BILAL HUSSSAIN
Even as much concerns are shown at many seminars and programmes held on the children's day focusing on the child labor in the state, a significant point missed at most places is that child labor is much of a financial problem than a social one. Financial support to the needy could rid the state of this menace, I believe.
Present Status
According to an estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labor - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous conditions, as working in mines, working in carpet industry, working with chemicals and working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, laboring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.
The state politicians and authorities are showing a rosy picture of the state, while the actual position is quite different. According to the census 2001 there were 1,75,630 child laborers in Jammu and Kashmir while some estimated suggest that at present the number of child laborers in the Valley alone may be over two lakh, however, the state seems least bothered about it.
Though the child laborer provides financial support to their families but that is a short-term support. In the long run it is a loss for the child as well as to the society. I am of firm belief that the financial support to the needy family would end this problem.
Legal Measures
Although there is an Act since 1986, which banned children below 14, to work in hazardous conditions, but in certain sectors children are allowed to work here. The Act in itself is not the solution, as it needs to be enforced where unfortunately the state has a poor track record as far these Acts are considered. The poor would rather have children who work to supplement the income. There are many cases where the parents sell their children as bonded labor for a petty sum of money. Banning the child labor I think won't help; imparting education to the child workers could possibly useful. Though child workers can't attend normal school, the only alternative is to provide them education at the time when they are free.
Need for Awareness
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 don't know their rights in the state. The working conditions of the children are inhuman and the incomes given are also meager. The government agencies and non-governmental organizations should raise awareness by involving masses, village heads, teachers and other employers, senior citizens, many others and seek their cooperation in respective areas to serve the purpose.
Attractive and free pre and primary school education system is necessary to attract children towards education instead of work and income. Aware people of benefits and necessity of education, encourage and convince children to go to schools is essential, etc. Non governmental organizations (NGOs) and other related agencies have to play vital role to make aware the downtrodden communities regarding the rights of children and harmful effects of child labor.
Carpet Consumes Children
The manufacture of hand-knotted carpets is an important craft-based industry in rural areas of the state, where labor is abundant and cheap. The rising demand for carpets, coupled with low wages, illiteracy and availability of children for this highly labor-intensive industry, has created ripe conditions for use of children as carpet weavers.
A 2010 health study with control groups showed that the carpet-weavers most commonly suffer from musculoskeletal problems (carpal tunnel syndrome, knee problems as well as low back pain and pain in neck and shoulders), due to the crouched position in which they work and the extensive use of their wrists, fingers and shoulders during weaving. Girls experienced more musculoskeletal disorders than boys because they tended to work longer hours and had less physical exercise and poorer nutritional status.
These conditions of work are conducive to neither productivity nor quality, since the more experienced the workers become, the more health problems they are likely to encounter; thus gradually the industry loses good experienced workers and has to rely on children, who can only deliver comparatively poorer-quality products. Demand is increasing for hand-knotted and hand-woven carpets, especially for export to the industrial countries. In 2008–09, the total value of carpet exports from India alone was over US$ 600 million.
A 2007 ILO study which reviewed both historical and contemporary changes in child labor associated with technological change concluded that to successfully use innovations to reduce child labor requires looking at each industry individually and taking into account its unique cultural and financial factors. These include the employers’ financial margins, the cost of the new technology, the potential for increased profit and the potential impact on employees’ overall family incomes (some technological innovations have reduced adult employment, especially that of women).
Any innovation that reduces child labor should also be coupled with improved access to schooling. Of particular interest with respect to hazardous child labor, it appears that innovations may be more likely to be accepted when introduced as a way to reduce hazards in the activities being performed by adolescents.
Child Financials
It would astonish many but is a fact that child labor generates Rs 197.58 crore annually in Jammu and Kashmir. The figure is arrived at by taking number of child laborers, the income earned by them and the illicit profits being generated by employers both in organized and unorganized sector by not appointing adult workers.
The greed for maximization of profit fuels the demand for child labor, with children as cheapest form of labour. Child labour, corruption and flow of black money, fuel and sustain each other in an illicit nexus that only profits the employers and the middlemen.
On arriving at the figure, there were around two lakh child laborers in the state who assumingly work for approximately 150 days in a year on an average cost of Rs 75 (50 percent of what an adults get for the similar work) per child per day.
The amount so calculated is Rs 197.58 crore in a year. Now, if these two lakh child laborers can be substituted with the two lakh adults with an average floor wage of Rs 150 per day, child laborer would generate Rs 395.16 crore.
The difference between these two amount amounts to Rs 197.58 crore. Normally this amount should have been paid by the employers to the workers but they instead employed underpaid and overworked child laborers. In most of these cases the employers also don't report any income to the government, evaded taxes, making Rs 197.58 crore worth illegal money.
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