Hi all,
Apologies for being out of commission for a month. I was busy working on my grad school applications and was on a short break with family. My next entry is a 2-part entry because I feel I have a lot to say and because the issue I am examining is slightly complex. As always, I encourage you all to post your thoughts and ideas and turn this into more of an interactive discussion.
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I was 16 when I first met Chottu, a nine year old with a missing row of teeth who came to work for our family, and I remember being very confused when he first smiled at me. Not only was I staunchly against child labor, I also had little regard for the kind of work someone his age could really do. Yet, on noticing his emaciated body and the desperate need for money that his uncle sniffled of when parting with Chottu, I realized a job could do him some good. Over the eight months that he worked with us, Chottu became not just a keener worker, but also a healthier boy, a student of English (which my sister taught him), a happier person and a member of our family. My next 2 blog entries, supporting child labor, is based largely off my experience living with Chottu.
Part 1: Right to education?
In an ideal world, I would have liked to have Chottu studying in the school where I currently work, empowering his mind and trying to rise out of terrible poverty. Despite government grants to families whose children attend public schools, Chottu missed out on ever seeing a classroom in his village. Instead, his parents cruelly planted him at the age of six to plow their fields and tend to the livestock. The reason was simple: in a gross oversight, the government continued paying his family a grant even though Chottu was not attending school. A policy meant to keep poor children in school was backfiring by sending them to work in the baking hot fields. The reason? India's infamous bureaucracy (which makes problem identification harder), corruption, and simply, negligence.
Lets even suppose poor families are sending their children to school for reasons other than money. The quality of functional literacy provided to such children is minimal at best. Asia Child Rights, an NGO, reports that India's public schools are sparse in number as well as quality (read more here). Teachers are frequently absent, educational supplies are missing and, in some cases, social taboos prevent girls from being sent to school. Is a sub-standard education for such a student more valuable than a job that can fill her stomach? Using little argument around morality and answering this question with pure common sense, I say: not really.
Today, India has the world's second largest population and is rapidly growing into an economic nightmare for employment pundits. The CIA reports India's current unemployment rate as 7.2%. For the uninitiated, unemployment rates are based on adults more than 18 years of age who have been actively seeking a job for the last 3 months. In India, where a majority of the population resides in villages and does not have access to census bureaus or employment offices to report unemployment (unlike in developed nations), this number is bound to be much higher. My point is simply that despite the high economic growth India has experienced over the past decade, there are too many people to fill too little jobs. What is the incentive for a poor family to send their child for a basic education only to have him flounder around later for a job? Economically and practically, this is a bad proposition.
It is therefore important to appreciate such issues surrounding child education in India before brushing child labor off as a malignant phenomena that needs to be urgently done away with. When India's system of carrot and stick are not functioning in the favor of child education, child labor becomes a necessary method to survive.
