Opinion - Editorials   

Lost childhood

A British garment bargain-retailer’s axing of three Tamil Nadu-based exporters for engaging child workers in the value-addition process must be welcomed for the catalysing effect it should have on India’s efforts to rid itself of one of its most backward socio-economic practices. Employment of children in any occupation — be it ‘hazardous’ or ‘non-hazardous’ — deprives them of their fundamental right to education and more generally of the rights of childhood. Official data suggest that 29 per cent of 6-17 year-olds are out of school in India, which continues to boast the largest army of child workers in the world. Ballpark numbers range from a non-credible official claim of a mere 13 million to non-official estimates upwards of 100 million. India is a party to the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This mandates the country to ensure, among other things, “the [Article 28] right of the child to education” and “the [Article 32] right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

In his 1990 book, The Child and the State in India, the American political scientist Myron Weiner analysed the strong correlation between the Indian system’s failure to make even primary education compulsory and the practice of child labour on a massive scale. The central proposition of his study was that India’s economic situation was less relevant as an explanation than the conservative set of beliefs shared by the state system and various constituents of society. This led them to buy into the argument of ‘harsh realities’; view education as a means of maintaining differentiation between social classes and strata; and contend that eliminating child labour and enforcing compulsory school education required first the overcoming of mass poverty. What is clear is that in the era of liberalisation and globalisation, the state in India has not earnestly gone about fulfilling the obligations it undertook under the U.N. convention. Fortunately, foreign trade has played a progressive role in checking child labour, given growing consumer sensitivity to social issues in global markets. The news media — in the latest instance, the BBC — must be given credit for some fine investigative journalism that has exerted public pressure on the issue. Rather than play the victim, Indian businesses that profit from child labour at lower- and middle-levels of the value-addition chain must clean up their act. An Indian version of ethical/fair-trade labels, a practice that engages popular attention across consumer-driven western markets, is overdue. The long-term value of educating every child in society must not be bartered away for a fistful of dollars.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

New tactics, deadly result
Lost childhood
Democracy and childhood school curriculum
Towards free and fair elections in India
Progressive move or political correctness? out of london
Corrections and clarifications
Nuclear deal
Remembering Sam
Amusing

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu