India’s child labour laws are violating child rights
Children in the age group of 14 to 18 years are being exposed to various hazardous occupations and processes.
India’s much awaited ratification of ILO Conventions 138 and 182—which, respectively, provide the minimum age of 18 years for employment and prohibits work likely to jeopardise health, safety and morals of young persons and the worst forms of child labour including slavery like practices, trafficking and bonded labour etc.—have been most appropriately applauded by child rights activists, including our friend, the Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi. I recall our prolonged discussions on this issue with the ILO global chief Guy Ryder last year, before he met the Prime Minister to sensitise and obtain his acceptance.
Led by the NCPCR (Na- The aftermath of the incident in South Kashmir, where a civilian was tied in front of an Army vehicle to protect the polling staff from a large stone-throwing crowd, has been discussed threadbare, and is being continually attended to by an over-enthusiastic media. As stated by the officer leading the Army detachment, the move exhibited innovation and initiative in a dire situation, despite its oblique connotations. The obvious alternatives may have been worse and heart-rending. Rules of engagement too are not handcuffs, but handrails, guidelines that allow for zero-hour initiatives within the laid down realms of use of minimal force, safety to lives and avoidance of collateral damage, and larger response to human rights considerations. Ideally, the situation and the response must not be replicated.
However, mention must be made here of the security forces’ response to the stone- pelters at the location of a terrorist incident. Responding to the call of inimical parties, stone-pelters deny the security forces any room to manoeuvre during counter- terrorist operations. Thus, these stonepelters act as accessories or accomplices to the terrorists by being present at the location of a terrorist-crime site and by acting in a disruptive manner. As accessories, they have knowledge that crime is being committed, but by their actions they help and encourage the principals—that is the terrorists. When these accessories resort to such dis- tional Commission for Protection of Child Rights) on 12 June, the World Day Against Child Labour, along with many others who work to protect, look after and rehabilitate the children at work, we also discussed the recently amended Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, alongside the two Conventions and several other issues relating to these children under extremely difficult circumstances and in need of care and protection. These children are estimated to be over 30 million in the country.
Although, the Nobel Laureate and our friends in the government have endorsed the amended child labour law and its timing with the ILO Conventions, there are strong reservations about the contradictions arising out of the situation and divergent provisions in other laws including the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, which happens to be the basic law for children up to ruption, the security forces need to act against them in a manner “similar” to how they would act against the principals. In fact, these accessories are generally termed as over- groundworkers of the terrorists. After all, the security forces cannot equate the stonepelters’ “protest” with a political agitation, say at Jantar Mantar. Of course, targeted fire from the terrorists and multi- directional stonepelting are two diverse areas. So, mindful of human rights, attempts must be made, initially, to remove the stone-pelters from the site of counter-terror operations and ensure that they 18 years in the country. Incidentally, in complete agreement with the UNCRC and SDG Goals, which protect and provide for universal primary and secondary education for all children, the government has planned out multiple programmes, but the definition of child under the new child labour law is only up to 14 years, in sync with the RTE Act, do not come in harm’s way. However, within the norms, rules and commandments, accessories to terror need to be seen similarly. The principals and their accessories are partners in conspiracy, voicing political discontent through radicalisation and through the use of force, which can be contested only through the use of force— firm yet minimal.
Experts, analysts, commentators, academics, veterans and politicians have, of late, been making a cacophony by siding with one or another viewpoint. Media channels and socialmedia too have been affecting society at large and the serving security community on the matter.
Armies the world over prefer to combat adversary armies, than terrorists embedded in a semi-radicalised civilian population. Any army’s, including Indian Army’s, raison d’ etre is closing- in, dislocating and destroying adversar- 2009. The odd introduction of the term “adolescent” for children between 14 to18 years creates a lacuna.
Since the enactment of the amended child labour law in 2016, serious debates have been going on about the provisions under which a child is employed and permitted to help in his family or family enterprises, other than the hazardous ies. Any engagement where traditional borders do not exist, where every operation has the likelihood of involving civilian population, how so much small, is an aversion in a democratic dispensation. In a counterterrorist environment, the aim is to isolate the terrorists, while segregating and protecting the civilian population. Such situations lead to interactions between the society and the soldier and puts societal pressures on the polity.
In combating terrorism abetted by a proxy war, as the one in Kashmir, where control in the use of force occupations and processes set forth in the Schedule of the 1986 Act, after school hours and during vacations. The child is also permitted to work as an artist in the audio-visual entertainment industry, including advertisements, films, television series and sports, except circus, subject to conditions and safety measures. The majority of people work- is of paramount consideration, there cannot be any victors. In India, the situation is no longer akin to the insurgencies of the 1960s and 1970s, where the lack of information in the drawing rooms did not put any pressures of democracy on the polity. The soldier and his leader are not divorced from reality. They are in touch with society through friends, family and social media. For the security forces—who are a part and parcel of the democratic dispensation and society at large— any recognition of their life threatening ventures is oxygen. However, ing in child related programmes and activities are finding it extremely difficult to reconcile the children’s right to education, their leisure and well being with the amended law, particularly in respect of the millions of children who are routinely found to be working under huge socio-economic compulsions from their poverty driven families. The law, in a way, denies normal childhood to such children by putting them to work beyond school hours. Under the JJ Act, children in need of care and protection; or those without home, settled abode; or ostensible means of subsistence; street, working and begging children, etc.; or those who are being abused, exploited for unconscionable gains, are none other than the working children who are required to be legally protected, but remain outside the coverage of the amended child labour law.
This anomalous situation was appreciated by Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, with an assurance to correct the same through the Rules and the Schedule that provide for the prohibited occupations and processes in respect of children. Earlier, as Schedule to the child labour law, there were 18 occupations and 65 processes that were prohibited for children, and we had expected that the constant journalistic probing, the loud and brash electronic media debating operations incessantly, the polarisation of public opinion, the evident radicalisation, strain the state agencies. The arm-chair debates on television affect the soldiers, with many of the “analysts” and “commentators” using pejorative language and mannerisms.
Such sensationalism can have dire consequences. It may well carry forward to the next day’s security operations and may lead to hesitations. Any hesitation at zero-time in combat, any anxiety about the acrimony all of them would remain prohibited for children (termed adolescents) under the amended Act as well. However, the said Schedule has now been divided in two parts, wherein the Part A meant for children and adolescents cover mines and collieries, inflammable substances and several hazardous industries excluding many others through Part B, which is meant only for children up to 14 years. By implication, the children in the age group of 14 to 18 years are being exposed to various hazardous occupations and processes, like all forms of unemployable railway activities as porters, cinder picking, ash pit cleaning, constructions, catering; crackers, fireworks, automobiles, garages, domestic workers and servants, dhabas, eating places, mica cutting etc.—59 of them.
There appears to be a systemic shift in the process of defining a child, compromising the safety net of 18 years, as provided under various laws and policies. Allowing the employment of children below 18 years could be justified under the cover of skilling, but the national policy on skilling also suggests skilling integrated with formal education, and cannot be a substitute. In other words, it clearly means that a child may be skilled from age 14, but he an action will generate, will embolden the terrorist organisations and their kin, who are always on the lookout for signs of weakness. Inimical elements do not miss to spot our internal dissensions and hesitations. In fact, they seek to use these to inflict higher casualties on the security forces. In time, this may lead to loss of initiative, motivation, morale, and inculcate a defensive mindset in our forces.
In this context, there is a lot to “learn” from the dignified debate post the Manchester and London Bridge/ Borough Market attacks. Such debates must have strengthened the hands of those involved in combating terrorism incessantly.
It is the state that gives a task to the security forces, which the latter complete within the rules. The state, the society and the soldier (contextually also the policeman) are intertwined inexorably. The soldier deserves support and consideration. To do their task, soldiers draw strength from the society and the state.
On their part, the security forces, with a wealth of experience behind them, must rely on time- tested methodologies—innovations, if any, will be explicable as exceptions, and not a rule. The security forces must also learn the nuances of the electronically charged environment and adjust to the occasional critique from the serving or the veterans, without any hyper-reaction. Rakesh Sharma is a retired Lieutenant General of the Indian Army will have to wait for proper jobs unless he or she is 18.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has clearly enunciated his view that much of India’s development agenda is mirrored in the Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 16.3 calls for promoting the rule of law at the national and international level and ensuring equal justice for all. But how will this be achieved, without ensuring an environment that is friendly to children and which guarantees their rights given under the time-tested JJ Act, which is the corner-stone of all laws related to children in this country?
India may well have ratified the ILO conventions, but the recent legislations passed by our government, either through oversight or lack of proper information about the inherent contradictions, are putting the clock back. These lacunae must be taken care of before it is too late and the future of our children is jeopardised. The message between the lines, rather than the written word itself, has to be looked at more seriously, which has, unfortunately, been lost in the plethora of welcome arches and speeches. Amod K. Kanth, a retired bureaucrat, is General Secretary of Prayas, a non-profit organisation, which aims to protect the rights of marginalised children, women and young people.
There appears to be a systemic shift in the process of defining a child, compromising the safety net of 18 years, as provided under various laws and policies. Allowing the employment of children below 18 years could be justified under the cover of skilling, but the national policy on skilling also suggests skilling integrated with formal education, and cannot be a substitute.