Introduction
There are millions of children currently involved in subsistence-level kinds of labour with little economic output within various countries of the world such as India. The case study focuses on child labour within textile and other related industries in India. Further interventions are required to ensure implementation of sustainable solution capable of keeping children out of such exploitive working conditions. Such conditions expose children to health and safety threats especially those between ages 5 to 14 years. However, it is necessary to understand various factors leading children indulging in such activities. This is necessary for the purposes of ensuring that families within India have meaningful and sustainable alternatives capable of preventing these children from returning to such exploitive labour situations (Bhalotra and Zafiris, 2003).
Intervention Measures
Pre-empting and ultimately curbing Child labour and other social injustices meted on vulnerable and less fortunate Gender in the Indian society calls for a concerted, multi-pronged strategy by the union government, civil society organizations, Bollywood celebrities, cricket stars and the vibrant and growing corporate players. Given the stratified nature of the Indian society, characterized by caste system, investigating extent to which the menace has pervaded the Indian society; designing ,monitoring and evaluating the already in place strategies is a complicated affair. This calls for dovetailed approach by the aforementioned stakeholders, in order to achieve expected effectiveness (Bhalotra and Zafiris, 2003).
The Union government of India need to earnestly take the initiative of conducting civic education, particularly for the Indian scheduled castes and Tribes as these categories provide wellspring for the vulnerable and susceptible Gender. This pool provides cheap labour that the unscrupulously empowered business and corporate leaders take advantage of by way of undue influence, coercion, disinformation or misrepresentation of facts. This is done for the purposes of attaining commercial goals. The existence of such social evil within subcontinent is certainly a disgraceful phenomenon, but unfortunately the government remains indifferent, and sometime show laxity in its endeavour to design an effective strategy providing lasting solution thereof. The existence of institution of modern slavery in India is merely the sign and symptom of the real malady-Ignorance (Betcherman et al., 2004).
The first approach to controlling child labour in India is for the Government to demonstrate that its working on making use of focus groups and other government sponsored and supported institutions. Use of schools to assist in capacity building and empowerment of vulnerable groups. This ensures that the less fortunate are aware of their rights as enshrined within constitution, thereby enabling them to resist attempts by the unscrupulous business people in taking undue advantage of their ignorance. It is essential to point out how sensitive and touchy some of the citizens of India are to the issue of caste. But this can be traced to profound ignorance that engulfs the social issue in question; stemming from inadequate or misleading information that cloud it. It is therefore fit for the government to take a leading role to sensitize her citizenry about the limiting effects of such social order, as any of individual’s or lobbyists’ efforts would be countered by the fierce anger of the conservatives and the Indian societies’ orthodox. Most of these custodians of caste system incidentally are the ones who support and perpetrate such social evil, owing to their enormous socio-economic power brought about by the status quo. Given their status no voice of reason would dare control them; but the union in collaboration with the state governments could crack their whip to their submission (International Labour Organization, 2003).
These governments can easily collaborate with civil society organization to harness their expertise and resource to aid in designing and implementing a model of affirmative action capable of bolstering already existing but far less effective system. Liberalization of Indian economy brought about significant opportunity for entrepreneurs in India to form networks with foreign investors to exploit the comparative advantage-cheap labour- readily available in the country. It is no doubt that this move has worked to bring good income and helped improve the welfare but the governments need to provide a structured and streamlined institutions that ensure the vulnerable are protected from abuse by the wealthy.
There is a serious need to regulate the financial and commodities sector by bringing them to the mainstream. This will make it easy for the government to streamline the operations in the bullish sector.It would be relatively easy for the government to put in place stringent regulations that govern recruitment and employment of people in these lucrative business. The governments should also, in addition to all these efforts put in place legislations that provide checks and balances to the way businesses incentivize the workforce. Any Business that attempt to entice parents by any means to offer a minor to go work for them should have its license or mandate revoked ,and to face legal charges
Organized banking sector plays a vital role in financing businesses in India. A larger percentage of banking sector is under the control of the Union and the state governments through the Reserve Bank of India. By taking a leaf from the way Rural Regional Banks and Lead Bank schemes have effectively worked to advance the economic empowerment of the rural folks, governments can use the same strategy to guide the wind of social change. First and foremost, the governments can put in place conditions under which the State bank and its subsidiaries issue loans and advances to the business community. The Banks in turn need to enforce these conditions and requirements by putting thrust on social responsibility criteria before sanctioning funds. Social responsibility entails making certain that businesses work in pursuit of their economic goals, but put into consideration the positive endeavours to mitigate social vices such as Child labour. Once the state and nationalized Banks take the initiative the other banks in the private sector would follow the suit (Bhalotra and Zafiris, 2003). In order for this strategy to work effectively, it is important that these stakeholders use a bit of incentives to reward the investors who help towards this cause. To supplement these efforts, there is the need to use moral suasion to exhort the business community to be considerate and mindful of the society they intend to bequeath to the future generation.
There is need for provision of education initiative grants capable of promoting education as one of the major intervention measures, capable of combating child labour. As revealed from the case study, India seem to be one of the most populated countries of the world hence difficulties in providing basic education to all children. The quality and relevance of education should be promoted amongst children since there are possibilities of resource constraint and education inaccessibility in many regions. Education initiative grants support improvements in educational programs, access, teacher training and provision of training materials (International Labour Organization, 2003).
Besides education, there is need for rehabilitative services to cater for children’s social and mental health accompanying their removal from oppressive labour situations. Such services can be provided through family visits as well as establishment of residential centres. The common cause of child labour as revealed from the case can be attributed to need for additional family income. This means that families should be provided with other financial alternatives capable of meeting their sustainable needs. Such alternative income generation activities include training skills for family members as well as micro-finance opportunities. Additionally, there is need of changing hazardous production methods within textile industry where employees are provided with sewing tasks or other project tasks within poor communities. Hazardous conditions would involve use of chemicals and explosive substances of which are dangerous to children (International Labour Organization, 2003).
Besides loans and advances to the Business community, the Bankers need to support efforts by the parents to send their children to school by providing a wide range of educational loans-along the line of differential and zero interest rates schemes, to the scheduled castes and tribes. This will go a long way in ensuring that the parents appreciate the importance of education as a way of aiding growth and welfare improvement. Foreign investors, like GAP should be asked to do a background check on the local business they outsource work to; through the government’s department of labour, Registrar of companies and such other charters that regulate business operations in India. Businesses whose operations do not conform to the legislations that protect and support child and the less fortunate’ wellbeing are left out of the business loop (International Labour Organization, 2003).
India is a cricket crazy nation hence the sport can effectively be used to sensitize the citizenry on the harmful impact that the child labour has on the socio-economic wellbeing. This strategy has been used, with positive and encouraging effects in curbing the spread of HIV and AIDS in the nation. Talks bordering on sex-in the public domain-was once considered a taboo in India, but once the government engaged cricket celebrities in endorsing condoms; and persuading people to abstain, the response was very encouraging. The same concerted efforts can be replicated in an attempt to curb child labour in India. The cricket players are engaged in the media commercials to endorse products, the same can be employed to spread awareness among the public. Players of the calibre of Sachin Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dhoni command iconic tag and charismatic following that can be leveraged to help towards convincing the public to affect paradigm shift in attitude.
Conclusion
Indians love and cherish their movie stars to the extent that almost all their movies released have never registered any flop. The same attitude can be harnessed to spread message about the dangers of child labour. The Government needs to incentivize these stakeholders and, streamline the labour market- placing stringent rules and regulations, and enforcing the same. There is also the need to double the efforts to increase the Grants to educational institutions to ease the school fees burden to both parents and school administrators. Education will help enlighten people about their Rights and entitlements
References
Betcherman, G., Jean, F., Amy L., & Prouty, R. (2004). Child Labour, Education, and Children’s Rights. Washington, DC: Social Protection Unit, Human Development Network, World Bank
Bhalotra, R., & Zafiris, T. (2003). Child Labour: What Have We Learnt? Washington, DC: Social Protection Unit World Bank,
International Labour Organization. (2003). International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour. Wounded Childhood, Switzerland, Geneva: International Labour Organization