‘All studies on child labour show that girl children are around 60 per cent of the total strength.’ Picture by S.H. Patgiri

According to estimates given by chief minister Tarun Gogoi at a seminar in August 2001, in that year Assam had an unemployment backlog of 20 lakh. The census of the same year shows that the state has several lakhs of child labourers. Thus, lakhs of adults remain unemployed while several lakhs of children are deprived of their childhood. Can there be development with this contradiction?

Equally important is the fact that many of those who protest against adult unemployment also have a vested interest in child labour. For example, a study conducted two years ago on Deprived Urban Children in Guwahati or those who are popularly known as street children, could identity only 19,000 child labourers in the city, of whom 40 per cent were girls.

All the studies on child labour show that girl children are around 60 per cent of the total strength. Guwahati showed the opposite picture. While analysing the data, we realised that families who employed domestic workers did not allow the investigators to enumerate or interview them for fear that the exploitative situation of these children would be revealed. Guwahati is estimated to have 8,000 to 10,000 children working as domestic helps. The total number of child labourers in Guwahati exceeds 30,000.

This also shows the vested interest of the middle class in child labour. The refusal of those employing children as domestic helps to let the investigators interact with them reminded me of another incident in 1986 when the Union government was planning to enact a law (which it did stealthily) that for all practical purposes legalised child labour. At a meeting of a women’s organisation, the consensus was that we should join hands in the fight against child labour. The rhetoric continued till one of them stood up and asked “If you stop child labour where will you get your domestic servants from?” That was the end of their fight against child labour.

Such vested interests have also obstructed those who have been demanding a law to include domestic helps and others working in the informal sector in the category of workers and ensure them decent working conditions. The clause on domestic workers has been meeting with opposition from the same middle class. It opposes the very idea of such helps having any legal rights.

The family wants children who can be overworked and underpaid and often beaten with no protest.

This vested interest extends to the political and bureaucratic decision-makers. For example, the then Union labour minister had said the country’s economy required child labourers because the carpets woven by them fetched Rs 180 crore in foreign exchange in a single year. Ignored was the fact that, in the same year, Rs 256 crore were spent to import colour television sets.

In Assam, as a whole 27 per cent of the children in the 6-14 age group are out of school. But according to a study conducted by Sarba Shikshya Abhjan in 2002, 43 per cent of the children of present and past tea garden workers were out of school. A separate study in the tea garden areas in the same year confirmed this figure. Another group, whose children rarely enter school, belongs to the riverside or char areas. About 27 per cent out of school includes children from all the communities. Together they form around 40 per cent of the state’s population and very few of their children go to school. According to another study, almost 100 per cent of the indigenous Assamese children go to school.

Thus, most children who are excluded from school and a majority of the child labourers are from these communities. For example, all the studies conducted by the North Eastern Social Research Centre show a very low sex ratio in the 10-20 age group in the ex-tea worker families living in the slums near the tea gardens. On deeper scrutiny we found that it is because many of these impoverished families send their teenage daughters as domestic workers in order to earn some more. Most boys who are called “street children” are from immigrant or low caste families. That is also the national reality. Studies show that more than 80 per cent of the child labourers are Dalits or tribals. Most families of these groups live below the poverty line. Around 90 per cent of the Dalits are malnourished. Child mortality rate is more than 400 per 1,000 among the construction workers. Of those who survive, 60 per cent are malnourished, fewer than 30 per cent enter school and very few go beyond Class IV.

There have been ongoing protests about the neglect of Assam by the economic decision-makers and the consequent unemployment in the state. One agrees with them that the state has been neglected and that the Northeast has by-and-large been treated only as a supplier of raw materials. While not denying possible discrimination against Assam as a whole, one can ask whether the ethnic and caste minorities are subjected to similar discrimination. Just as the state is treated as a supplier of raw materials, are the ethnic minorities treated only as suppliers of cheap child labour?

If that is the case, then one can ask whether development can be real to the whole state or only to a few ethnic communities. The state may develop but many of its people will remain poor, not merely today but also for the next generation because their children are deprived of their right to childhood and denied the possibility of improvement in the future. Shouting against unemployment in the state becomes meaningless if there is one child labourer for every two adult unemployed persons. Getting rid of child labour and creating a situation favourable for children to remain in schools can go a long way in eradicating adult unemployment. Besides, studies show that to the parents of child labourers, a child is not a mouth to feed as it is to the middle class but two hands to work with. So they continue to have many children since they are a source of income. If when 25 per cent of the adult workforce is unemployed and an equal proportion of children work full time, the fight against unemployment and overpopulation becomes meaningless.