Child labour is the exploitation of children and their childhood through any form of work in which they get involved into and lose their childhood. Childhood is the phase in one's life that needs proper care, guidance, access to basic necessities of life, love, and support.
According to the 2011 census it was found that out of a total 259.64 million children around the globe, 10.1 million were child labourers.
When we talk of child labour we talk of the children aged between 5 to 14 years working for a better living. These small-aged children can mostly be observed working on the roadside tea stall, factories, construction areas, and sometimes at our homes too.
While trying to communicate with these children, it was found that the lack of basic necessities leads their families to send them to work. The need to earn so as to be able to fulfill the basic necessities of all their family members acts as an invisible pressure on them for going out and working. These families do not even have enough financial resources and support to send their children to public schools. However, in most cases, the parents of these children willingly opt not to send their children to school in the dearth of enough awareness.
According to the survey of 2011, it was found that 22% of the people in India were below the poverty line who are directly or indirectly forced to work due to their poor family conditions.
In certain situations, it has been observed that the families send their children to work and earn even when they have other working members in the house who can earn enough to feed all the family members. In most of the cases, the reason for doing this was the lack of shelter and unwanted urge to migrate from one place to another. These families lack access to a permanent shelter and also a permanent source to income which is why they do not want their children to get admission into schools and engaging their children in some work is an idea that seems perfectly feasible to them.
Food isn't the only requirement but shelter too plays a major role in securing a safe and stable future for these families.
It has been so common for the children of needy families to go to work in an age of going to school that the children have happily accepted this as a part of their lives. However, this is not just a mere mistake and lack of awareness on the part of these unprivileged and underprivileged people but a failure on the part of the privileged part of the society. We, as a society, fail at all instances when we observe any small kid or child working hard to earn food for him/herself and the family in an age when he/she must have gone to school or played with his/her friends.
So, we can't say that they earn for their greed as it is part of their basic need which allows them to have food, clothes, and shelter.
But this doesn't prove that child labour should be promoted instead we should understand the situation and condition of these children seeking work at a very small age and rather try to provide their adult family members a permanent source of income.
It is a collective responsibility of all of us to keep a check on such instances and do whatever one can, in order to prevent any child from working or getting exploited. Let us all join hands and fight together against “Child Labour’.
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