Current General Studies Magazine (June 2016)
General Studies - II "Debate Based Article" (A law that allows child labour)
At first glance, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, passed last month in Parliament, seems progressive. It prohibits “the engagement of children in all occupations and of adolescents in hazardous occupations and processes” wherein adolescents refers to those under 18 years; children to those under 14. The Act also imposes a fine on anyone who employs or permits adolescents to work.
However, on careful reading, the new Act suffers from many problems. One, it has slashed the list of hazardous occupations for children from 83 to include just mining, explosives, and occupations mentioned in the Factory Act. This means that work in chemical mixing units, cotton farms, battery recycling units, and brick kilns, among others, have been dropped. Further, even the the ones listed as hazardous can be removed, according to Section 4 — not by Parliament but by government authorities at their own discretion.
Two, section 3 in Clause 5 allows child labour in “family or family enterprises” or allows the child to be “an artist in an audio-visual entertainment industry”. Since most of India’s child labour is caste-based work, with poor families trapped in intergenerational debt bondage, this refers to most of the country’s child labourers. The clause is also dangerous as it does not define the hours of work; it simply states that children may work after school hours or during vacations. Think of the plight of a 12-year-old coming home from school and then helping her mother sow umpteen collars on shirts to meet the production deadline of a contractor. When will she do her homework? How will she have the stamina to get up the next morning for school?