Child Labourers Will Not Benefit From The Proposed Amendments to the Child Labour Law, But the Tobacco Industry Might
On 13 May 2015, the Union Cabinet approved amendments to the Child Labour Prohibition Act of 1986. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, introduced by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the Rajya Sabha in November 2012, has proposed a complete ban on the employment of children less than 14 years of age in all commercial enterprises, as opposed to only 18 hazardous industries according to the original act. However, a closer reading of the Bill reveals that children of all ages may in fact, be used for labour in some of the most hazardous industries in the country.
Unquestionably, the decision to restrict the employment of children is a sound one. According to the 2011 census, one in every hundred full-time workers in India is under the age of 14, and a third of those child workers are under the age of nine. One of the reasons cited by both the previous and present governments for the amendment is that it will plug a loophole in the act that allowed children to be employed in home-based workshops. However, these figures may still not decrease with the new bill that will be presented in parliament during the monsoon season, unless the issues raised by the Standing Committee on Labour in its report dated December 2013 are taken into consideration. Going by the response of the Ministry of Labour and Employment on 16 June 2014, a majority of these concerns went unaddressed. This leaves the provisions in their current form vulnerable to misinterpretation, a problem for which the UPA government would be to blame, given the manner in which it first framed the amendments.
The most worrying aspect of the bill is an exemption that the Cabinet has allowed for, to strike a “balance between the need for education for a child and reality of the socio-economic condition and social fabric in the country.” This exemption decrees that a child may work in family enterprises, farmlands and the audio-visual entertainment industry, barring the circus, provided the work is being done after school hours and during vacations.
This exemption is particularly contentious given that many of the industries where children are put to work, such as beedi-making, domestic work, weaving and brick-making are home-based and dependent on family labour. Beedi making is the biggest of these industries, with an estimated 90 percent of the activity taking place in the informal sector, at homes and beyond the control of government regulators. The most recent government estimate that is cited from the Ministry of Labour's 2000–2001 annual report puts the total number of workers engaged in the informal beedi industry at 4.4 million, although trade unions claim the actual figure is around 7 to 10 million workers. While there are no firm figures on how many women and children are employed in the industry, the consensus among Non-Governmental Organisations and the government is that they form the overwhelming majority of workers. A lower tax of 1.2 paise per stick on hand-made beedis versus 3 paise per stick on machine-made beedis has ensured that it will remain a cottage industry.
According to a 2013 report by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), beedi production employs 21 percent of all working children. Going by the 2011 census, this would mean that close to 900,000 children under the age of 14 are working in the beedi industry. Estimates of the number of children employed in the beedi industry range from 225,000 on the low end to 1.7 million on the high end.
Beedi making involves prolonged exposure to tobacco leaf and dust, in addition to extended periods of sitting hunched over in closed in and humid spaces, repetitive motion and a constant state of tension to meet quotas. Documented health effects on the workers include tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, asthma, conjunctivitis, anemia, malnutrition, back problems and neck pain. It is one of the most hazardous industries to work in, for both children and adults.
State and central governments have made very little progress in cracking down on the industry, and many of its nefarious practices, such as 14-hour work days and the physical abuse of child labourers flourish in plain sight. The NCPCR report stated that even though "Children are also noticed working in labeling and packing jobs in factories and in beedi rolling in homes, their employment was not shown in the records."
The amendment does not solve problems like these, and may in fact make them worse. It proposes a legal definition for "adolescent" to mean anyone over 14 and less than 18 years of age. This would allow for adolescents to be employed as long as it is not in a hazardous industry or process. There are two concerns here. The first is that the creation of a category for 14 to18-year olds goes against the spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, which India signed and ratified in 1992, and which defines a child as anyone under 18, with a recommendation for participating countries to do likewise. The amendment also fails to recognise that even 14 to18-year-olds need to continue their education, especially in an economy in which the demand for skilled workers has increased.
Furthermore, in defining hazardous industries and processes for adolescents, the amendment ignores the more up-to-date list in the 1986 act, which bars children from 16 occupations and 65 processes. Instead, it reaches back to the Factories Act of 1948, which only mentions 29 hazardous processes. The first item from the 1986 list of prohibited processes is beedi-making, of which, along with tobacco processing (item 48 in the 1986 list), there is no mention in the 1948 act. Bearing in mind what is known about tobacco, leaving it off the list is signing an early death sentence for any child or adolescent who works with the industry.
In its review of the proposed amendment, the Standing Committee on Labour raised many of these objections. The report took note of the loophole that would allow children to work at home and the regression in defining hazardous occupations. It also clarified that the Right to Education Act (RTE), 2009, guarantees a child the right to complete his or her elementary education even after aging past 14 years. The report stated, “While aligning with the RTE Act, the Ministry has missed the spirit of the RTE Act.” On the exemption, the Standing Committee was of the view that, “The Ministry is itself providing loopholes by providing this provision” and that “the Committee is not able to understand as to how the Ministry proposes to keep a check on children working in their homes.”
India desperately needs a new child labour law, but one that truly bans child labour, without any allowances. It remains to be seen exactly what is in the Modi government's version of the bill. But, even if they make no changes to the previous version, it would strike a blow against children's rights.