Failing Child Labourers

To our deep distress, the Child Labour Amendment Bill 2012, passed recently in the Rajya Sabha, fails our children, yet again. Since its first tabling four years ago, the state should have critically reviewed why child labour has remained rampant in the country despite enactments of legislation and how a plethora of state policies have been directly contributive to the increasing number of communities eking out a survival in severe poverty and deprivation, compelling more children to enter child labour. Instead, the state abdicates its duty with a sweeping ban on labour of children under 14, without a single safety net or rehabilitative process in place. Without viable alternatives, children will be further criminalised and will be forced to resort to invincible and hence, even more exploitative labour.

The labour minister claims that this is a historic bill. How can minor tinkering of a radically-faulty approach which simply does not address the causes nor seek to mitigate the reasons why children work, stand to this claim? Both the act and its flagship, the National Child Labour Programme, ignore the larger socio-economic environment in which child labour is embedded.