The new child labour act: Without proper enforcement, the ban is just lip service

The reactions to the Cabinet’s decision to allow children to work in family businesses have ranged from howls of protest to support for the law since it also allows for greater punishment for those employing minors in hazardous industries. In theory, the law is a welcome addition to the already existing ban on child labour whereby it bans children from working in jobs such as automobile workshops, carpet weaving, handloom, mines, bidi making and even domestic work. The only occupation sanctioned by the law is where a child were to help his/her family after school hours. The law also makes the punishment harsher for those found employing minors below the age of 14 in industries that are deemed hazardous. So where the maximum imprisonment was earlier between three months to a year, it has now been enhanced from six months to two years. [caption id=“attachment_2243778” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters image[/caption] The law for considers the welfare of an ‘adolescent’, a minor aged between 14 and 18 and prohibits the employment of this category of minors in hazardous industries as well. And the penalty will be between six months to two years and a fine that is between 20,000 to 50,000. For most of us, apart from the minor hangup of allowing minors to work in family-owned businesses, the law would seem like a welcome increment to the existing legislation. But as always there is skepticism on whether a ban such as this can really work. In a paper titled ‘Perverse consequences of well intentioned regulation: Evidence from India’s Child Labour Ban’, researchers Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah K. Lakdawala and Nicholas Li say that the ban has in consequence not really had the intended result. They say that despite the ban on child labour it hasn’t reduced but has even increased it in some families. “We find that child wages decrease in response to such laws and poor families send out more children into the workforce. Due to increased employment, affected children are less likely to be in school,” the researchers note. The study claims that consumption behaviour is affected by the ban and that household welfare indicators don’t increase as they’re expected to. The findings would seem to tie in with the commonly held belief that parents, especially those living in poverty, should be allowed to determine their children’s future and if it means violating a ban to do so that is fine. Working children are often perceived as victims of circumstance, to be pitied but to be left as they are while they work for their own and their family’s upliftment. Even the researchers of the paper say that the ban while well intentioned fails due to a lack of alternative measures being provided. They argue that cash transfers would work better at keeping minors out of work since enforcement isn’t adequate. In fact the enforcement is pathetic. A Labour Ministry’s reply to an RTI filed by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan in 2012 showed that state governments across the country had rehabilitated just 28 children rescued between 2006 and 2008 despite over 10,000 being rescued and just 797 cases were detected in the same period after over 2 lakh inspections. The reason for the low rehabilitation was cited as the fact that the rescued children didn’t want to go through the process. Poor reporting and rehabilitation will mean that even if the ban is made more stringent, it will as the research paper indicated, not really reduce child labour in the country. Keeping children in a workplace, whether hazardous or not, is almost always going to have an effect on how much time they are able to devote to their own education. Writing for _Firstpost_ , Dr Renu Singh of NGO Young Lives also points out that as per a study conducted by the them most children prefer to study over domestic work and even working in agricultural work in their homes impacted how much they studied. Working in farms was just bad for children, who risk falling behind their peers and gradually even dropping out. While the existing law does let children under 14 work only in family businesses only after school, even that isn’t the best solution since it will need to ensure that children attend school enough and aren’t forced to give higher priority to the family-owned business whatever it might be. Speaking to the Hindu, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi says that all forms of child labour should be banned till the age of 14, the punishment for people employing minors in work should be increased, rehabilitation measures should be improved and government officials need to be held accountable in every case where an industry is found guilty of employing minors. Satyarthi’s points of argument are most relevant as the government will struggle to implement a ban that it has not been enforced convincingly so far. It will need to beef up its education system so that government schools function as required to and that the rehabilitation process for children rescued from labour actually works. Without it, as it has been so far, the best laid ban might not amount to much when it comes to saving the future of India’s future citizens.