Aditya Dantuluri's List: Justic Project-Child Labor

• Hundreds and thousands of children are toiling as bonded labor in India’s silk industry and the government is not able to do anything to protect their rights. Those children who are working in India’s silk industry are virtually slaves.
• he children are bound to work for their employers in exchange of the loan taken by their parents or families,
• unable to leave because of the debt.
• paid very paltry sum for their labor.
• alits are called untouchables and belong to the lowest level in the hierarchy of the Indian caste system.
• Most of these children are Dalits.
• claim bonded children are very conspicuous In India everywhere.
• Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu form the core of India’s silk and sari industry. Bonded children as young as five work for more them twelve hours a day in the silk industry
• nearly seven days a week, breathing smoky fumes from the silk making machinery
• children squat near cramped looms to help and assist workers in dim and damp rooms
• required to dip their little hands in boiling hot water that causes blisters
• handle dead worms which breed infections.
• wisting thread which injure their fingers
• ttempts to attend school are met with protest and physical violence by their employers.
• adulthood is impoverished, illiterate and damaged by the weight
• production depends completely on the labor of bonded children under the age of fourteen.
• Most of the bonded children are either Muslims or Dalits.
• Children as young as nine years are tied and beaten with belts if they don’t do they work properly
• kept behind covers by being pushed into individual homes.
• amil Nadu in South India is the home of the largest number of bonded children
• more attention has been paid to rehabilitate children working on match and fireworks manufacture,
• Children are ill-treated, scolded, beaten and denied development needs regularly for commercial gains in these industries.

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• In Northern India the exploitation of little children for labor is an accepted practice and perceived by the local population as a necessity to alleviate poverty.
• In Northern India the exploitation of little children for labor is an accepted practice and perceived by the local population as a necessity to alleviate poverty. Carpet weaving industries pay very low wages to child laborers and make them work for long hours in unhygienic conditions. Children working in such units are mainly migrant workers from Northern India, who are shunted here by their families to earn some money and send it to them
• he situation of child laborers in India is desperate. Children work for eight hours at a stretch with only a small break for meals. The meals are also frugal and the children are ill nourished. Most of the migrant children who cannot go home, sleep at their work place, which is very bad for their health and development. Seventy five percent of Indian population still resides in rural areas and are very poor. Children in rural families who are ailing with poverty perceive their children as an income generating resource to supplement the family income. Parents sacrifice their children’s education to the growing needs of their younger siblings in such families and view them as wage earners for the entire clan.
• The Indian government has tried to take some steps to alleviate the problem of child labor in recent years by invoking a law that makes the employment of children below 14 illegal, except in family owned enterprises.
• law is rarely adhered to due to practical difficulties.
• Factories usually find loopholes
• ircumvent the law by declaring that the child laborer is a distant family member
• in villages there is no law implementing mechanism, and any punitive actions for commercial enterprises violating these laws is almost non existent.
• Poverty is the reason for child labor in India.
• meager income of child laborers is also absorbed by their families
• e paucity of organized banking in the rural areas creates a void in taking facilities, forcing poor families to push their children in harsh labor, the harshest being bonded labor.
• Bonded labor traps the growing child in a hostage like condition for years
• importance of formal education is also not realized
• child can be absorbed in economically beneficial activities at a young age.
• o access to proper education in the remote areas of rural India

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• In some industries children are forced to do repetitive and tedious work like weaving carpets, assembling boxes, polishing shoes, cleaning and arranging a shops goods. It is seen that children are found working more in the informal sectors compared to factories and commercial registered organizations. Little children are often seen selling in the streets or working quietly on domestic chores within the high walls of homes – hidden away from the eyes of the media and labor inspectors
• 218 million children between the age of 5 and 17 working all over the world.
• The most condemned form of child labor is the use of children for military purpose and child prostitution
• India and other developed and developing countries are really plagued by the problem of child employment in organized and unorganized sectors

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• The children who are sold as bonded labor only get a handful of coarse grain to keep them alive in return for their labor

• Indian sweet shops are notorious for profiting from child labor which is tantamount to slavery.
• Children as young as eleven and thirteen toil in these shops for hours on end and suffer from exertion and fatigue.
• o fixed working hours
• onstantly threatened with the fear of being fired,
• unction quietly and illegally as household industries making little children toil for long hours on very low wages before huge cauldrons of burning fat
• Many children working in Indian sweet shops remain unpaid or poorly paid
• Most of the children working in this sector are not paid more than 300 to 800 rupees in a month, for more than twelve hours of labor each day
• most of the children working in Indian sweet shops want to quit work and go to school.
• small children due to their vulnerability in terms of wanting remuneration
• easy to bully and scold a child

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• Statistics reveal that India has 17 million child labourers -- the highest in  the world
• Lack of awareness about the basic rights of a child has lead to easy violation  of laws meant to protect and empower children. In homes, on the streets and in  sweatshops
• Over half of the working children (54%) are in agriculture
• others are employed either in construction (15.5%)
• household work (18%).
• 5% are in manufacturing jobs
• remainder (about 8%) are scattered across other forms of employment

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• India has the largest number of children employed than any other country in the  world.
• 90 million out of 179 million children in the six to 14 age group do not go to  school and are engaged in some occupation or other.
• close to 50 per cent of children are deprived of their right to a free and happy  childhood.
• Unofficially, this figure exceeds 100 million
• it is estimated that if these working children constituted a country, it would  be the 11th largest country in the world
• large number of children work in cottage industries producing carpets, matches,  firecrackers, bidis, brassware, diamond, glass, hosiery, hand loomed cloth,  embroidery, leather goods, plastic, bangles and sporting goods. The highest  number of children are found working in the agricultural sector.
• Poverty has often been cited as the reason for the child labour problem in India
• What are the causes for child labour? One can attribute it to various factors --  unemployment, low wages, poor standards of living, ignorance and illiteracy,  social attitudes, and the like. Together they culminate in poverty and  exploitation.
• would rather have children who work to supplement the income
• many cases where the parents sell their children as bonded labour for a petty  sum of money
• Ignorance is one of the main problems; ignorance on the part of the parents who  believe that with the children working, poverty will be eradicated; and  ignorance on the part of the children who do not know their rights in this  country
• working conditions of the children are inhuman and the incomes given are also  meagre
• Eighty per cent of the children work in hazardous conditions

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• Maharashtra is officially child labour-free but the exploitation of children  continues in the zari units in its capital.
• lanes of Govandi,
• this slum, located in one of India's most progressive cities, harbours perhaps  the worst form of human exploitation - bonded child labour.
• Bits of fabric, gold threads, glitter beads and tiny fake pearls are some signs  that invariably guide you to the dens of misery called "zari factories".
• between the ages of six and 14 were found kneeling at low work tables sewing  beads and coloured threads on to vast lengths of fabric.
• hovel-like rooms that house the zari units
• boys work 20-hour days, seven days a week, in dingy 10{minute} x 10{minute}  sized rooms
• small smelly bathroom located in one corner
• floors are grimy.
• rooms have hardly any ventilation
• sleep, bathe and eat in this same room.
• if lucky, two cups of tea
• two meals a day
• rarely allowed to leave the room
• if they are lucky, the owner takes them on an occasional Sunday outing
• Some rooms have two trapdoors. So if there is a raid, the children are shunted  down the other one,
• owner locks the trapdoor, to open it only the next morning
• boys are shagirds.
• Zari workers are split into shagirds (apprentices), karigars and  owners
• basic embroidery, a shagird does the cleaning and washing of clothes and  some cooking for the unit.
• paid about Rs.50 a month
• Physical and sexual abuse is part of this sad existence
• 12-year-old Afzal Ansari, who worked in a unit in Govandi, died after  contracting hepatitis.
• his employer did not treat him
• asked a relative to take the boy away
• died on the way to hospital
• marks left by burning cigarettes all over the boy's body and several signs of  sexual abuse.
• died after being beaten severely
• 11-year-old Ahmed Khan
• employer made the little boy massage his feet every evening.
• did not do a very good job one day and the employer began thrashing him. Among  other forms of torture, he pulled out the boy's fingernails
• per cent of children in the zari units in Mumbai are migrants from Uttar Pradesh  and Bihar.
• areas they come from are extremely backward.
• When we return the kids, we ask the parents why they sent them," says Kasbe.  Many say they cannot afford to look after them.
• believe that by sending the children they save them from a miserable life in the  village.
• live in border areas say sending children to Mumbai prevents them from joining  terrorist or naxalite outfits.
• India has about 10 crore children in the workforce
• Maharashtra comes eighth among the top 10 States that employ child labour on a  large scale
• If working at the age of six to earn Rs.50 a month is a better life, then  clearly India has a long way to go before it can claim to be an emerging economy  that has become a favourite in the global market

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• The fireworks industry, which is concerned at the implications of the World  Trade Organisation regime and a dwindling domestic and international market, has  been claiming for the last four years that child labour ``has been eradicated''  from registered units.
• NGOs, who are fighting against employment of children, do not see any tangible  change in the predicament of children who are involved in manufacture of matches  and fireworks. The gullible children, they point out, are being exploited by  manufacturers, who take cover under legal provisions that allow children to work  in households.
• involvement of children in the manufacturing process,
• six children employed in two units.
• several children, including urchins, were engaged in the manufacturing process  at their homes.
• villagers revealed that the finished products were being sent to three fireworks  units in Karisalkulam, Vijayarangapuram and Thayalpatti
• Paper tube rolling, filling of aluminium powder and sand, powdering, sticking  labels and paper cutting are the works assigned to households.
• children were involved in tube rolling after school hours.

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• three years ago, when his mother died following a prolonged illness
• his father could regain his position, he died in an accident a year ago.
  
• quit school and find a job
• 67-year-old grandmother to care for
• not enough
• just Rs 3,000
• wealth management agent
• grandmother who often fell ill
• tread the wrong path to earn a quick buck
• pprehended by the MRA Marg police two months ago
• began with stealing car logos

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• My sister is ten years old. Every morning at  seven she goes to the bonded labor man, and every night at nine she comes home.  He treats her badly; he hits her if he thinks she is working slowly or if she  talks to the other children, he yells at her, he comes looking for her if she is  sick and cannot go to work. I feel this is very difficult for her.

• don't care about school or playing. I don't  care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home from the bonded  labor man. For 600 rupees I can bring her home-that is our only chance to get  her back.  

  We don't have 600 rupees . . . we will never  have 600 rupees.  

  -Lakshmi,1 nine  year-old beedi (cigarette) roller, Tamil Nadu. Six hundred rupees is the  equivalent of approximately $17
• they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen  hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants,  these children endure miserable and difficult lives.
• With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115  million, India has the largest number of working children in the world
• struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families
• earn little and are abused much
• working since the age of four or five, and by the  time they reach adulthood they may be irrevocably sick or deformed-they will  certainly be exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead  by fifty.
• do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest skills  of literacy.
• children are working under some form of compulsion, whether from their parents,  from the expectations attached to their caste, or from simple economic necessity
• fifteen million of them, however, are workingas virtual slaves
• Bonded child labor" refers to the phenomenon of children working in conditions  of servitude in order to pay off a debt
• tend to be relatively modest, ranging on average from 500 rupees to 7,500 rupees
• creditors-cum-employers offer these "loans" to destitute parents in an effort to  secure the labor of a child
• always cheap, but even cheaper under a situation of bondage
• Due to the astronomically high rates of interest charged and the abysmally low  wages paid, they are usually unsuccessful.
• children who are sold to these bond masters work long hours over many years in  an attempt to pay off these debts
• they reach maturity, some of them may be released by the employer in favor of a  newly-indebted and younger child
• Many others will pass the debt on, intact or even  higher, to a younger sibling, back to a parent, or on to their own  children.
• More than 300,000 children are estimated to be working in the carpet industry,8 the majority of them in bondage
• number, but it represents only about 2 percent of  the bonded child laborers of India.
• great majority of the carpet weavers' bonded brothers and sisters are working in  the agricultural sector
• agriculture, which accounts for 64 percent9 of all  labor in India
• silk and silk saris, beedi (hand-rolled cigarettes), silver jewelry, synthetic  gemstones, leather products (including footwear and sporting goods), handwoven  wool carpets, and precious gemstones and diamonds
• practice of child debt servitude has been illegal in India since 1933
• distinct laws governing child labor in factories, in commercial establishments,  on plantations, and in apprenticeships
• are laws governing the use of migrant labor and contract labor
• recent law-the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986-designates  a child as "a person who has not completed their fourteenth year of age
• Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 which strictly outlaws all forms of  debt bondage and forced labor.

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• Poor children in India begin working at a very young and  tender age

• children have to work to help their  families and some families expect their children to continue the family business  at a young age.

   

  India has all along followed a proactive
• some families expect their children to continue the family business at a young  age.
• India has all along followed a proactive policy in the  matter of tackling the problem of child labour. India has always stood for  constitutional, statutory and developmental measures that are required to  eliminate child laborr in India. Indian Constitution consciously incorporated  relevant provisions in the Constitution to secure compulsory universal  elementary education as well as labor protection for children
• most children begin working at a young age due to economic reasons
• doing so allows them to break from some social constraints
• regulate the working conditions of children in other employment
• policy of the government is to ban employment of children  below the age of fourteen years in factories, mines and hazardous  employment
• Children perform a variety of jobs: some work in factories, making products such  as carpets and matches; others work on plantations, or in the home.
• boys the type of work is very different because they  often work long hours doing hard physical labor outside of the home for very  small wages.
• Children are often exploited and deprived of their  rights in India, and until further measures are taken, many Indian children will  continue to live in poverty.

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