In the early hours of December 27, 1978, just as the old year was giving way to the new, 37 children, mostly girls aged between 10 and 14, lost their lives when the bus in which they were travelling overturned in the Arjuna river in South Tamil Nadu.
These children were not kids on a school picnic celebrating what the newspapers call the ‘fes-tival season’. They were workers who give warmth and brightness to the festivals of the privileged! They were the children without a childhood, the child-workers of Sivakasi’s match and fireworks industry.
Sivakasi makes about 60 percent of the country’s match-boxes and 80 percent of its fireworks. The industry employs 40,000 children who constitute about 40 to 45 percent of its total work-force. Twenty percent of the children are between 2 and 5 years of age. Girls are three times as many as boys.
The drudgery of these children, who never get a chance to enjoy their childhood or even to go to school, begins as early as 2.30 a.m., when the buses leave the various villages on their first trip. Many children are practically pushed out of bed by their parents and assemble, half-asleep, at the bus-stop.
At the factory, work begins at 6 a. m. and goes on till 6 p. m. Those who cannot go in the first trip have to wait for another two hours for the next bus. During this period too, they continue to work. So in effect, they work upto 14 hours a day.
The scene at a typical match factory is frightening. In a big hall, half-starved children sit in rows, filling flint frames. Most of them are girls, the smallest one not seeming more than 4 years old. Their faces wear a look of resignation, and there is no joy in their dull, work-heavy eyes. The older children and men are engaged in the task of filling the boxes, labels. and dipping the sticks in potassium chlorate, a chemical dangerous to health. The only permanent staff in the factories are the foreman and a few office staff. All the child labourers work on piece rate basis, earning between 50 ps. and Rs. 2 per day.
Legally, children are protected from exploitation, but this is only paper protection. The reality is just the reverse. According to the Factories Act of 1948, no child below 14 years can be made to work. Moreover, even children between 15 and 16 years have to be certified fit by a doctor before being employed. Again, their working hours should not exceed 4.30 hours a day, and they should be allowed one day’s earned leave for every 10 days’ work, along with other weekly offs and paid holidays.
The Act threatens dire punishment to those who flout these clauses. It provides for Rs. 2.000 or 3 months imprisonment or both for the first violation, Rs. 4,000 or 6 months’ R. I. or both for the others. But in actual fact the exploiters get off very lightly. Though there are instances of proce-cution in Sivakasi, no employer has yet been awarded a jail term. They normally escape by paying as low a fine as Rs. 20. There is one instance of an employer who was charged with 15 offe-nces being fined merely Rs. 210 !
The Harbans Singh Commitee appointed by the Tamil Nadu government in 1976 to study child labour in Sivakasi, submitted a report which has not yet seen the light of day. The report says the families which send their children to work are too poor to survive without their earnings. Thus the parents of these children should be first helped to get jobs. It is clear that as long as capitalist-landlord rule exists, this will never happen. In the rural areas, if poverty must disappear, land should be given to the tiller. This, the, landlords will not allow. Neither will the capitalists force them to do so. They are class allies. Meanwhile, in the urban areas, the capitalists keep a large section of the people unemployed in order to lower wages. Thus, capitalist-landlord rule increases poverty, forcing parents to sell their children to exploiters in order to live. Only socialism can give the children of the poor the childhood they have been robbed of. And achieving that should be our aim.