https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIGO%2F2018%2F04%2F27&entity=Ar01014&sk=3A06D9E3&mode=text
Just beyond the neon glare of Tourism Goa lurks a tawdry secret. Thousands of voiceless, nearly invisible children toil in terrible conditions. According to a new research paper by Goa University assistant professor Siddhesh Sinai Shilimkhan, entitled ‘Socio-economic study of child labour in beach shack restaurants in Goa’, at least 7000 highly vulnerable child labourers are regularly subjected to 14-16 hour workdays on the coastal belt, where they are forced to work late into the night, fed highly irregularly, and illegally deprived of weekly holidays and regular leave. Much the same is the case away from the shoreline, where additional thousands of children work in restaurants, markets, farms and private homes across Goa. To India’s credit, the country has a remarkable Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (also known as RTE) which makes education a fundamental right of every child between the age of 6 and 14, and requires official surveys to monitor all neighborhoods, identify children requiring education, and set up facilities for providing it. All this has been praised by the World Bank, as “the first legislation in the world that puts the responsibility of ensuring enrolment, attendance and completion on the Government” thus easing the burden of the millions of poverty-stricken parents around the country. But legislation without implementation is meaningless. Shilimkhan found that over 70% of Goa’s child labourers remain illiterate. Unlike most of the rest of the world, it is not illegal for children to work in India, though only under certain circumstances. The controversial Child Labour Act of 1986 specifies a ban for only some specific “hazardous” occupations, prohibiting employment in ports, abattoirs, foundries, mines, plastic units, beedi making, carpet weaving and a list of other industries. There is considerable leeway for minors who help their families in traditional pastimes like farming, and making handicrafts. All this is understandable for a country where a huge percentage of the population still struggles with the circumstances of extreme poverty, and whose popular Prime Minister was himself a child labourer in his father’s business of a tea stall at Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat. That experience has now become central to Narendra Modi’s mystique. Keeping in mind there is no excuse for exploitative child labour in Goa, which is India’s richest state from multiple standpoints, it is essential to understand why the pernicious problem is sustained by constant influx of desperate migrant children. In fact, they are fleeing even worse conditions at home. As highlighted by the most recent, deeply shocking National Nurition Monitoring Bureau survey, rural India is experiencing a wrenching crisis of diminished nutrition that affects children the most. Compared to what we are usually taught to think of the “bad old days of socialism” in 1975-79, average daily consumption has gone down by 550 calories, 13 gm protein, 5 mg iron, 250 mg calcium and 500 mg vitamin A. Children are drinking 80 ml of milk per day instead of the 300 ml they require, and now over 40% are officially malnourished. In its own report, ‘India: Undernourished Children: A Call for Reform and Action’, the World Bank pulls no punches. “Given its impact on health, education and productivity, persistent undernutrition is a major obstacle to human development and economic growth in the country, especially among the poor and the vulnerable, where the prevalence of malnutrition is highest. The progress in reducing the proportion of undernourished children in India over the past decade has been modest and slower than what has been achieved in other countries with comparable socioeconomic indicators. While aggregate levels of undernutrition are shockingly high, the picture is further exacerbated by the significant inequalities across states and socioeconomic groups – girls, rural areas, the poorest and scheduled tribes and castes are the worst affected – and these inequalities appear to be increasing.” Malnourished children means compromised adults, which puts at risk every grandiose policy project aimed at powering India into a better future. Forget superpower status, this is simple nuts and bolts which other countries long ago tackled in a single generation. Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel Peace Price winner, says, “I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor…If not now, then when? If not you, then who? If we are able to answer these fundamental questions, then perhaps we can wipe away the blot of human slavery.”