The United Nations Organisation declared the year 1979 as the International year of the child. This was, as usual, turned into the year of Speeches, Edit-orials, Seminars and Press Statements by the politici-ans, newspaper editors, Rotary and Lion’s Club mem-bers and their memsahibs who had nothing else to do. Meanwhile, the children of the poor, the working class and the peasants continued to suffer… Mean-while, the child killers, the capitalists and landlords continued to thrive on their sweat and tears..
India, the so-called largest democracy in the world, has also the highest rate of child labour in the world. This was disclosed in a recent survey conducted by the Anti-Slavery Society. According to the Society, 16.5 million children in the age group 5-14 years, i. e., one out of every 23 children are employed in fields, factories, quarries and other work-places in India. (Indian Express, December 5.)

Child in the Third World, a book brought out by the People’s Publishing House, says that, in India, “the largest proportion-nearly 43 percent or 7.4 million of child labour is employed in agriculture, constituting nearly 10 percent of the total agricultural labour force in the country and 20.6 percent of the labour force engaged in livestock, for-estry, fishing, hunting and plantations. Six percent of the child labour is engaged in manufacture and proc-essing services and another 6 percent in household and other industries. There is also a greater proportion of girls among child labour than the proportion of boys to adult workers (26.6 percent and 17.4 percent respectively). (pg. 35)

In the urban areas, according to a survey conduc-ted by the Department of Social Welfare, in Delhi, child labour is mainly to be found in the small indus-tries, This survey, from which we quote the following statistics, points out that the worst exploited children (mainly boys between the ages of 7 and 14) are those who are employed in tea shops or dhabas, specially the unregistered ones. The working hours of these children are from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and in many cases more than 12 hours a day. About 64 percent of the children do not have a weekly off. Their wages are below Rs. 25 and very often young boys are paid noth-ing but given something to eat and a place to sleep. The conditions are so terrible that many children gen-erally leave their jobs. To prevent this, the employers often do not pay the children for the first month of employment. While they serve food to the customers, these boys themselves get barely enough to satisfy their hunger. They feed other people’s hunger-not their own.

Shoe-shine boys, the boon of office-goers, mainly fall between the age group 6-14. Their daily working schedule is 10 to 12 hours, starting from 8 a.m. Avera-ge daily earnings are between Rs. 3 and Rs. 7. During the rainy seasons, states the survey, they usually have no work. Generally, the local dada collects his share from their earnings. And if they do not pay, they are forced to quit their place of work. The police, being guardians of law and order’, support the dadas. Thus they clean and polish shoes, never earning enough to have their own pair, Selling morning and evening newspapers and magazines is another job done mainly by boys. The number of children working in this job, says the survey, is between 200 and 300. The hawkers of English newspapers earn about 3 paise per copy and hawkers of Hindi newspapers get 4 paise per copy. They are able to earn a rupee or two a day. Poverty makes these boys take up this job. And the job, among other reasons, prevents them from going to school. Thus, they sell newspapers and magazines which they will never be able to read.
Home delivery of milk is done by children belew the age of 12, three-tenths of them being girls, reveals the survey. These children are generally paid per bottle and sometimes on a monthly basis. They begin work in the early hours of the morning. Shivering in the cold, they stand in queues for milk which they are too poor to buy and drink.
Collecting rags, old papers and other material from the garbage ground is another common occupation of
children that the survey studied. About 44.2 percent of the children are below 11.8 years, 55.8 percent are in the age group 12 to 14 years. The working hours are between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. About 15.4 percent of the children work for more than nine hours a day, 76.9 percent work between six and nine hours and 7.7 percent work for less than six hours. Their wages are paid daily and are between Rs.2 and Rs.4. Almost one-fifth of the children earn less than Rs.4 a day. While the children of the rich play with expensive toys, these children roam the streets, markets, garbage cans and even sewers, in order to survive.
Auto and cycle repair shops employ children for dismantling parts, cleaning, oiling, and refitting them. About 26 percent of the children are in the age group 9-12 years and 74 percent between between 12 and 14 years. About 63 percent of the children are paid daily wages, the rest of the 37 percent are paid mon-thly wages, the survey estimated. The daily wages ran-ge from 50 paise to Rs. 4 and the monthly wages from Rs.20 to Rs.120. The working hours are from 9 a. m. to 7 p. m. About 74 percent of the children work 8 to 12 hours a day and the remaining 26 percent, less than 8 hours a day.
The survey found that quite a large number of children are employed in domestic work. Such child-ren are in the age group 12 to 14 and the rest fall in the age group 9 to 12. About 3 percent of these child-ren are girls. These children generally start work at 5 a. m. and work till late at night. They have to sweep, swab, wash clothes and vessels, cook, run errands and give up every bit of personal joy in order to satisfy the desires of the household. Excluding food and clothing, their monthly wages are below Rs.25.
These children are often ill-treated by their empl-oyers. Sometimes they are even beaten badly for sim-ple mistakes. For most of them, life is an unending line of heavy work, scolding and beating.
Other industries like book-binding employ about 17.6 percent of child labour. Tailoring, employ-ing 11.8 percent of child labour is also a common occupation. The survey brings out the fact that the children are made to work for long hours, sometimes through the night to make button holes, sew buttons, etc….
In India, children are also employed in other small industries like brickmaking. Children carry the clay, mould bricks and load and unload them at the kiln. Working in brick kilns is dangerous to the health. Ac-cording to Mainstream (November 24), children who are employed in kilns, suffer from silicosis, a disease affecting the lungs, bringing about a nagging cough, shortness of breath and chest pain. Thus, these children who will never have a brick-built house ruin their health permanently.
The famed carpet industry of Jammu and Kashmir is another industry which ruins the health of child lab-ourers. Boys between the ages 8 and 10 are taken on as trainees. They are made to work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., in damp, badly ventilated dark rooms and are even made to eat their meals next to the loom! (Hindustan Times, November 13). These children ruin their eye-sight because the places in which they work have very little light. Besides, the lack of ventilation makes them breathe in particles and fluff of cotton and wool and this affects their lungs. Sitting in the same position the whole day prevents their bodies from developing nor-mally. These children, whom the capitalists tie to the loom, are paid Rs. 4 a day and when they grow up, are paid Rs. 8 to Rs. 10-the highest wage a weaver can get. These same carpets are sold for thousands of rupees by the capitalists!
To keep these exploiters supplied with child labourers, the Jammu and Kashmir government, as well as the Central government controlled All-India Handicrafts Board and the Handicrafts and Handloom Exports Corporation have set up “about 130 carpet weaving training centres in different parts of the Kash-mir Valley”. (Times of India, September 4, 1978) The report says that under this scheme. “only children be-tween 11 and 14 years are to be imparted training in carpet weaving”. Though these centres for weaving are required to provide educational facilities and healthy working conditions, the truth, however, is different. “These safeguards have been ignored at most centres”. (Times of India, September 4, 1978)
The authorities justify the “working of children in training centres and factories on the ground that unless training is imparted at a young age. the craftsman’s fingers cannot acquire nimbleness which is the hall-mark of of his skill. It is stated that the demand for Kashmir carpets is growing abroad”. (Times of India, September 4, 1978.)
Thus, for the state and Central governments, the profits of the capitalists is more important than the welfare of these young children.
The 1971 National Census had shown that Andhra Pradesh has the highest percentage of child labourers, to the total population, namcly. 33.77 percent in the rural areas and 29.97 in the urban areas. The figures for the other states are as follows: Assam (including Mizoram) 3.68 percent and 2.77 percent, Bihar 19.03 percent and 9.27 percent, Gujarat 9.79 percent and 10.12 percent, Haryana 2.2 percent and 1.72 percent, Himachal Pradesh 1.91 percent and 0.27 percent, Jammu and Kashmir 1.07 percent and 1.19 percent, Kerala 2.29 percent and 6.76 percent, Madhya Pradesh 23.07 percent and 10.76 percent, Maharashtra 20.97 percent and 21.87 percent, Manipur 0.42 percent, and 0.16 percent, Meghalaya 0.7 percent and 0.24 percent, Karnataka 14.77 percent and 23.64 percent Nagaland 0.37 percent and 0.04 percent, Orissa 8.08 percent and 2.30 percent, Punjab 2.96 percent and 3,84 percent, Rajasthan 10.97 percent and 6.58 per-cent, Tamil Nadu 12.91 percent and 30.74 percent, Tripura.29 percent and 21 percent, Uttar Pradesh 22.42 percent and 18.74 percent, West Bengal 7.51 percent and 12.7 percent.
—
As the reader will note, most of the statistics we have quoted are from a report by the Department of Social Welfare and the National Census, both gover-nment organisations. This only proves that the govern-ment is aware of the problem. In fact, Gurupada-swamy, a former Central minister who headed the Committee for Child Labour, has himself admitted, “children were treated like commodities and work extracted from them like cattle herds”. (Indian Exp-ress, September 7.)
If this is the case, if the government knows so much about the exploitation of child labour in the country, if it is so much concerned about child labour, what is it doing? Nothing, except to issue scraps of waste paper which they call laws to curb the growth of child labour.
Such legai measures are meant to control child labour in three ways. Firstly, by fixing a minimum age for children to be suitable for employment. Secondly, by controlling night work and restricting work in unhealthy and dangerous occupations. Thirdly, by calling for regular medical check-ups. Employers who break these laws can be imprisoned for three months and fined up to Rs. 1,000.
That these laws are mere waste paper can be seen from the experience of the Sivakasi match and fireworks industry. (See box Children Without Childhood). In fact, the Indian Council for Child Welfare itself admitted in 1975 that the percentage of working children increased by 40 percent between 1961 and 1971, Further, the wages of the child labourers was, on an average Rs. 60 a month which is 32 percent less than the minimum of Rs. 87.88 prescribed by the Unskilled Children Minimum Wages Act, 1975.
Another aspect which was pointed out by the ICCW report was that out of the child labourers below 15 years, 90 percent live below the poverty line. The poverty of their families forces the children to become child labourers. Therefore, it is no wonder that most Indian children never enter a school. In all, 73 percent of the boys and 80 percent of the girls never reach the high school stage. (Times of India, January 1, 1979.)
‘United Nations Statistics, 1976 indicate that the highest proportion of child deaths (139 for every 1,000) occurs in India. The chief cause of these deaths is malnutrition, i. e., lack of food, which is necessary to keep the human body functioning: in other words, starvation. Over 60 percent of the 300 million children in our country suffer from malnutrition. (“Child In Third World”, p. 17).
Lack of proper food also leads to vitamin defi-ciency. It is estimated that 12,000 children in India go blind every year due to Vitamin ‘A’ deficiency (Times of India, January 1, 1979). In the 1-5 age gro-up, 140 million children show signs of this deficiency. About 70 million children or 50 percent of the children in the 1-5 age group suffer from anaemia, i. e. lack of blood.
The poverty of the vast majority in our country affects the physical growth of the present and co-ming generations. The President of The Anthropolo-gical Survey of India, Dr. Pranab Ganguly, has pointed out that in the last two generations, Indians have become shorter. This was due to severe malnutrition to which the body tried to adapt by becoming smaller, so as to require less food. (Times of India, January 5, 1977).
We have seen that poverty is the fundamental cause of the terrible conditions in which the vast majority of our children live and die, Poverty destroys the health of the child, denies it education, and robs it of its childhood. On the one hand, poverty gives the capitalists and landlords a cheap source of labour, on the other, it forces the parents to sell their children in order that the family may survive. Thus, it is in the interests of the exploiters and oppressors to maintain poverty, while it is in our interest to end it. In this clash of interests. our only strength is organisation, consciousness and militancy. Only then can we end the rule of the child killers. Only then will the laughter of children. fill this land. To wipe their tears, to make them smile, that is our task.