Would the Nobel Laureate explain how Child labour is legalised!
Palash Biswas
The amendments also make it clear that children between 14 and 18 years will also not be allowed to work in hazardous industries. (Source: Reuters photo)
Labour reforms passed with Parliamentary consensus and the trade unions played witness silent witness screaming slogans to divert public attention as Business friendly RSS Government signals plan to stimulate economic growth by removing basic protections for workers and ending ban on child labour !
Would the Nobel Laureate explain how Child labour is legalised!
According to a report published by Hindustan Times on April 8, a draft provision in the Child Labour Prohibition Act said the prohibition on child labour would not apply if they were helping the family in fields, forests and home-based work after school hours or during vacations, or while attending technical institutions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to exclude some family jobs from a revamped child labour law in a move with an unmistakable echo of his own childhood, when he helped his father sell tea from kettles at a railway station.
The cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to a 1986 child labour law, aimed at imposing a broader ban on childhood work but also introducing a loophole for family businesses that critics say undermines efforts to end the practice.
Under the proposed changes, which must now be approved by parliament, children below the age of 14 may work after school or during vacations to help their "family or family enterprises".
The amendments would also apply to the entertainment industry and sports, except the circus.
Modi's administration said the proposed changes take into account India's socio-economic conditions and would protect its social fabric.
"In a large number of families, children help their parents in their occupations...children also learn the basics of occupations," the government said in a statement.
The move has drawn ire of child activists who say the exemption would open the doors for employing children in industries such as matchbox manufacturing, footwear and carpet making and would slow progress in eradicating child labour.
Some fear the changes could also be misused to deny education to girls, whose school drop-out rate is almost double than that of boys.
"It is a regressive step as children are mostly employed with the consent of their parents," said Amod K. Kanth, who runs a non-profit organisation, Prayas, which provides free education to children from poor families.
"A child who goes to school has to spend all the time in school. He is not supposed to work."
In recent decades, efforts to provide free and compulsory education and higher household incomes have led to a sharp drop in child labour.
The number of working children in the age group of 5-14 years dropped to 4.3 million in 2011 from 12.6 million a decade ago, according to India's last census data.
Currently child labour is not prohibited in most industries and the new rules would on paper be tougher. The proposed amendments provide for stricter punishment for employers. Even parents would be fined up to about $156 for repeat offences.
But Kanth and other activists believe that the exception for families is so vague it would allow more child exploitation.
"How would you peep into a house to see whether parents are obeying the law or violating it?," Kanth said.
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While prohibiting employment of children below the age of 14, the Centre decided Wednesday to let them work in family enterprises and in the audio-visual entertainment industry, except the circus, provided their school education is not affected.
The government justified the exceptions to strike "a balance between the need for education for a child and reality of the socio-economic condition and social fabric in the country".
The Cabinet on Wednesday approved a ban on employment of children below 14 years, with a caveat that children can pursue family businesses, entertainment and sports activities after school or in vacations. The penalty provisions for employing a child have been increased to jail term of three years and fine of up to Rs 50,000.
Mind you the caveat with a caveat that children can pursue family businesses, entertainment and sports activities after school or in vacations.
Very recently, the Pingla Bang right in Didi`s den Midnapur exposed the truth that how childhood is baked in the emerging market which is going to be the greatest market with unification of taxes and tax reforms with Tax Holidays for free flow of foreign capital and foreign interests.
Mind you,Children can be employed only in non-hazardous family enterprises, TV serials, films, advertisements and sporting activities (except circus) with a condition that they would be made to do these jobs after school hours.
The decision has been slammed by child rights activists as retrograde advocating a complete ban saying it was in contravention with the Right to Education Act.
Explosion has been witnessed by civil society this morning while the intellectuals visited the place and no casualty reported this time ,however.
Twelve people were charred to death and four others injured in an explosion in an illegal fire cracker factory at Pingla in West Midnapore district late Wednesday. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has ordered a CID probe into the explosion.
The blast took place around 10 pm at Brahmanbar village in Pingla. Sources said at least 33 people were working in the factory at the time of the blast. Witnesses claimed the impact of the blast scattered the body parts of the victims all over the place and led to cracks in several mud houses in the area.
The factory owner, Ranjan Maity — a Trinamool Congress block-level leader — has been arrested. Ram Maity, who used to run the factory on Ranjan's behalf, has died along with his wife and child.
Mind you, job in the fire cracker factory is livelyhood as well as family business for the poor lot not only in Bengal,its is treated as Small Scale industry as human tarffick is also considered small scale industry.Not Hazardous,No Crime.Never never.
Thus,clearing to move amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012 — it will have to be cleared by Parliament — the Cabinet decided to prohibit employment of children below the age of 14 in all occupations and processes, linking the age of prohibition of employment to age under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
But it made two exceptions. First, "where the child helps his family or family enterprises, which is other than any hazardous occupation… after his school hours or during vacations"; and second, "where the child works as an artist in an audio-visual entertainment industry, including advertisement, films, TV serials or any such other entertainment or sports activities except the circus".
The Guardian reports:
Something momentous is happening in India– and not many outsiders are noticing. Prime minster Narendra Modi's government has recently announced significant changes to the laws governing India's labour market. These "reforms" appear to be to aimed at stimulating economic growth and inward investment by removing "red tape" from entrepreneurs. So far, so little out of the neo-liberal ordinary.
However, removing "red tape" will mean taking away basic protections for some of the most vulnerable workers. This will include dismantling labour inspections, restricting trade unions, moving employment law violations from criminal to civil code, removing penalties for gender-based discrimination and ending the country's absolute ban on child labour.
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Indian society, in particular a new coalition theWorking People's Charter Secretariat, has begun to protest. They are fearful of a "race to the bottom" among businesses and between states to cut costs by reducing wages and terms and conditions. Civil society has also warned of increased exploitation of children, by making legal many of the forms of child labour and exploitation that have so long blighted India's vast "informal" economy. These proposed changes are particularly depressing coming so soon after India's compulsory education law promised a reinvigorated effort to end child labour.
India is already rife with labour rights abuses. Bonded labour, recognised as a form of slavery under both Indian and international law, affects millions, perhaps most notoriously in agriculture and brick production. Child labour and slavery remain a pernicious problem. Other forms of forced and child labour have recently emerged in export-oriented industries: the child labour found in the manufacture of sporting goods in Punjab would become legal under the proposed "reforms"; forced labour of girls and young women, notably in the spinning mills of Tamil Nadu, forms part of the supply chains that provide cheap clothes to northern hemisphere high streets.
Those affected by these slavery abuses – poor girls and young women, Dalits and people from other minority groups – are precisely the people that the laws governing India's labour market are meant to protect. If the government were to increase the capacity of the overburdened courts, and root out corruption and prejudice in the police, it would begin to transform the promises of those laws into a reality for all Indians.
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Instead the path it has chosen appears quite different. The proposed reforms, taken together, are arguably unconstitutional, flouting article 23 of the Indian constitution, which prohibits trafficking and forced labour. Future generations may come to regard this as a seminal moment in Indian history, when an Indian government repudiated the ideals enshrined in the constitution by the founders of the republic – and instead substituted a legal basis for the exploitation of vulnerable citizens.
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