By Kauser Hussain & Srishti Singh
The fighting against child labor in the world continues to be a daunting challenge. We know today that with the political will, the resources and the right policy choices we can definitely put an end to this scourge in the lives of so many families worldwide.
Child Labor: Challenges
Eliminating the practice of child labor requires responses that correspond with the development initiatives undertaken by national and international actors. This describes local development needs as voiced by community leaders and members living in communities: (i) livelihoods; (ii) infrastructure and development; and (iii) the broader provision of basic provisions such as housing, food and water.
These needs represent a long and broad list of development needs whose detailed consideration falls outside the scope of this report. This aims at providing a space for the development concerns of local leaders and stakeholders in light of the strong sense of urgency with which they were expressed and serves as a locally expressed call to action to the local community members as well as international members.
Basic Community Needs
Community members express a widespread desire for improved living standards and community infrastructure. Chiefs and members alike report that their communities suffer from shortages of medical care, food and adequate housing. Improvements in the delivery of basic services should be considered as a means of supporting families in communities that can prevent the practice of child labor.
Insufficient, Affordable and Adequate Housing
A number of housing clusters have mushroomed in and around various metropolitan centres in a haphazard and unplanned manner, without a proper layout and devoid of service lines and other essential facilities. These unauthorized developments are encroachments on land parcels belonging to Government bodies, public-private institutions or areas meant to be green belts.
The removal or re-settlement of these overcrowded, unhygienic clusters, commanding massive vote banks, is a serious challenge to correcting these aberrations for planned growth of cities, especially in our democratic set-up. Therefore, massive concerted effort needs to be made with the best of administrative actions and deft political handling for the sake of future generations.
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is a Central Government scheme implemented by the ministries of urban development and housing and urban poverty alleviation with an aim to improve infrastructure and governance in Indian cities.
In its report, the CAG stated that the Central Government ministries were not equipped to monitor a project of JNNURM’s magnitude. The CAG said that the JNNURM guidelines were deficient in giving adequate advice to States regarding utilization of funds and there was a lack of uniformity in utilizing interest earned from funds held by various States.
The urban development ministry’s Internet-enabled programme for monitoring and evaluation had proved unsuccessful. Only 11 out of 216 sample projects selected by CAG for 2005-06 to 2010-11 were completed. Delays were mostly due to non-availability of resources such as land, escalation of costs and changes in designs, while in many cases ULBs and State Governments did not keep their commitment to implement reforms within the framework of local governance.
The CAG recommended reforms in the financial, institutional and governance structures of ULBs to make them efficient, accountable and transparent. It also recommended that the Central Government should give incentives to States which implement reforms envisaged under JNNURM.
Water and Sanitation
Despite the years of independence, community people express the need for better water and sanitation facilities in many parts of the country. As reported by The Hindu, as many as 4,861 of 5,161 cities across the country did not have even a partial sewerage network. The statistics were based on a survey conducted across the country by Dasra, a strategic philanthropy foundation.
India has a population of almost 1.2 billion people. 55% of this population, nearly 600 million people, has no access to toilets. Most of these numbers are made up by people living in urban slums and rural areas. A large populace in rural areas still defecates in the open. Slum dwellers in major metropolitan cities reside along railway tracks and have no access to toilets or a running supply of water.
Around 1,000 children below the age of five die every day in India from diarrhoea, hepatitis-causing pathogens and other sanitation-related diseases, according to the UNICEF report referred to in the article.
Drought and Chronic Food Shortages
After 65 years of independence, India was still not able to feed its population. Drought is a major concern for agricultural India as it occurs almost every two-three years and eats away into the development of the nation. It occurs due to a late arrival, early withdrawal or failure of the monsoon, the season which single-handedly decides the fate of millions of farmers.
Drought years, resulting in food shortage and famine, not only point at the human cost but, in some years, a political and economic cost as well.
1986-88 was among the worst droughts in the history of independent India, though it was less talked about because of its adept handling by the government. The severity of the 1987-88 drought, in terms of rainfall deficiency, was more than 26% and it affected twice the population affected by a number of previous droughts.
The trickle-down effect of the government’s long-drawn planning, with food sufficiency, employment generation and poverty alleviation as core areas of emphasis, worked well and soon the country was out of the mesh of the 1987-88 drought.
The problem India is facing is not only bad monsoon but also low productivity of our fields. Since the 1990s, food output has hovered around 400 million tons. Rising fuel prices and low availability of food around the world have only added to our hunger pangs.
Poverty
Poor children and their families may rely upon child labor in order to improve their chances of attaining basic necessities. More than one-fourth of the world’s people lived in extreme poverty, according to 2005 UN statistics. Intensified poverty in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America causes many children there to become child laborers.
Poverty is a state symbol in less developed countries. Lester R. Brown in his book World Without Borders explains poverty as a human condition of despair, grief and pain, including the despair of unemployed parents, the longing of a child unable to enter school because his parents cannot buy textbooks, and the grief of parents unable to afford medical care.
India is a poor country. We can see easily this picture of uneducated, hungry and poverty-stricken people also in India. Mass poverty is one of the important characteristics of the Indian economy. In India, due to abject poverty, about half of our population lead a miserable life.
By poverty we generally mean a situation in which a person fails to earn income sufficient to purchase the bare means of subsistence. A poor man does not have command over basic needs such as enough food, clothing, drinking water and shelter. On the non-material level, a poor man is deprived of basic social needs like health and education.
Combating Child Labor
Community Based Approach for the Eradication of Child Labor
Man from the time of origin is living in communities. Community is the primary actor in the field because they contribute and implement their ideas to an overall development process which integrates local knowledge and practices, applying a people’s participation approach in community work for eradicating social evils. This approach is highly efficient in combating social evils and is sustainable in terms of ownership and effect.
The best thing is that it covers a small, geographically manageable area and develops a sense of “My Community” that motivates stakeholders to eliminate child labor in their community.
An example cited is the Fiji community-based approach in the programme Tackling Child Labour through Education (TACKLE), coordinated by People’s Community Network through the ILO and implemented in informal communities in the Central Division of Fiji. The approach involves strengthening community development and adopting the role of a child labour monitoring committee coordinated by a community facilitator and assisted by a peer mentor.
This intervention programme was initiated in 2011 and capacity building and other technical support was being provided to complete the programme.
Working
PCN initially targeted 10 communities in the Central Division and later added two more. These 12 communities each had a Child Labour Monitoring Committee (CLMC), a community facilitator and a peer mentor to identify and monitor child labor in their area.
All members of these communities are trained on child labour and its impact and its legal provisions under existing laws, international labour standards and child rights. CLMC works in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders including local State actors such as labour and education officials.
Achievements
As a result of this multi-pronged approach, including training of at-risk children, communities, committees and families, immediate actions were taken to withdraw children from child labor. The 12 communities integrated 21 children withdrawn from child labor back into the formal education system, while 46 children were awaiting education support and remedial classes before reintegration.
The approach established structures and processes involving community members from various ethnicities and social classes and linked them with State actors to eradicate child labor in informal and squatter communities.
The community set up a community saving scheme where each community member paid 50 cents a day to the community scholarship fund for education support. Free bus fare vouchers from the Government greatly contributed to keeping at-risk children in school. Non-formal education providers supported these communities in enrolling out-of-school children and reintegrating them into the formal school system.
Political Will and Implementation of Law
“Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.”
The three objectives for the elimination of child labour are the identification and elimination of opportunities for at-risk child labor and education of the community on the evils of child labor. To achieve these objectives, several factors play an important role: political will to end child labor and provide adequate resources to fight not only the battle but also the long-term war; legislative support giving specific powers to attain goals; and professional and dedicated staff possessing the necessary integrity, efficiency and vigilance and given the necessary training and equipment.
What is needed is domestic pressure rather than simply international pressure in the form of a UN recommendation or statement. While international pressure is valuable in terms of international standing and governance, without corresponding domestic demands for change it is useless. Such domestic demand comes with the unity of civil society, whose strength compels governments to pay heed.
The mobilization of civil society can be enhanced through development cooperation. International governments, human rights organizations and civil society can all play a role in working with local groups to improve implementation of human rights. The forming of grassroots movements, citizens’ tribunals and networking with State and non-governmental organizations may need a push from international actors, particularly in countries where civil society movements are largely non-existent.
Financial assistance is essential for countries to improve implementation mechanisms. Resources and expertise will both be needed in the development of model agencies, such as national child labour monitoring committees and child rehabilitation programmes.
Social Media and Public Awareness
No individual or organization acting alone can eliminate the worst forms of child labor, but together we can make a difference. Individuals, governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups each have a unique and vital role to play.
To reach our goal, we must focus our collective efforts on eradicating the root causes of child labor so that children can break out of the cycle of poverty. Child labor is normally concentrated in the informal economy, in the rural sector and in other industries hidden from public view.
Children engaged in child labour, either because they are below the legal work age or because they work in hazardous, illegal or degrading conditions, are unable to develop to their full potential. Scholars have studied the role of the media in governance and development. Stiglitz (2002) studied the role of media in government transparency and accountability. Besley and Burgess (2001) and Besley et al. (2002) examined media and its role in solving citizen-government problems and influencing public policy and corporate governance.
Amartya Sen adds weight to the argument for the importance of media in economic development by connecting the media with prevention of famines. Sen (1999) states that the liberal institutions in India, including competitive elections and a free press, have played a major role in preventing famine since independence. Building on Sen’s thesis, other scholars argue that the freer the media, the greater the potential for economic development. Djankov et al. (2002) analysed media ownership and concluded that state ownership of media correlates with poverty, meaning free independent media fosters economic prosperity.
Education and Vocational Training
Compulsory education has a vital role to play in eradicating child labour. Getting children out of work and into school could provide an impetus for poverty reduction and the development of skills needed to boost growth, generate jobs and create more inclusive societies.
However, the linkages between child labour and educational disadvantage are two-way. Poverty forces many households to withdraw children from school and send them to work. Many children are working at least in part because education is unaffordable, inaccessible or seen as irrelevant. Failures in education policy can therefore increase the number of children drawn into labour markets.
Strategies for the eradication of child labour have to tackle the underlying source of the problem in an integrated fashion, combining more stringent enforcement of rules and incentives to combat poverty with improved education provision. Vocational training presents an approach to promote vocational training and apprenticeship for children in the 13-17 year range as an alternative to child labour. Vocational education is related to the age-old apprenticeship system of learning, and apprenticeships are designed for many levels of work from manual trades to high-knowledge work.