 "Laws that make the Budget")
This week, Rajya Sabha debated and passed a legislative proposal, which has a significant impact on minors below 18 years of age. The intent of the Child Labour (Amendment) Bill, 2012 is to completely ban ‘children’ (i.e. those below 14 years) from working in any occupation or industry. The Census data shows that, as of 2011, 4% of the child population was employed in the workforce. This is about 1 crore children. The Bill also prohibits ‘adolescents’ (i.e. those between 14-18 years) from working in hazardous jobs. The Bill is expected to be debated in Lok Sabha in the coming few days.
Currently, child labour is regulated under the Child Labour Act, 1986. When this law was enacted, it intended to cover children below 14 years of age. This law bans their working in hazardous industries. From the provisions of the Bill, it seems that its thrust is to bring the 1986 Act in line with the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, that makes education up to 14 years free and compulsory. This is because the Bill seeks to create an enabling environment for children to be in school, and not in any workplace.The Bill also complies with international norms that require the minimum age for entry into the workforce to be at least 14 years, and prohibits anyone below 18 years from being engaged in hazardous work.
While the Bill intends to cover all children, it does allow them to work in two circumstances. Firstly, it allows children to help out their family and family enterprisesoutside school hours. This will includeany manufacturing activity, business or work done by family (i.e. parents, parents’ siblings and own siblings). Secondly, it permits children to be employed in the audiovisual entertainment industry and sports, as long as the work does not affect their school education.
On the one hand, the focus of the Bill is to provide an enabling environment where a child can go to school, and not have to earn. But this may be constrained by challenges related to implementation of the law. The Census data of 2001 showed that 12% of the working children were employed in hazardous industries, even after 15 years of implementation of the 1986 Act. This indicates that it has been difficult to enforce the child labour law over the years. More recent data on children employed in hazardous industries is not available, so it is not known whether implementation has improved since 2001. While the Bill makes the law more stringent, it may face implementation-related challenges as well.Let us consider a scenario, where a child is engaged in agricultural activities. To check whether this is prohibited under the Bill, one will have to inquire into whether the child is assisting his family or not. If it is found that the child is helping out a family member, it will have to further checked if the child’s schooling is affected or not. These aspects may be difficult to estimate, and may throw up more challenges.
The Bill’s prohibition on employing adolescents in hazardous industries (such as mining and inflammable substances) is also a significant change. As this is permissible under the current law,it may be argued the Bill may have an impact on the relatively low gross enrolment ratio (GER) in secondary and higher education. Currently the 95% GER in primary education (up to class 8th) drops to 79% and further to 54% in secondary and higher education respectively (9th-10th and 11th-12th). However, it is difficult to gauge how many persons will this provision end up impacting because there is no government data regarding adolescents employed in hazardous industries.
Other significant aspects of the Bill include provisions regarding penalties. The Bill is looking to increase the deterrent effect of the law by doubling the penalties. For instance, currently an employer may be imprisoned between three months and a year for committing an offence under the Act. The Bill is increasing this to
imprisonment between six months and two years. However, the Bill proposes to deal with the parents more leniently. This is because there may be compelling circumstances behind permitting a child to work,such as abject poverty and lack of quality schooling. Therefore, parents will be punished with a fine, and only if they commit an offence more than once. It remains to be seen how these provisions will be implemented, and what kind of impact will they have on child labour in the country.
The author can be reached at anviti@prsindia.org
