Working Children in an Increasingly Hostile World

Abstract

Child workers are probably the most endangered species on the planet. With corporate globalisation and the spread of a consumer economy, the nature of State has also transformed. Even democracies are metamorphosing into capitalist autocracies that have lost all humanity and for whom increasing GDP is the only myopic goal.A goal that is being pursued with great vigour but to the detriment of the poor and marginalised and at great cost to issues such as poverty, unemployment, agriculture and the destruction of our environment that should be the foremost priorities of a nation.Simplistic equations and catchy clichés such as ‘poverty and child labour have a chicken-and-egg relationship that education and only education can break’, ‘that adult unemployment and child employment share a symbiotic relationship’ and that one can be replaced with the other and that every ‘out-of-school child’ is a child labourer conceal the real concerns and seduce one into believing that punitive measures are the only option.The examples used to illustrate these arguments are always the worst forms of child labour that account for less than 20 % of work that children are engaged in and are already covered under law and have been since the 1970s. Thus, these justify the use of drastic ‘last-resort measures’ as standard operating procedures [SOP].This unrecognised genocide against working children and the resulting trauma and violation of their rights are written off as collateral damage. If one used health care as an analogy, the first step would be prevention not amputation which in the case of working children is the ‘raid and rescue’ intervention followed by locking the children up in state homes until they are 18 years and unprepared for the real world and unfit for any employment.This paper will examine the sociology of ‘work’ and ‘education’ in the life of a child and the distortion of definitions and concepts to fit political agendas. It will also look at the trajectory of responses to this issue from the perspective of working children [Bhima Sangha] from the Indian State over a period of 37 years and the influences of International Agencies and Organisation on the government, NGOs and the moulding of public opinion.