Conclusion

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER- 8

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The term child labour is defines as that any child between the age of 5 and
14 years who are directly or indirectly forced to work at home or outside for
money or for the sake of apprentice. As a consequence, children are not only
deprived of their dignity but also their freedom to play and spend some time as
they spend. More over, their scope to develop physically, mentally and
emotionally is lost. These children are also denied education that is a fundamental
right and is supposed to have been available to them under any circumstances.

It is unfortunate to say that, even today the problem of child labour greatly
exists in our country and in many parts of the world. These child laboures are paid
less for their hardship, which generally fails to get one square meal a day. Driven
out to work at a crucial formative age and burdened with hard labour, these ill-
fated children are deprived of nutritious food, playtime and education. They lead a
pathetic life, devoid of simple childhood pleasures and do not even get the
opportunity to develop into valuable human resource.

Children are the important assets for the future development of any Nation.
They are supposed t be the future builders of any society. The destiny of a country
depends directly on how its children are nurtured to fulfill the requirements of its
society. In India, education is the joint responsibility of both the State and central
governments and the constitution of India envisages free and compulsory
education for all children upto the age of 14 years. Ironically, in reality, a large
number of children are denied their fundamental rights and are subjected to
undergo hard labourship in pathetic conditions.

Child labour policy in India concentrates more on amelioration than on its total
abolition. Only 3.9 per cent of India’s Gross National Product (GNP) is spent on
education out of which only 1.4 per cent on primary education. It is quite miracle
and unfortunate that the same India spends 85 thousand crore rupees of money for

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‘Defense’ in a year. Lack of social and cultural based anthropological study of the
problem, strong political will, under use of available resources and low economic
growth are some of the basic factors that lead to the failure of many anti child
labour programmes in India.
Recent World Bank report (1999) has revealed that, more than 9 crore
children are working in India, which is largest in terms of any country in the
world. These nine crore working children includes one and half a crore bonded
working children. No doubt, the complete elimination of child labour is a big
challenge for the country. Various government are keep-framing number of
policies and programmes to eliminate or just to control the problem atleast.
Progressive as well as integrated approaches have bean adopted by these
Governaments to resolve the intense socioeconomic issues embeded in this
problem. A multidimensional action plan to create awareness among all sections of
the society is most essential. This research study has proved that Social and
Cultural factors, Poverty, Larger family size, and Legal failures are few major
reasons for the existence of child labour problem as for as studied samples is
concerned.

The existence of poverty in different forms is one of the major and vital reasons
behind this problem. Various kinds of cultural and social factors are embedded on
poverty. The cultural analysis on poverty is most urgently required. Widespread
poverty may leads to increase labour size of the family. Also, many cultural beliefs
plays a vital role in increasing the family size. As long as, these twin problems
continue to exist, it will not be possible to effectively tackle the problem of child
labour. So “it hardly of any use to talk about abolition of child labour which is not
only unrealistic but is also likely to do more harm than good to the millions of
poverty stricken people in the county who are forced by their awfully poor
economic condition to seek the help of their children to come out and work for
their existence” (Mittal, 1999).

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Another major problem is that difficulty is inherent fact that children working in
rural areas, in urban informal sector and in domestic service are not readily visible.
An integrated and effective measure to save children from hazardous or abuse
should, therefore, begin by exploring the invisible visible. As long as child labour
is part of the harsh reality that makes good economic sense, the conditions for
change will not be met.

A Balanced Approach
As for as India is concerned Child labour problem is a complex of both
social and economic issues. This problem needs an analysis from different kind of
approaches. A lot of research works have been done /or still going on the specific
issues on child labour. But an intensive social and cultural factors which embeded
in household fertility behavior, cultural concept on risks, household decision-
making, labour market and advanced technology should be explored as soon as
possible. A conventional research provides a useful framework for integrating
these variables in analyzing childlabour problem.

Cultural and social backgrounds, economic strength and demographic

characteristics are largely responsible for the supply of child labour in Bangalore
City. It is evident that education level of the parents, and the employment status of
the family members also affects on the supply of the child labour. When the
number of family members increases, invariably it increases the dependency ratio
which naturally increases the likelihood of a child will need to generate income to
maintain the household.

Since the Government concentrated and spending crores of rupees money

on higher education, primary education market has gradually been to the state of
failure. Along with poverty, it has been proved that failure of the education market

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also plays a major portion for perpetuating of this problem in the Indian society.
Low quality of education, poor learning achievements by the children, excessive
cost, educated unemployment, lack of roll models in the community, absence of
forward and backward linkage that strengthen primary education, lacunas in
universalisation of primary education are some of the different reasons for the
failure of the Indian education market. If Governament decides to impose ban on
child labour or come out with new laws, which may contain provision to punish
the parents who send their children work will absolutely lead to a further detritus
status of the children who have already limited opportunities. Imposition ban on
the child labour is not quite logic and it will be a meaningless move by the State.
Further, this move may affect the basic structure of the welfare economics of the
any family. Because, on one hand children cannot work and on the other hand
children may not want to go to the school. So, forceful imposition on child labour
issue is likely to be failed, as it would threaten the survival of the entire household
in the community.

Beter, we have to search for the needle where we had lost it. The most vital
task before the Governament, civil society and NGOs is the restoration of
education market soon. The Governament should revise its National Policy on
Education. All its educational programmes should be culturally and geographically
specific. A uniform type of education system is not good for the whole country.
Governament should fill-up the gap between the learning achievements between
Governament schools and private schools. Studies have shown that a large number
of children do not become literate even after four years of schooling. Hence,
school effectiveness and actual learning have to be primary concern than universal
elementary education (Sharma, 2001). Government should seriously think about
improving the quality of education especially in Governament schools situated in
most backwards areas of any revenue division. More than that, it should bring
some radical changes in teacher’s education and it should invest more of its GDP

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on primary education and social development. Next, hoe w effective schools are
ad success in learning depends not only on school level inputs but also on the
factors out side of school. Hence, programmes, which will be useful in
understanding schools from the wider context, are highly preferable now a days.
Indirect cost on the education on the parents must and should reduced. Alternative
income generation programmes of the parents who send their children to school
should be the vital initiative and it is very crucial in the retention of the children in
schools until the end of the cource. Governament should think few new
approaches to strengthen the forward and backward linkage (link between
education and decent job), which gives a new life to the job market. Also there
should be a lot of scope for vocational education atleast after certain level of
primary education. Once the Governament can address all these issues, then it can
have more effective laws and Acts to ban child labour.

Further, Governament and NGOs should make sure on the following three aspects
while framing policies to curb this problem; 1) designing special delivery
mechanisms for reaching the unreached and marginalised sections of the society;
2) designing and demonstrating innovative and workable models for providing
quality of education and 3) identifying basic parameters for ensuring an efficient
delivery system for primary education and formal and non formal education
through field based studies.

More Anthropological research would be desired to reveal why some of the

poor family spends considerable amount of money on education and why not some
of the financially sound family would not? Also it is very interesting to find out
why many households give more priority to the income from the Childs’ work and
less weightage to the child’s schooling than the social optimum? Until getting
answer for above cited questions, the only way before the State is to improve the
living conditions of families depending on the wages of their children. More over,

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income-increasing incentives need to be combined with schooling incentives,

especially for girls, in order to increase household well-being and children’s
human capital attainment. Next, urban poor also should be brought up within the
circumstance of the Employment Guarantee Programme.

Child labour is a socioeconomic problem required multi prolonged strategy

should be adopted as a long-term basis. As much as possible all policies and
programmes should be culturally and geographically specific. Programmes should
be need based one. Understanding the problem from poor people’s point of view is
the long way to go. An innovative, well-balanced welfare economics, legislative
and social interventions will be succeed in eliminating child labour as per as India
in jeneral and Karnataka is particular. Based on the detailed field study on the
different aspects of the problem, the present study has got some policy
implications. All these suggestions are operative base. This new findings and
results may be useful to the policy makers, economic planners, administrators,
researchers, demographers and NGOs and social and women activists, who are
fighting against this deadly social evil.

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Policy Suggestions
• In Indian family system, a traditional woman is a real living force of the
family. She is the strength of the family. She plays a major role in every
household’s decisions. Hence, there is a need to create awareness and
consciousness among the urban women, as the traditional female who are
conservative lacks not try to understand the social problems of the present day
context.
• Since social and cultural background of the family plays a vital role in taking
household decision to send their children to work, all anti child labour and
poverty eradication programmes should emphasize on the following four
aspects: value, norms and social solidarity of the community, integrative forces
in the people’s life, minimum and maximum resistance to modern innovations
in their culture and recognizing vital linkages in people’s cultural fabrics.
• The definition and scope of the term child labour should be thoroughly revised.
It should include all small households work, various cottage industries work
and agriculture sector where large number of children found employed in case
of India.
• Since India is a country of having different culture and traditions all policies
and programmes should be geographically and culturally specific. All policies
should have a lot of waitage to the local cultural norms with enough flexibility.
• No new specific legislation is required if the existing laws are effectively and
promptly implemented. In the same time Governament should think to have an
effective control about the practice of invisible child labour.
• A comprehensive and an integrated approach are required to address sector-
specific issues on rural, urban, regional and cultural specific. This necessitates
the active participation of civil society and a synergy between the various
Government programmes, which are dealing separately with aspects that
impinge on child labour.

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• Important and necessary alternatives are required to implement free, relevant,

quality and compulsory elementary education for all the children upto the age
of 14 years. If implemented, it would certainly help in eliminating the process
of children being drawn into the workforce in their early age. Of course, the
task of reorganizing or restructuring the current education system is a vital task
to any administration.
• State should make sure of every child to have an access to education, which
should be relevant in terms of language, dialect, socio cultural conditions, and
history of the region and opportunities prevalent in the region. A special effort
must be taken to provide education in those areas where it has been historically
absent.
• ‘Crèches’ attached to the primary schools in rural and urban centres are
necessary. Young children who are otherwise forced to take care of siblings can
be encouraged to attend school if such facilities are provided. Successful
programmes have been conducted for the children of construction site workers
(combining education for older children and crèches for younger siblings) by
different NGOs and are noteworthy to mention here.
• Education must be of high quality in terms of teachers, infrastructure and
educational aids. An active programme to control school dropouts is necessary.
It can be seen that though enrollment is high, many children are forced to
dropouts of school for several reasons including poor teaching methods, lack of
infrastructures etc. Teachers need to be further trained to make education
interesting, attractive and more meaningful to the life.
• Education should aim at rehabilitation. It is necessary to look at the kinds of
jobs that children are forced doing for the formative approach to eradicate child
labour. Strategies must address sector specific issues. For instance, children in
garage, children in construction work, children working in hotels and domestic
works and street children. It is necessary to involve the community, parents and
employers to design a comprehensive rehabilitation programmes so as to

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have an impact on the context of a widespread campaign against the

employment of children (CACL, 2001).
• Efforts also need to be made simultaneously provide to non-formal education,
vocational education and training to the child workers. Income increasing
incentives need to be combined with school incentives, especially for girls, in
order to increase household well-being and children’s human capital attainment
• Governament should target poverty as a vital point embeds with this problem.
Policies and programmes should be implemented in a decentralized manner
and there should be enough scope for grass root level development. This kind
of programme should be more suited to the local conditions and norms.
• Urban anti poverty programmes mainly should cover slum dwellers, people
belongs to depressed class, causal workers, etc. More Anthropological
research is needed on cultural analysis of poverty and its particular context
and local settings.
• The urban anti poverty programme should be threefold: poverty reduction,
construction of productive assets and promoting mainstream employment
subsequently. We strongly believe that an Act needs to include this long-term
focus of the programme, as the strategies use of surplus manpower for
sustainable development has to be an important component of any new
programme.
• Cost effective health care measures must be put in operation, seeking in
particular reduction in infant mortality rates, that will reduce the social
pressure on families to have many children as possible as way to insure against
high rate of child mortality. More over family planning service must be made
available to all at easily and affordable cost.
• To formulate and execute the projects related to child labour, organizational
capacity of the institutions and the departments must be strengthen. The

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responsibility of setting priority, coordinating activities, promoting private

sectors participation and launching of pilot schemes-etc should be entrusted to
these institutions and departments.
• The ultimate objective of the child labour programmes should be convert
working children into productive and participative members of the society.
This needs generation of public awareness and simultaneous gearing up of the
enforcement of the existing machineries to meet with the challenge.
Introduction of new methods of monitoring and evaluation of child labour
programmes and projects will help to implement a programme in a specific,
time-bound, cost-effective and result-oriented manner
• More Anthropological study on child labour should be undertaken on a large-
scale basis in different parts of the Bangalore Urban District. This will help in
making specific policies suitable to the different cultural and regional settings.
Through this we can overcome the regional difference issue also.

Further, what is needed is the creation of an environment where the

community would not tolerate child labour in any form. It is only then child labour
can be eliminated totally and permanently. If parents or children are to be
commenced monetarily or in some other way, the cost of the programme will
increase enormous and it may even tempt others to withdraw their children from
school just to get the compensation package.

Lost but not least, this study has reveled that majority of the poor families
consider children is one of the meance for economic development of the families
since long time. It requires a radical change particularly in our society where
traditional preoccupation of children is not favorable for their well-being. The
dominance of caste sanctions, feudalism and superstitious believes continued for
centuries in Indian society, but with the development of science and technology,
revolutionization of ideas and ideologies in the western world, in particular and in

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the human society, in general, a considerable impact was produced on the

traditional ideas and practice of the people who are living in underdeveloped and
developing countries. This has to create a rational out look of the people and
requires purposeful efforts to weaken the culturally bounded traditional
perception about children and to bring about more enlightened social attitudes
towards innocent children.

Finally it can be said that a country’s full commitment to the total abolition
of child labour should be judged not merely on the basis of official
pronouncements but on whether the child labour objective is consciously
considered in the already mentioned policy implications. More over practical
action and standard setting will have to be combined with policies, which address
the root causes of child labour as identified by this study. The policy package
suggested in this study offers very thought provoking, more realistic and sober
view of the challenges faced in the genuine success of time bound programmes for
the elimination of child labour. Unless and until findings of various studies are
taken into account, there is a real risk of policies being dominated by hasty, adhoc,
often negative short term responses to dealing with a phenomenon which also
requires substantial action on core issues having a clear long term significance.

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