History of Child Labour in India

Child labour is not a new issue to our world. In fact, it has occurred in the world for a long long time. In India child labour had always appear to be in the agricultural sector. The children and their parents used to work side by side in their farms. In addition to the task of talking the cattle to eat growing grass and pastures appropriated to the children. Now, this work was tiring and hard, but it didn’t lead to damaging their possibly future. Education was not available in a variety of the villages and most of the jobs stayed in the agricultural sector. So, I guess you could say this work played as training for their futures. The act of treating children unfairly in order to benefit from their work in India began with appearance of the British. A manufacturer started hiring children who were forced to work brutal conditions. Laws against child labour were passed through the Employment Of Children Act of 1938. These attempts at legislation failed as they declined to address the main cause of child labour in  India: poverty. Until the population was brought out of poverty. It was impossible to take children out of the labour forces. Here are some random India child labour statistics:

• In 2014 there was 17 million children labour in India
• When working outside children put an average of 21 hours of labour per week
• 80% of child labour is engaged in agricultural work
• Children work because there is demand for cheap labour
• A larger number of children work because they don’t have access to good quality schools
• Around 2 million child commercial sex workers between the age of 5 -15 years, and about 3.3 million between 15-18 years
• 500,000 children were forced into this trade every year

In 1995, out of a total of 210 million children in India there were 11.2 million children working between the age 5-14 years. Companies usually preferred children to work because they were saw as cheaper, manageable, and less likely to strike. One of every ten workers in India is a child. Did you know that in 2001 the child labour in India for children under the age 18 was about 43% of India’s population of approximately 450 million? That’s crazy! This video below is from 2010 so the numbers probably aren't accurate to today, but it has strong points that can relate to child labour today.