the child labour eradication mission. In the past, NGOs have done good work individually in mitigating child labour though they have failed as NGO -coalition.
Therefore, expert NGOs and child rights activists should be involved in the mission by the labour department.