I was always concerned with anything to do with children and their suffering. While I was researching about the Child labor issue in India, I came across the following facts:
According to the 2001 census, there are 12.6 million children under the age of 14 engaged in child labour. This is surely a conservative estimate. The government estimates also do not acknowledge the millions of children working in agriculture. Civil society places the number of child labour at a more realistic 40 million or so.
Approximately 70 per cent of children in child labour are in agriculture. Owing to the labour intensive nature of cotton production, the use of child labour in cotton fields, especially for cross-pollination, has increased over the years. Children working in cotton fields are continuously exposed to poisonous pesticides. Apart from the health effects such as headaches, nausea and respiratory ailments borne out by various studies, children working in cotton fields are deprived of schooling. Working long hours in the field means that children cannot attend school regularly or even if they are enrolled, invariably drop out at some point.
Source: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main46.asp?filename=Ws170710AnanthapriyaSubramanian.asp
An estimated 12 percent of children in India ages 5-14 are engaged in child labor activities, including carpet production (UNICEF, State of the World’s Children 2010).
Source: http://www.goodweave.org/child_labor_campaign/facts
Irrespective of what is shown in the official statistics, we say that the phenomenon of child labour is significant because, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 is a legislation to address hazardous industrial child labour in a limited way as the purview of the Act covers only the organized sectors of production. As it is inbuilt in the law, this Act has excluded a vast section of toiling children in the unorganized sectors, as over 90 percent of the labour force in India is accounted for by the unorganised sectors of production.
I always feel that what we see/hear/read is just 10 to 20 percent of the actual reality. So I feel this is one problem which needs to be handled as quickly as possible.
IMPACT TOGETHER 
Leave a comment