St.

jude’S global School

English Project

Topic: Is child labor still persisting in

India?

Group 4
Submitted by: Ruvel, Riya Susan, Ria Kuruvilla, Nathanael, Roopa,
Stephy
Submitted to: Mr. Thomas Mathew
Submitted on: Oct 16 2023

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 CONTENT

S NO. CONTENT PAGE NO.

1 Certificate
2 Declaration
3 Introduction
4 Objective
5 Report and findings
6 Conclusion
7 Appendix
8 Bibliography

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 CERTIFICATE

This is the Certify that (Your name) Student of class XII A has
successfully completed the research on the topic
is child labor still persisting in India under the guidance of
Mr. Thomas Mathew during the year 2023 – 2024

Teacher’s Signature Principal’s Signature

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 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project work entitled

“Is child labor still persisting in India?“
submitted to the department of English, St. Jude‟s Global
School is the original copy prepared by me.

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 INTRODUCTION
Rescued from forced employment, 13-year-old Lakshmi is frail and frightened. Two child
protection officers hold her on either side as she walks into the police station. She was
abducted four years ago from her village in north-east India. Until her rescue, she had been
working in people's homes across West Delhi - cooking, cleaning and taking care of children.
"I was not allowed to rest," she says. "If I did something wrong or it was not what they
wanted, they hit me. "If I wanted to sit down for a bit because I was so tired, they would
scream at me. "I was never allowed to leave the house, so I didn't realize that I'm in Delhi. My
employers told me that we are in Madras in South India."
As the police and counsellors question her, Lakshmi breaks down. She tells the police that
she was sexually assaulted by the men who kidnapped her. She was threatened that if she
told anyone about it, they would tell everyone back home in her village and her honor would
be destroyed. And then, when she started working the agent who arranged her work
withheld all her wages leaving her with nothing. This is not just the story of Lakshmi but of
hundreds of children who are child laborers. Nearly 1 in 10 children are subjected to child
labor worldwide, with some forced into hazardous work through trafficking.
Despite rates of child labor declining over the last few years, children are still being used in
some severe forms of child labor such as bonded labor, child soldiers, and trafficking.
Across India, child laborers can be found in a variety of industries: brick kilns, carpet
weaving, garment making, domestic service, food and refreshment services (such as tea
stalls), agriculture, fisheries and mining. Children are also at risk of various other forms of
exploitation, including sexual exploitation and the production of child pornography, including
online.
Child labor impedes children from gaining the skills and education they need to have
opportunities of decent work as an adult. Inequality, lack of educational opportunities, slow
demographic transition, traditions and cultural expectations all contribute to the
persistence of child labor in India. Age, sex, ethnicity, caste and deprivation affect the type
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and intensity of work that children perform. Agriculture and informal sector employment
continue to be sectors where children end up working
Child labor and exploitation are the results of many factors, including poverty, social norms
condoning them, lack of decent work opportunities for adults and adolescents, migration and
emergencies. These factors are not only the cause but also a consequence of social
inequities reinforced by discrimination.

Children belong in schools, not workplaces. Child labor deprives children of their
right to go to school and reinforces intergenerational cycles of poverty. Child labor is
a major barrier to education, affecting attendance and performance in school.
The continuing persistence of child labor and exploitation threatens national economies. It
has severe negative short and long-term consequences for children, such as denial of
education and undermining physical and mental health.
Child trafficking is also linked to child labor and always results in child abuse. Trafficked
children face all forms of abuse-physical, mental, sexual and emotional. Trafficked children
are subjected to prostitution, forced into marriage or illegally adopted; they provide cheap
or unpaid labor, are forced to work as house servants or beggars and may be recruited into
armed groups. Trafficking exposes children to violence, sexual abuse and HIV infection.
Child labor and other forms of exploitation are preventable through integrated approaches
that strengthen child protection systems, simultaneously address poverty and inequity,
improve access to and quality of education and mobilize public support for respecting
children’s rights.
Teachers and others in the education system can be frontline supporters to protect
children. They can alert other stakeholders, such as social workers, to situations where
children display signs of distress or indicate they work long hours. Getting children out of
work and into school also requires broader changes in public policy to empower families to
choose education over exploitative labor.

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UNICEF works with government and for-profit agencies to implement the policy framework
to end child labor. It works with businesses to assess the supply chains and to find
sustainable options to address business practices that lead to child labor. It works with
families to support the ending of labor resulting from bonded or debt labor. UNICEF supports
state governments in integrating programs that would end child labor. We also support
communities in changing their cultural acceptance of child labor while ensuring alternative
income to families, access to preschools, quality education and protection services.

Listening to children is vital to achieving success in the fight against child labor.
A key message in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is that children have a right to
voice their views on matters affecting them and to have these taken into account. Children
have the power to play a significant role in preventing and responding to child labor. They
are key actors in child protection and can give valuable insights into how they perceive their
involvement and what they expect from the government and other stakeholders.

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 Objective
A survey on child labor in India typically aims to achieve several objectives, as addressing
child labor is a critical social and economic issue.

 Quantify the Extent of Child Labor in different areas

 Identify Vulnerable children Groups
 Examine the Causes and Consequences of child labor
 Assess Education Access: To combat child labor effectively, it's essential to evaluate
the availability and quality of education facilities
 Collect Information on Working Conditions of child laborers
 Raise Awareness about child labor in India and advocate for policy changes

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 REPORT
What is Child Labor
The term “child labor” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood,
their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.
It refers to work that:
- is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and/or
- interferes with a child’s ability to attend and participate in school fully by obliging them to
leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with
excessively long and heavy work .

Why Child Labor

There are many inter-linked factors contributing to the prevalence of child labor. Child labor
is both a cause and consequence of poverty. Household poverty forces children into the
labor market to earn money. Some perform child labor to supplement family income while

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many also are in it for survival. They miss out on an opportunity to gain an education,
further perpetuating household poverty across generations, slowing the economic growth
and social development.

A Vote of appreciation
Government has been implementing programs, laws and organizations to prevent child labor
in India some of them are

 Legislative Action Plan for strict enforcement of The Child & Adolescent Labor
(Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986
 Child Labor (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Act 2016
 Project based action plan in areas of high concentration of Child & Adolescent Labor
- National Child Labor Project (NCLP) Schemes.
 Child Labor Amendment (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 2016 and The Right to
Education Act 2009
Government has accordingly been taking proactive steps to tackle this problem
through strict enforcement of legislative provisions along with simultaneous
rehabilitative measures. State Governments, which are the appropriate implementing
authorities, have been conducting regular inspections and raids to detect cases of
violations. Since poverty is the root cause of this problem, and enforcement alone
cannot help solve it, Government has been laying a lot of emphasis on the 13
rehabilitation of these children and on improving the economic conditions of their
families.

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 APPENDIX
1. Do you support child labor?
a) Yes
b) No
2. Have you witnessed child labor around your surroundings?
a) Yes
b) No
3. Does child labor still exist in india?
a) Yes
b) No
4. What do you do when you see someone engaging in child labor around you?
a) I report to the authorities
b) I report it to the nearest NGO
c) I mind my own business and ignore
d) I have never seen anyone performing child labor
5. Out of the 259.6 million children in India of the age group 5-14 years, whats the
number of children working as child laborers?
a) About 5 million
b) About 8 million
c) More than 10 million
6. Does children engaging in child labor earn an equal or a good amount of money when
compared with adults?
a) Yes, they are paid like adults
b) No, they are paid little
7. What do you think are the reasons for child labor?
a) Poverty
b) Illiteracy

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 c) Political system
c) Culture
8. What are the types of work child laborers do?
a) Work in agricultural field
b) Work in factories
c) Selling goods in the streets or markets
d) Work at mining sites

9. What are the groups of children most vulnerable to child labour?

a) Migrant and refugee children
b) Children from marginalized community
c) Children living on the streets
d) Children from impoverished families
e) Children from rural areas
10. Is poor education a cause of child labor?
a) Yes
b) No
11. What are the factors that affect child laborers from going to school?
a) Poverty
b) Lack of access to education
c) Lack of awareness
d) Migration to different areas
12. What are the working conditions of child laborers?
a) Long qorking hours
b) Short working hours
c) Low wages
d) High wages
e) Safe working conditions

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 f) Unsafe working conditions
13. What are the consequences of child labor?
a) Extreme bodily and mental harm
b) Slavery
c) Sexual or economic exploitation
d) Cut children off from schooling
14. Should child labor be banned?
a) Yes
b) No

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 Conclusion
Child Labor means the employment of children in any kind of work that hampers their
physical and mental development. A large number of children are compelled to work in
various hazardous and non-hazardous activities such as in the agriculture sector, glass
factories, carpet industry, brass industries, matchbox factories, and as domestic help. It is a
blot on our society and speaks immensely about the inability of our society to provide a
congenial environment for the growth and development of children.
Children constitute the valuable human resources The future wellbeing of the nation
depends on how its children grow and developed. The great poet Milton said “Child Shows the
man as morning shows the day”. So it is the duty of the society to look after every child with
a view to assuring full development of its personality. Children are the future custodians ad
torch bearers of the Society: they are the messengers of our knowledge, cultural, heritage,
ideologies and philosophies .
Collective efforts are needed on the part of society and the government to put an end to the
practice of child labor. In fact, every citizen should take a pledge to never employ child
laborer, rather discourage others too from doing so.
It is time to consign child labor to the history books and to allow all children to realize their
rights. Child labor is a fact of life for children and it is an issue that effect of all us in many
country

“SMALL HANDS CAN HANDLE A PEN BETTER. LEND

YOUR SUPPORT TO ABOLISH CHILD LABOUR”

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/child-labour-
exploitation#:~:text=Despite%20rates%20of%20child%20labour,%2C%20child%20soldiers%2C%
20and%20trafficking

https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-
new_delhi/documents/publication/wcms_557089.pdf

https://labour.gov.in/childlabour/about-child-
labour#:~:text=Subquitently%20the%20act%20was%20amended,Years)%20in%20the%20sched
uled%20hazardous

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25947984

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