Benevolent Exploitation

While generalisations are dangerous in an area where millions of child workers (estimates range between 18 million to 44 million or even higher) and their employers spread over the whole country are concerned, the fact remains that the child workers are perhaps one of the most exploited group in the world let alone in India. We, almost all of us, as employers, inadvertently or otherwise commit incalculable harms to young children in the early years of their development. In employing them we operate on a self-justification that without such employment these children may not survive or be forced to live in a semi-starved state. This might well be true but the fact remains that we employ child labour because children are cheaper than their adult counterparts, they can be easily controlled and do not have the capacity to retaliate if slapped, beaten or abused. This self-serving benevolence is sheer exploitation. As the Save the Child and Tulir Study in West Bengal point out, ‘children who work as domestics outside the family home are amongst the most vulnerable and exploited. They begin work at an early age, shoulder excessive responsibilities such as caring for babies/infants, handling fuel stoves, sharp tools, amongst others, working long hours with no rest period, with little or no remuneration, work at the mercy of the employer and frequently suffer from gender and sexual violence. They are deprived of access to schooling, play and social activities and the attention and support of their family and friends. These situations and conditions not only apply to child domestic workers but also to all children at work.’ Such appalling conditions of work are widespread. The Government of India Study found that nearly 56 per cent of the child workers in the age-group of 5-12 years of age worked seven days a week in all the 13 sample states in India, the percentage being highest at 80 percent in Bihar. The Study found that physical and sexual abuses were quite common. What worries me most is the psychological or the emotional abuse. The use of diminutive and abusive language is quite common. By the use of such language, feeding and clothing with leftovers, the child is constantly reminded of his or her marginalised status in the household. A child worker is often expected to get up and begin working even before the adult members of the family get up, they are allowed to go to sleep at night only after others have gone to sleep. Irrespective of age, the child worker is fed only after the family members have finished their meal. A child worker, day in and out, watches young children in the family being pampered with sweets, new clothes, and toys, often a dream for the child worker except possibly on one or two annual festivals such as Holi or Deepawali. He or she is not allowed to play with children of the same age in the family. Thus, every minute of his or her existence in the family a child worker is reminded of his or her position as a servant, someone inferior and marginalised. This undermines the child’s self-confidence, narrows his or her horizon. Even those employers who are generous enough to keep the child workers in reasonable comfort, a partial incorporation of the child workers keeps them reminding of their inferior position in the family and society at large. Certainly, there are generous employers who allow time for schooling. But the schools, to which child workers go, are unattractive, badly equipped and often lack adequately trained and sympathetic teachers. Besides, after hours of domestic work the child workers do not have the energy to concentrate. The narrowing of his or her horizon itself acts as a deterrent. Without encouragement and inspiration from a peer group, the child knows that he or she is destined to end up in some kind of menial or low paid job. Clearly, this dampens his enthusiasm for education.

Other than house work, children are employed in farming, mining, various trade and industries including garments, footwear, brick kilns, stainless steel, hotels, textile workshops. carpet weaving, gem polishing, glass blowing, match works, brassware, electro-plating, lead mining, stone quarrying, lock making and beedi rolling. Many of these are hazardous to human health. For instance, a study by the Pasumai Trust, Tiruvallur, and the Peoples Forum for Human Rights in Chennai in 2005 found that children working in brick kilns in Tamil Nadu, apart from accidents and injuries, developed skin and stomach problems, wheezing, asthma and stunted development as a result of their being constantly exposed to sand, dust and heat. Adolescent girls developed menstrual dysfunction. Most of the injuries at work go unreported, workers not receiving any compensation.
In the lock industries of Aligarh, and the metal industries of Moradabad, Varanasi and Delhi, Children working for long hours with hand presses, buffing machines, electro-plating and spray-painting units are exposed to chemical fumes, which slowly destroy their respiratory system and eyesight.

The Beedi industry is another notorious example in which children, largely girls, work for long hours in a crowded work place and are exposed to tobacco fumes and develop lung diseases. Glass bangles and glass blowing industries are yet another group of industries in which child workers constantly inhale cyanide and silica fumes. Many such child workers develop tuberculosis and die young.

Child labour is also widely used in cutting and polishing diamonds and other precious stones in Jaipur and Surat. Children work for long hours in congested, badly lit and poorly ventilated workshops, and develop various work-related ailments such as kidney dysfunction, lung disease, stomach problems, wheezing, pains in their joints and eyesores. According to the medical sources nearly a third of the child workers get tuberculosis. Children also complain of body aches and finger tips scraped by the polishing discs. Other complaints include eyestrain and allergic dermatitis due to the regular use of dirty water. The Indian carpet industry is still another example of a large employer of child labour in hand-knotted carpets manufactured largely for export.
The industry uses children as young as 6 years of age, who are made to work in confined, dimly-lit workshops, often chained to carpet looms. These children constantly work in cramped, damp, ill-ventilated and badly lit workshops and breath damp air, dirt and woollen fluff and fall victims to spinal deformities, retarded growth, respiratory illnesses and poor eyesight.

Child workers face a similar fate in India’s silk industry. As the Human Rights Watch, an American public interest group, points out, child workers are involved in the entire process from boiling cocoons, hauling baskets of mulberry leaves, to embroidering saris. The children work twelve or more hours a day, six and a half or seven days a week, under appalling working conditions and are subjected to conditions of physical and verbal abuse. The children suffer injuries from the machines and from sharp threads. They are constantly exposed to sericin vapors from the boiling cocoons, smoke, diesel fumes from the machines in poorly ventilated workshop and develop respiratory ailments such as chronic bronchitis and asthma. With the constant immersion in scalding water and the handling of dead worms hands become raw, blistered, and sometimes infected. Children have to work at looms located in damp and ill-ventilated workshops for hours and develop contagious diseases, especially tuberculosis and digestive disorders, spread easily in crowded rooms. Poor lighting and constant visual strain always affects the eyesight.

Unfortunately, some of these hazardous industries such as brick kilns, mines and quarrying, glass making, sericulture and silk weaving and carpet weaving have a high incidence of bonded child labour. Under the system parents are advanced some money by the contractors of the employers and the children are bonded until such time when the loan is paid back. They have to work at low wages for long hours, may be 10 to 12 hours a week, seven days a week. Much of the bonded labour comes from migrants belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes who are landless and lack alternative sources of income.

As you can see even a cursory look at the employment situation in India shows that the conditions of work for child workers is pitiful; they have to work for long hours under unhygienic conditions and are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Undoubtedly, it is mainly economic vulnerability which is at the root of child labour. Yet, the sociological conditions and societal attitude of those in privileged economic and social groups are also important. Often, vulnerable groups are considered to be less intelligent and not enterprising enough to break out of the vicious circle of poverty, ignorance and powerlessness.