Child Labour-An Obstacle in the Implementation of Right to Education Act, 2019.

It took weeks to evacuate dead bodies from those rat holes when the river flooded all of sudden and rushed those holes to kill most of the children who were struck. The undulating hilly terrain of Meghalaya state is famous for life-threatening work like rat hole mining run by those landlords. It is a cheap method of extracting coal. Usually, children are used to working at these tiny holes, and due to Lack of education, employment and poverty pushes this vulnerable section to such dangerous work conditions assuming that as a treasure chest and the victims are young lives.

Month of May reminds us the birthday of great intellectual, Karl Marx. Yes! His theory of population gives the real root of child labor. The idea is simple, poor produce more so that they get more hands to work and in-turn could feed their hunger. Capitalist society widens the gulf between rich and poor, wherein formers makes profit and later believes in producing which sustains child labor. So the question here is whether capitalism is a Bale? Answer is No! Do we have a solution for this? The answer is loud yes!!! It’s education.

Quote of swami Vivekananda goes like, “If the poor cannot come to education, education must go to him”. The logic is to build human capital. For example, girl studied class 10 has meager choices than who has a graduation. So, more the education, more the choices and more the capability. In today’s era trending pedagogies has gone beyond imparting knowledge to teach life shaping skills and the time is well matured.

Historical legacy

India being a colony under Imperial force, who sucked her wealth and drained the country with fractured economy and keeping the literacy rate lowest. The society of British India pushed the agrarian culture to industrial works. Even women and children were kept to work at Hazardous place beyond limited hours with minor wages. But early nationalists intelligentsia like Dadabhai Naorji  Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dr B R Ambedkar believed in western education and struggled to bring reforms is education to kill social evils like child labor, communalism etc.

British government never took sole responsibility for mass education until woods dispatch was released. One thing has to be clear here is, those education reforms brought under imperial heads to fulfill their ambitions, Indians in Color and British by mind.

They left India at 1947 with literacy rate 12% and today India has achieved 74% with low decadal growth. Why that is slow progress and gap of 26%? Because there are dragging forces like, child labor, Poverty, patriarchal mindset, poor women empowerment and insufficient policy implementation.

India and her Potholes                                                    

India has many labor intensive industries which have Hazardous working ambience like, Diamond, mining, textile, fireworks. Those employ children till date. As per 2011 census, still 10.1 million of 5-14 age groups are forced under child labor, despite enacting child labour laws, poor Enforcement and corruption have raised the collar to keep the law on paper further diluting the need of the hour.

According to Directive Principles of State Policy, it’s the duty of the state to give compulsory elementary education and it’s left to their economic capacity to go for higher education. There are statistics showing low literacy and high school dropout’s, due to low infrastructure and poor teaching skills to attract children.

There are number of policy glitches, in which state has to strengthen their policy implementation and come out with innovative integrated approach to face such challenges.

Children mindset

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. This saying has a good message to parents and state. Children minds are like empty box what we feed they built like that if children are assisted with good education from earlier days they will become real pillars of the country. They are prone to curiosity and Excitement if that is harnessed properly they can do wonders.

But today, socio economic conditions have made education a privilege. Parents without knowing the fruits of education in long run, be the victim of short-term gain and send their children for work and Children take the palm of what their Environment shows.

Push and pull factors

Today’s private education is more of commercialized and government schools are not on par with them. A Report of “Swatch Bharat Abhiyan” shows the high school dropouts in rural areas especially among girls is because Of lack of toilets. Additionally, there are incidents of teachers molesting and raping children weaken the idea of educating the mass. These hurdles further tunes the parents mind to take along children to work site rather than being subjected to such harassment.

Human and child trafficking, drug peddling, are the society where many children live today. Stereotypes, Lack of contraceptive awareness, children of sex workers and those at slum settlements are most of the cause for abandoning children without any future goals. Their family burden, poor background, voluntarily punches them to work condition bypassing the road to school. This is the where livelihood pushes them to early labour.

There are millions of daily wage and migrant workers across the countries who roam State to state and their children faces discontinuous education which increases probability of child labour. Linguistic barriers from interstate mobilization, lack of vernaculars teaching and textbook supply hampers the child Education. This covers as reason for those kids to enter into the maze of early working.

When they earn money they become vulnerable to bad environment. Being the victim of drugs and alcoholism which fences them, that they forget to come out of it. This pulls them to highness of soothing instead holding pen and books.

Poor parents earning will be like hand to mouth and that should not be a reason for them to keep children away from school. Awareness about benefits of education, scholarships available, showcasing model achievement of eminent from poor background are the simple steps required from state end.

Above challenges should not overshadow the vision of education and state has to keep in mind all those while formulating the policies to address them without forgetting that poor education is a mass destruction. 

Climbing the stairs

Child labour is not only a problem in India it is worldwide and there are many global foundations and NGO like UNICEF working with India in order to prohibit child labour. Government of India has realized the essence of education in solving such evil practices and burden.

Firstly each state has wide diversification and one size policy doesn’t fit in. so education was kept at state list but this had no fruits to curb child labour. There was a necessity to bring nationwide approach to tackle child labour and for this Child and adolescent labour (prohibition and prevention) act 1986 was enacted. Recent amendment bringing adolescent under its ambit further brace the legislation.

Secondly education subject is shifted to concurrent list and article 21A was introduced to make right to education as a fundamental right this strengthens the education to be justiciable and also made providing education to their kids as fundamental duty of the parents. Making elementary education free and compulsory.

Thirdly, 25% reservations at private school, reservation for SC and ST and to give on a par education like private institution, Rashtriya, Kendriya and Yekalavya vidyalas were set up

Fourthly, scheme like, mid-day meal, Free bicycle, bag, uniform free health checkups, and vaccination are provided. Teachers go door to door at their clusters to check the dropouts. Anganwadi were established to empower women and children. Enactment of POCSO act gives safe environment for children at school

Fifth, some NGO,NPO, Community institution are working in tandem to include all those who are excluded in nook and corner  of the country into educating pool.

Sixth, teachers are playing beyond roles They have been trained up to go extra mile from teaching to mentoring. Sarva shiksha abhiyan has a fruit bearing results in implementing RTE

Despite the effort‘s child labor has become a serious burden to keep check on education. Change has to start from people mindset that is matured. Domestic employment like beedi, Teashops, puncher shops is a bigger burden which employs children even today. These low skill jobs should be regulated regularly.

There are families Who run a pani puri shops, groceries shops attached to home where child look after daily transaction which is more at rural places these are simple bits. So there are certain grey areas like above where state cannot play efficient role and at that moment it’s the behavior of the people that has to trigger.

Politicians, bureaucrats, policy makers, public servants, PRI, schools, judiciary should work hand-in-hand to implement RTE efficiently. Health and education are essential key elements to woven the Countries idea of being developed. These challenges are minor when everything comes is unity. The proper assessment of school statistics, annual checks on dropouts demographic details, child mortality rate, are essential holistic approach to implement RTE.

As Malcom says when you live in a poor neighborhood, you are living in poor area where you have poor schools, when you have poor school, you have poor teacher, you get poor education, you can only work in poor paying job.  And the poor paying job enable you to be in poor neighborhood again it’s a vicious cycle.

So educated has to help in educating those budding minds. Every educated who is active in child labor should realize he’s the initiator of mass destruction and if he fails, then he is an educated mind with an uneducated heart.