India’s Progress Reducing Child Labor

New economy’s need for skilled labor sends India’s youth back to school.
Schooling has traditionally not been an option for many children in India’s rural families. With poverty widespread and high skilled jobs scarce, rural children typically have had to leave school early and join the workforce, earning what little they could to help feed their families.

But technology may be changing things for the better. Tech-based industries are growing quickly around India and are desperate for educated workers. Newly available jobs in software design, engineering, and communications promise young people lifestyles that they could never achieve with manual labor. Growing numbers of parents are taking note and are urging their children to stay in school.

School enrollment in India has consequently made a boost. UNESCO reports that, whereas 82% of boys and 69% of girls completed primary school in 2002, 87% of boys and 82% of girls completed primary school in 2005. Secondary school enrollment rose from 55% of boys and 41% of girls in 2002 to 59% of boys and 49% of girls in 2005.

“[Parents] see that there is this upward mobility, and the people who are benefiting are, more often than not, educated,” says Leona Christy, program manager for Pratham USA, the U.S.-based support arm of Pratham, one of many Indian education advocacy groups that work for more and better Indian schools.

In villages around India, parents and village leaders attend Pratham sponsored workshops on teaching and school administration methods. They also organize into PTA-like groups that press teachers, school administrators, and district officials for needed building improvements and more rigorous curricula.

“The concept of holding the government accountable is slowly building up,” says Christy. Pratham field coordinators teach parents basic math and reading, and also encourage parents to have their children read in front of them. Even if the parents cannot read, they can see if their children struggle over words.

Without parental advocacy, teachers may collect their salaries but skip teaching their students. If parents see a child is not learning, they can take the matter up with the teachers or school authorities.

These developments mark a considerable change from years past, when those parents might have expected their children to forgo study for work.

“Many would have said to you, ‘Why would we [send our children to school]? They are only going to work on the farm, anyway,’” Christy says. “Now, they are seeing the opportunities.”

Even those children who remain on the farm benefit from more schooling. Educated farmers are better able to weather food price fluctuations, droughts, and crop diseases by supplementing their farming income with nonfarm income, according to Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University professor of Indian political economy.

“They now find some other employment for a few months of the year. Sometimes they come into factories; they just come in for short periods and then they’re gone,” he says.

Education also enables farmers to stay more attuned to farming innovations. In 2006, the food and tobacco company ITC undertook construction of 6,500 “e-Choupal” kiosks (choupal is a Hindi word for village meeting place) that consist of crop depots with computer terminals. Farmers now can come with their produce, then go online to check market prices and sell at the best prices. They also can check weather reports, learn new farming practices, or shop for household and farming supplies. The information they glean leads to greater crop yields, higher profits, and cheaper pesticides, but getting these benefits requires literacy and computer skills.

In general, service industries — computer software, telecommunications, real estate, marketing, and other knowledge-based, high-skilled enterprises — have become increasingly important to India’s economy since the 1990s. The CIA World Factbook reports that, while services employ less than one-third of India’s labor force, they account for more than half of its economic output. That output has pushed India’s economy skyward: Gross domestic product grew on average 7% a year from 1997 through 2005, and by 8.5% in both 2006 and 2007.

Such a boom would end quickly, though, without a steady supply of educated workers. That supply has long been wanting in India, where, historically, only the children of the most affluent Indian families have received good educations.

The Indian government declared a long-term fix in December 2002 with the passage of the 86th Amendment, which decreed “free and compulsory education” for all children ages 6 to 14 by 2010. The government would build schools in communities that lacked them and hire new teachers to better staff the existing schools. It would also examine all schools, old and new, to make sure that all buildings and utilities were in working order.

In 2006, the government further encouraged youth education with a ban on children’s employment in the domestic and hospitality sectors. It referred children who were found working in these sectors to the National

Child Labor Projects, which provides them education and rehabilitation services.

The law cannot rescue every child. Economic desperation still pushes many poor families to put their children to work. Mira Kamdar, a World Policy Institute senior fellow who has written numerous articles and books on India, has come across more than one child servant at a well-to-do house during her visits to India.

“These people can’t afford not to have their children work. A child in these families who doesn’t work basically doesn’t eat,” Kamdar says, noting that more than half of India’s population lives on less than 50¢ a day. “India remains, for all the growth and the tens of millions enjoying a First World lifestyle, a very poor country.”

Still, the CIA World Factbook states that poverty has declined 10% since 1997. And many of those in India who remain poor are increasingly hopeful.

“There is a recognition among them that education is a way out of poverty,” says Panagariya.

— Rick Docksai

Sources: “Web Kiosks Lure Indian Farmers as Retailers Target Rural Market,” by Subramaniam Sharma, Bloomberg News (May 15, 2007).

“India Against Child Labour,” World of Work (December 2007), International Labour Office. Interviews: Leona Christy, Pratham USA.; Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University; Mira Kamdar, World Policy Institute.

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