A child labour: deprivation of dignity

PS Bali

Child labour as defined by International Labour Organisation (ILO) is putting children of under-14 years of age in various type of work that deprives them of their childhood and their dignity and hampering their access to education and acquisition of skills.

Child labour in simple is putting children in hard physical employment, which neither suits his age, nor his potential to carry out work effectively. Moreover, deprives children from basic education. As child labour is crime and a sheer violation of fundamental rights of the children, but is practiced every where.

The magnitude of child labor is as such that it is widely prevalent in some form or the other, all over the world and in India it is on rampant. The term is used for domestic work, factory work, agriculture, mining, having own work or business’ like selling food and doing odd jobs, though helping parent’s in home made jobs is not among child labour practice.

It is more in rural areas than in urban, due to poverty and illiteracy in rural areas. Industrialists and factory owners hire small children and put them in hazardous jobs, which are totally unfit for their health and strength.

In India, the main cause behind the spread of child labour is poverty, vested interests and illiterate parents.

In India, half of the population is Below Poverty Line (BPL), which induces parents to send their child to work and not to school, in order to have some support in the family income.

Moreover, low level of parental education is also cause of spread of child labour, they cannot distinguish between good and bad for their children, for them basic of life is to earn money. And third and most heinous is that of vested interests, where some industrialists for the sake of cheap labour hire children. They put children in unhealthy jobs with minimum wage as compared to the adult for same work.

Although, different rules have been made in different countries to fight this crime, even constitution of India has a framework within which ample provisions exist for the protection, development and welfare of children. There are a wide range of laws that guarantee children their rights.

Article 24 includes prohibition of employment of children in factories, means that no child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.

Article 39 (f) states that children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth are protected against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment.

Article 45 provides for free and compulsory education for children from six years of age upto 14. Even though, Article 21-A was also incorporated among fundamental rights to ensure elementary education of every children.

As it is a universal problem, as a citizen it is duty of all to eradicate child labour from its roots.

NGOs can play a major role in eliminating child labour from the societies, they are empowered to aware masses about the ill effects of the child labour, as government does not have the infrastructure to reach every section of the society and particularly the in remote areas. Thus, NGOs can act as a bridge between hard-to-reach areas and the government.

However, the role of media in elimination of child labour is one of the most important components of the process of total human development. The media should expose defaulting firms or business houses that secretly employ children and violate laws relating to child labour.

At last but not the least, the government can provide certain monetary incentives to the families that live Below Poverty Line (BPL) to avoid child labour so that their children can be sent to school.

Although, besides government various agencies including NGOs are working to bridle this menace but due to lethargy in the implementation of proper planning at the root level, all goes vain. The need of the hour is to expand the machinery for enforcing the various laws on child labour. There is a plethora of laws but nothing can eradicate child labour unless there is awareness among parents and children, which will go a long way in saving the future of millions of working children in India.

Women empowerment, a myth or reality

PS Bali

The empowerment of any section of the society is a myth, until they are conferred equality before the law, so it would be perhaps wrong to say that women empowerment in India is a myth. Women empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength, making her entitled to equate men, thus it substantiates the fact with the participation of the women in all activities such as education, politics, media, art and culture, service sectors and science and technology.

Since ancient times, women in India is considered to be a divine, to whom people worship and respect,

The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles. The Constitution not only grants equality to women, but also empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women. The Indian Constitution guarantees to all Indian women equality (Article 14), no discrimination by the State (Article 15(1)), equality of opportunity (Article 16) and equal pay for equal work (Article 39(d)).

In addition, it allows special provisions to be made by the State in favour of women (Article 15(3)), renounces practices derogatory to the dignity of women (Article 51(A) (e)), and also allows for provisions to be made by the State for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief (Article 42).

Notwithstanding, such a gigantic space in the Indian constitution, women in India is till date facing wrath of honour-killings, biological sex difference has caused wide discrimination between men and women, female foeticide leading to morally and socially sick race, rape and molestation. She is striving to get identified and is still longing for free life to live.

Transcending, orthodox beliefs women tried lot to equate men, but were let-off, she sought reservation in local bodies, but were not given as men felt that if women came in politics, their seat would be on stake, that’s why even after year’s of struggle, women is still craving for adequate representation in any house of the parliament and in local bodies.

The women held a sacred position in context of religion in India. Since Vedas, she has been worshipped as deity and it has been proved from numerous excavations, where it was found that people worshipped women idols in different eras.

Eventually, in later Vedic period, women respect came to decline, in that era, women was thwarted to participate in public bodies, men over shadowed her desires, harsh laws were imposed on them, like that of Sati, Devdasi and child marriage among others, thus making them speechless, powerless and hapless creature. 

They were considered to be the entity for house-hold and at many places her free movement was also debarred.

All these factors led to the constitution of female bodies, to fight for their rights, but could not stand against men, as there was no unity among them.

The prime feminist activism in India picked up momentum during later 1970s. One of the first national level issues that brought the women's groups together was the Mathura rape case. The acquittal of policemen accused of raping a young girl Mathura in a police station, led to a wide-scale protests in 1979–1980. The protests were widely covered in the national media, and forced the Government to amend the Evidence Act, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Penal Code and introduce the category of custodial rape. Female activists united over issues such as female infanticide, gender bias, women health, and female literacy.

The National Commission for Women was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1990 to safeguard the rights and legal entitlements of women. The 73rd and 74th Amendments (1993) of the Constitution of India have provided for reservation of seats in the local bodies of panchayats and municipalities for women, laying a strong foundation for their participation in decision making at the local levels.

Despite such commissions, committees no change has been witnessed so far, still in many parts of the UP, Bihar, Haryana, MP and Punjab, female foeticide is on rampant. For men in these areas, women are nothing more than a dust, they treat them like animals.

Moreover, the statistics in the Indian Census-2011 tells a horror story, where sex ratio declined like anything. The Constitution of India gave equal rights to the women with men from the beginning. Unfortunately, women in this country are mostly unaware of their rights because of illiteracy and the oppressive tradition.

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