"Shame upon such crimes! Shame upon us if we do not raise our voices against them!" Samuel Gompers, U.S. labor activist, 1881
With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families as well. They do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest skills of literacy. Many of them have been working since the age of four or five, and by the time they reach adulthood they will certainly be exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead by fifty.
Most or all of these children are working under some form of compulsion, whether from their parents, from the expectations attached to their caste, or from simple economic necessity. According to latest servey, at least fifteen million of them, however, are working as virtual slaves. These are the bonded child labourers of India. "Bonded child labour" refers to the phenomenon of children working in worst conditions in order to pay off a debt. The debt that binds them to their employer is incurred not by the children themselves, but by their relatives or guardians-usually by a parent. The children who are sold to these bond masters work long hours over many years in an attempt to pay off these debts.
Why does Indian government, the ruling elite, the business interests as a whole-tolerate this slavery in its midst? Bonded labour and child labour in India are inevitable. They are caused by poverty, it is not possible to change them by force.The government of India should demonstrate its commitment to the eradication of bonded child labour by implementing the effective programmes.
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