Child Labour: Banned for the poor, boon for the rich

Working rich children are neighbours' envy, parents' pride. But, when it comes to the poor, the practice is branded as 'child labour' and condemned as a punishable offence under law with jail and fines. Child labour, up to the age of 14, is banned almost the world over. Paradoxically, there is no ban on rich people's children - from infants to teens - working and earning pots full of money for themselves or for their well-to-do parents almost anywhere in the world, including India where millions of working poor children support their less fortunate parents living in slums and footpath shanties to earn a square meal for them and their families. Defending the cause of child labour may raise eyebrows among the prudish as well as iconoclasts. Such an argument is totally unfashionable and may be considered daring as well. It is because of the narrow definition of traditional 'child labour'. The traditional child labour, unfortunately, represents only one section of the society, the extremely poor and economically vanquished. The biggest and the most powerful opponents of the child labour are large transnational corporations or MNCs and their places of origin, mainly the members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or, otherwise, the rich nations. They not only condemn child labour, but also punish with fines, jail and boycott those who ferry and peddle products of child labour in the global market. MNCs and foreign organisations spend millions of dollars every year to support non-government organisations (NGOs) in countries having large population of extremely poor people such as those in South Asia, Africa and Latin America to ensure their under-aged children are not employed by the manufacturing and export sectors. Conspicuously, the anti-child labour movement always focuses on the humanitarian aspects that condemn the exploitation of the under-aged as a source of cheap labour for employers and, in the process, depriving these less than fortunate children from going to school and growing up mentally and physically healthy. Western sociologists argue and warn that child labour tend to grow up as a frustrated lot and hardcore criminals in later life. It may sound cynical that the real objection to child labour from the rich is based on economic rather than social or humanitarian considerations. The humanitarian part is merely a mask. The main purpose behind the anti-child labour campaign by the rich is to prevent domestic manufacturers from using low-cost domestic child labour to improve the competitiveness of their wares against those of MNCs. Ironically, MNCs are the biggest employers of child labour (read rich children) to market their products. Even infants are not spared for the purpose. Well-to-do parents make fat additional income by deploying their well-fed cute looking under-aged children in commercial advertising, television serials, hoardings and cinema. Imagine global peddlers of nappies and baby toiletries such as Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, baby foods by GlaxoSmithKline and Nestle', so-called health drinks for growing children by Cadbury, Horlicks and Nestle', carbonated drinks by Coke and Pepsi, hamburgers by MacDonald and Burger King, Pizza by Dominos and Pizza Hut, breakfast cereals by Kellogg, sports goods by Nike and Adidas, electronic toys by Sony, makers of children's wears and services industry selling family comfort such as budget hotels, holiday resorts and airlines seats are banned from using children as their marketing tools! Children featuring in these ads and marketing campaigns are invariably drawn from well-to-do families. There is hardly any serious protest against the use of child labour in this category. There are not many reliable reports on the commercial exploitation of children from rich families by MNCs towards marketing and sales promotion of their products and services. This could be deliberate. However, the result of the first such serious attempt made in the USA, nearly 12 years ago, by an NGO revealed some awesome data about how kids in advertisements had been influencing buying decisions of US households. As late as in 2004, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conducted a different kind of study focusing on how advertising having a pervasive influence on children and adolescents. The AAP report said American children under 12 spent some $ 20 billion a year in buying things of their interest. Teenagers spent over $150 billion. Together, the adolescent influenced another $ 250-billion annual spend by their parents and guardians. These numbers must have gone up by 20-30 per cent by now. However, the AAP study is silent with regard to the number of children engaged by advertisement agencies to script their market promotion stories, their age group, shooting periods, time schedules (if during vacations, shooting during day time or at night, etc.) and fees paid to such kids or their agents. It has been noticed that well trained children engaged in commercials, earning good money, often turn out to be school drop-outs. Some of them even take to drugs and become petty criminals when out of job. Young Americans view some 40,000 advertisements per year on television alone. They are being increasingly exposed to commercials and pornography on the internet. The wannabes may disagree, the employment of babies and children in commercials and marketing is also becoming a serious threat to a healthy growth of the society by unwittingly bringing into the fore the rich-poor divide among children and their parents belonging to the two economic stratums. These advertisements and commercials are seen by children and their parents from the world of both haves and have-nots. They create desire which can't be fulfilled by the have-nots. They create social tension and encourage petty crime, theft and cheating among poor children. And, they also become easy victim of social, corporate and underworld exploitation. In India, poverty and growing high cost of living are driving hordes of poor children and their helpless parents to take up all kinds of odd and hazardous jobs to support families. To this large section of the society, suffering from abject poverty, the constitutional provision of 'free and compulsory education' for children in the age group of 6-14 years has little impact. The Indian constitution also prohibits employment of children under 14. With millions made to survive in starvation without even a permanent roof above their head, such provisions only mock at the constitution and the society. Fasting as a form of protest or mass communication tool may be a luxury of powerful politicians and so-called Gandhians, but it often acts as a forcible condition of daily living among millions of poor Indians without meals, many of who are compelled to go to the extent of selling children and taking up prostitution to fill their belly. The latest report of the Union labour ministry says that over 12.6 million children (under 14) are currently engaged in 'hazardous jobs' across the country. Seeing these kids working everywhere, the number seems to have been grossly under-reported. Children work in brick kilns, in dyeing and painting industry, shoe and sports goods manufacturing, diamond cutting and polishing, fireworks manufacturing, knitting and weaving, roads and buildings construction, loading-unloading jobs, packaging, pesticide spraying, floor sweeping, etc. They also work as domestic help, tea-boys in small eateries, attendants in small grocery shops, helpers in auto-repair shops and rag-tag pickers for dealers in domestic and industrial wastes meant for recycling. Thanks to the ban on 'child labour', these poor luckless children become victim of exploitation by their employers as well as the police, the partners of social extortion. The ban on child labour in the absence of a proper and realistic rehabilitation programme is doing more harm to poor children than if it were allowed under strict conditions, including award of minimum wage, cap on working hours and facilities for education and self-development, which discouraged their exploitation by dishonest employers. Undernourished slum-pups need social sanctuary and not job ban orders before some of them turn into 'slum-dog millionaires' for the glory and commercial exploitation of money-hungry movie makers, cashing in on the misery of the underprivileged. The writer can be reached at email: nan2benrg@yahoo.co.in