All work and no play

Munna, Chotu, Choti, Bahadur. Post ban on child labour, will they disappear from our lives?

Nasrin Sultana Delhi

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry  'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep
—William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper

In 1986, the government of India heard the bereaved cry of millions of homeless, hungry and condemned children of India, and the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act was enacted. The Act prohibits children from engaging in activities considered hazardous to health and well-being. It regulates the working conditions of children employed in non-hazardous occupations. Plus, a National Policy on Child Labour was announced in 1987. The policy envisaged the National Child Labour Project (NCLP), a project-based action committee initiated to work in areas of high concentration of child labour.

Twenty years later those tinkling bangles that women cherish, those crystal glasses that add charm to a dining table, those finely woven carpets, those fire crackers that illuminate the night sky on Deepawali, are still made by tiny hands. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act failed to wipe out even an iota of the social crime witnessed in every nook and corner of the country’s streets, homes, factories and sweatshops. Indeed, according to the 2001 census, India has 12.6 million child workers. Activists estimate the figure is more than 60 million, and they could be true.

Meanwhile, the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment rolled up its sleeves and passed a notification on October 11, 2006, following a High Court. The notification states that employment of children under 14 years as domestic workers or servants in dhabas, restaurants, hotels, motels, tea-shops, resorts, spas or other recreational centres is punishable with imprisonment for a term not less than three months, a fine of Rs 10,000 which may extend to Rs 20,000, or both. 

Did anything change? Not really, as this reporter found out in the capital.

Rekha, 13, from West Bengal, has been working as a domestic help in Delhi for the last two years. She has never seen her father, as he left her mother before she was born. Rekha was brought here by her aunty, mausi, as she is popularly known. Mausi gets children, especially girls, from Bengal, with the promise of two meals a day and clothes. These children are either abandoned by their families or sent to Delhi to earn some extra money. Rekha says most of the women in her village in Jalpaiguri are often sick because of constant childbirths, early marriage, non-stop hard work and hazardous working conditions.

Mausi is a one-woman ‘domestic placement agency’. She brings the children from the villages, gets them a job as a domestic help, in a dhaba, a garage. In return, she gets a commission. The employers are happy they have got ‘easy slave labour’ without the hassles of placement agencies, sprawled all over Delhi, or legal niceties.

Kanta, 28, came to Delhi from Darbhanga, in Bihar, as a 12-year old. Married to a carpenter, she has four children and is expecting another. Munshilal, her husband, says, “We believe in having more children. It means more mouths to feed, but the older ones can take care of the younger ones. There will be more employed people in my family. That means more money.”  Kanta’s two little children are working. The eldest one washes cups in a roadside tea stall.  Munshilal says he has not heard of any official notification banning child labour, “We have nothing to do with the government. Where are they when we go hungry? Our children will work, let’s see who stops us.”