Education and Child Labourers

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...about 83 million out of 185 million children in the six to 14 group do not go to school.

 

Primary level enrolment is a high 89.7 per cent, but it is anybody’s guess how many entrants complete the journey. Middle level enrolment is 59 per cent. “The critical questions that cross the mind,” the Society says, “are, what are the reasons behind such a huge number of out-of-school children, such a high drop-out rate, and why in spite of Article 45 (the ten-year commitment) and Article 46 (the “educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people”), each and every child cannot savour the benefits of education? The short answer is Poverty. In 1995-96 India had 20 million child workers, the largest of any country, out of the global total of 250 million.

the existing definition of work in general is leading to underestimation of the workforce...

 

Official statistics for India, on school-age (preferably 5-14) children reveal that a small proportion (5 per cent in 1991) of the children are reportedly working. But a large proportion of children are reportedly out of school and out of work. They are referred to as ‘nowhere children’ in the literature [Chaudhri 1996]. This is the segment that needs conceptual clarity. Scholars working on child labour do recognise the fact that many children who are, in fact, working do not report so. This is said to be for two reasons. Firstly, a restrictive definition of work excludes many activities in which children are involved. Secondly, parents under-report their children at work because of the low value attached to it. It is acknowledged in the literature that the existing definition of work in general is leading to underestimation of the workforce, especially female workers due to the exclusion of certain kinds of jobs [Hirway 2002]. Similarly, there is also an underestimation of child workers. Due to the restrictive definition of work, many out-of-school children who are working do not get included in the category of working children. Having realised these problems, one school of thought came up with an idea to refer to all out-of-school children as child labourers [Sinha 2000; Burra 1995]. The study group report on ‘Women and Child Labour’ for the Labour Commission, also recommended it [Lieten 2003].
 

the educational needs of out of school children is yet to be addressed in other States...

We came across "invisible" children — Jeetagallu in Andhra Pradesh and Pali in Haryana — bonded to work with an employer. In Chhattisgarh we saw young boys grazing cattle and girls working in the fields — they were formally enrolled in the local government primary school. In Haryana they were enrolled in a local Alternative School — which barely functioned. These are working children who have either dropped out of school or have never been there!While Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka  have intensified efforts to identify working children and help then get back to school through transitional bridge courses, the educational needs of out of school children is yet to be addressed in other States.

For some it is a source of indignation at the social injustice which it involves, for others it is a yardstick to come down on irresponsive governments in the third world, and for yet others it is a natural consequence of an asymmetrical world economy. Child labour in India, when sized down to realistic proportions, remains an ignoble illustration of exploitation and exclusion but a less dramatic illustration than would appear from the exaggerated claims and studies by some western observers. In the tradition of Mamdani, it still often is assumed that children are an economic asset, and that the high fertility, leading to child labour income, is actually a conscious household strategy of rural families. In the second part of the article, this view will be traced in the course of field work in two villages in Uttar Pradesh. The article argues that advocacy of schooling and of family planning are restrained by the limited choice rather than by cultural (de}formations.

Deep class/caste divisions have been barriers to the development of a national drive for mass education...

On educating its children India remains so behind the rest of Asia that it will take a major infusion of resources and political leadership to catch up. Deep class/caste divisions have been barriers to the development of a national drive for mass education by those who have made it to the upper strata.As the economy opens and employment opportunities grow with the expansion of the country's consumer industries, the governing middle class may recognise that the country needs a more literate population and therefore must invest in its children. But it will take a major coalition of locally based groups, the active participation of the media, the contribution of researchers and the information they disseminate, the support of investors, educators, social activists and trade unions and international donor agencies to get India to address the way it treats the children of the poor.

The most viable solution to child labour is evolving and implementing a programme of compulsory primary education. It requires the education system to be sufficiently attractive to the parents and children. The children should not only enrol but should stay on in the school. 

Without doubt, the most viable solution to child labour is evolving and implementing a programme of compulsory primary education. This issue has not received the quantum of attention that it deserves. It requires the education system to be sufficiently attractive to the parents and children. The children should not only enrol but should stay on in the school. 

We need to shift our emphasis from the "parents' unwillingness to send their children to school" to "building the appropriate infrastructure" for operationalizing the child's right to educa-tion. We may not necessarily look at education of the child as an end in itself but as means to grapple with the child labour syndrome— thus emphasizing the interdependence of the issues of illiteracy and child labour and not treating them as mutually exclusive issues.

Schemes of the Government

 

The National Authority on Elimination of Labour (NAECL) has decided to integrate the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan - the Universal Elementary Education programme with the National Child Labour Projects (NCLP) to shift children from their work places to school.

About 10,000 schools will be opened across the country under the NCLP, which will impart primary education to six lakh children in the age group of 5-14 years annually. At present 250 NCL projects are run and there are around 5000 special bridge schools. The course period in the bridge school is three years and age group of the working children enrolled here is 9 to 14, Those passing out of this school will be given vocational training. At the same time, working children of 5 to 9 will be inducted into formal education system.

There are 25 others like Nupura who have been left behind by mi-grating parents in the Community-Managed Residential Care Centre (CMRCC) at Ainlabhatta village in Belpada block. Nearly 2000 chil-dren now stay in 70 such schools across Bolangir, a district infamous for distress migration. Nearly 45 per cent of the total enrolled children in Bolangir drop out to join their parents in their economic pursuit to far off places, mainly to the brick kilns of Andhra Pradesh.

But for such centers, primarily meant for children whose parents have migrated, such students would have been forced to migrate too, discontinuing their studies and join-ing the child labour force. An ini-tiative of Collective Action for Drought Mitigation in Bolangir (CADMB), a network of 18 community-based organizations and NGOs for drought mitigation and rights of marginalised sections of Bolangir, the centres work with fi-nancial support from the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP). They have been running from 2002 during the migration season between December and May - six months in a year.

In a unique experiment designed to ensure access to educational opportunities to child-labourers in the brick kiln industry, 'bhonga shalas 1 perform several roles. By their wider involvement of the community, they also afford employment opportunities to several tribal youth and ensure continuity in the educational process....Most of these children also get  left out of the education system as the schools that they would need to go to, would have to be flexible and suited to their work sched-ules.

 

To fill the gap in education faced by the children of migrant tribal labour and to fight the endemic problem of child labour, Vidhayak Sansad, in 1995, started a cam-paign for the right to elementary education for all vulnerable children. Mobile schools (classes I-IV) have been set-up at the site of brick kilns for these children. The syllabus covered is the same as the mainstream schools, but taught in a non-formal, open atmosphere, using songs, dance and play-way activities. Examinations are conducted at the end of the session, by the Zilla Parishad and certificates are given to the children thus enabling them to continue their education after returning to their native villages. After the completion of the project, follow-up activities include visits to the various villages where the children hail from, en-suring that these children have rejoined their native schools in the correct classes, supplying the native schools and district education authorities with lists of these children and ensuring that there is no dropout.

 

...The government schools are mostly inaccessible as they are generally far away from the brick kilns and sometimes the terrain is also not easy. Then of course is the issue of the timing of these schools and whether they would be willing to accommodate these migrant tribal children.

...By bringing the schools to the brick kilns operating in Thane and Nashik districts, where a lot of children are also engaged in brick making, Vidhayak Sansad's sole aim is to bring down drastically the child labour component of this industry. Such a strategy which aims at reducing child labour has important policy implications and if supported, could contribute towards finding a long-term solution to the chronic problem of children getting displaced from their schools and consequently having to work when their families migrate in search for employment. Also, given that the brick-kiln has been declared a hazardous indus-try, it falls into a high priority area for policy-makers and Vidhayak Sansad's work in this area bring to fore that the problem needs immediate addressing and immediate action. To address the issue of the girl child and to ensure that all the female child workers also attend the shalas regularly, special attention should be paid to the female children of migrant labour. Having a high proportion of female teachers in its team could lead to there being better chances of the girl child being sent to these bhonga shalas. Through its various extra-curricu-lar activities such as songs, plays and poems, the teachers could disseminate the impor-tance of educating the female child to the migrant tribal community in these areas.

Change came two years ago when the Government of Maharashtra (GOM) made it compulsory for every child to study. The GOM also made it binding on the brick-kiln owners to send the children to send these schools, or cough up a fine of up to Rs 20,000.

 

What sets these schools apart is that all the curriculum is modified to suit the workers’ traditions and culture. As soon as one enters the compound of any of these Bhonga shalas, one can see digits and alphabets grown in paddy grass and a pruned map of India! The basic way to help children relate to formal education through innovative ways. One can hear the Marathi ‘Pumpkin and the old lady’ song being sung in the background, whilst in another class the harvesting season with names of grains is taught. "We hold games, contests and make them sing songs through which the cirriculum is taught. We teach six months studies so that they can go back to formal schools once they return to their villages. Meanwhile we also allow them use the brick, mud and grass for calculations, alphabets and arithmetics," says Sakharam T Dalvi, the brain behind this successful project and a former Municipal school teacher.

... The third dimension responds to the empowerment needs of children. These are addressed through a range of activities and discussions on children's rights (U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child), analysis of social and political structures, organisation building (Bhima Sangha/ Makkala Panchayat), resource management, crisis and conflict management, planning and strategising and talking about the future. The fourth component focuses on professional and vocational training needs of children. These are addressed through a range of skill training courses. Children learn the entire process involved in any trade from raw material procurement/ processing, design, marketing and accessing credit to managing finance and production. Children are placed as apprentices in their chosen trade for a year before they take off on their own.

 

Makkala Panchayat (an elected body of chil-dren) and the Task Force (a formal committee that includes the "real, adult Panchayat" mem-bers, local government servants and childrens representatives) choose the chil-dren. The students of Namma Bhoomi are recognised as "ambassadors of children's rights". The "graduates" continue to get sup-port from the Makkala Panchayat and they, in turn, continue to support the movement of working children. Though it started small, now, almost seven-years later, Namma Bhoomi is recognised as a Community Polytechnic by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

 

Hemanna, a young man now, summing up his own experience said: "I went to school till standard V, dropped out and started working in my family's fields. We are four children and my father was unable to work in the fields. I was not learning much in school even after five years I did not learn much I could not even read and write properly..,. I heard about Bhima Sangha and started going for their meetings. I was 15 years old then... In Namma Bhoomi, I opted for civil works construction....Construction work is not my caste occupation (which is agriculture/ grazing cattle/business) and generally Muslims do this work in my area. I have overcome my caste barrier...more than half of my dreams have come true and now I need not work under anyone. I can work on my own. I now have a skill, which I can use to work with dignity." Do we need to say more? Working children and out-of-school children are yearning for meaningful education, they are hungry for knowledge and above all they all have dreams. Does the larger education community have the courage to make at least half their dreams come true through thousands of Namma Bhoomi like schools across the country?
 

 
MV Foundation takes an inclusive approach in its at-tempts to build norms around the issues of children's work and education. All social groups, classes, castes, com-munities and individuals are involved in its efforts. A fair share of the population of Ranga Reddy district belongs to scheduled caste, scheduled tribe or minority religious groups, and class lines are sharply drawn on account of the significant numbers of landless agricultural labour-ers. Focusing exclusively on one group would shift the agenda from the issue of child rights to issues of identity, caste or class rights. In order to avoid this, all children are included in the programme and not just bonded la-bour, or scheduled caste children, or girl children. This has the advantage of having a wider appeal and of bring-ing the entire community together around the issue of children's rights. 

The experience of MVF is particularly important in the context of the decline of government institutions and apathy of most institutional structures. Where other NGOs pit themselves against government and inhabit the terrain of radical politics, MVF occupies the middle ground from where it can simultaneously trigger the process of rejuvenation of defunct government institutions and mobilise people to access them.

 

...The issues for action are release of bonded labour, girl children and child marriages, strengthening of middle and high schools, training of all stakeholders and development of strong non-MVF groups. Organisations and institutional structures created by MVF are school education committees, child rights /girl child rights protection committees, mothers' committees, youth organizations for liberation of child labour, Baala Karmika Vimochana Vedika Teachers Forum and Gram Panchayat Members Action Forum for Child Rights.

...Sensitisation and orientation of government officials to the issues of bonded labour, universalisation of elementary education and practical training in implementation of programmes such as bridge courses and 'back to school' is undertaken.

This perspective questions the conventional distinction between hazardous and exploitative labour and other kinds of child work, for instance, housework. The strength of this perspective comes from it being the basis of a successful strategy for eliminating child labour through sending children to school...The practice of MVF is a powerful argument against the poverty argument' for the existence of child labour. The MVF has presented enough evidence to show that poor parents send their children to school where it is possible for them to do so and without being offered any financial inducements to do so. The income of parents is often as important an enabling factor in their sending children to school as other factors such as there being a school which is accessible, whether they themselves are literate, and their level of motivation. Hence MVF has stressed improvement of the quality of education and aiding access of parents and children to the school system both by helping them with unfamiliar tasks such as admission and by inculcating a sense of participation among parents by getting them to contribute to the school fund... MVF volunteers consistently stressed the point that the poverty argument presumed that parents were devoid of concern for their child's future or of any wish to improve their prospects. This was a patently false premise, belied by ground reality. Given an opportunity, parents have grasped it with open hands, even at the cost of considerable financial loss.

Another misconception questioned by MVF is that formal education is inappropriate to the rural context. Some experts have even argued that rural, deprived children may be better off learning traditional skills within their community than going to schools whose curriculum is not adapted to their needs and work schedule. Formal schools merely push them into the ranks of the unemployed. MVF takes the opposite view that the formal school, with all its weaknesses, is the only institution designed for children and that all children should be in school and not at work...MVF volunteers point out that vocational education did not enhance the prospects of the child in a long term sense of the widening of choices; it reflected a class bias in that lower caste children were encouraged to join institutes for technical education on the assumption that this was appropriate to their position in society