The Hindu

• Study was conducted in Bidar, Chamarajanagar
• One-third of boys involved in agricultural labour in the districts

Bangalore, Jun 15: Most debates on child labour in the recent past have revolved around children doing domestic work and working in the hospitality industry. But the alarming magnitude of child labour in the agricultural sector — rated the most hazardous along with construction and mining — has remained relatively out of media focus.

A recent study in Bidar and Chamarajanagar districts by the Centre for Decentralisation and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, sheds more light on this dark area. The study, which provides the baseline data for International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) child labour project in the State, provides indicators of not only the large number of children that the sector employs but also the social conditions that push them to work in rural areas.

The study conducted in 80 villages and urban wards in the two districts (covering 40,206 children) indicates that 49 per cent of all the child labourers in Bidar and 42 per cent of those in Chamarajanagar are involved in agricultural labour. The next important sector in Bidar was livestock rearing, while it was plantation in Chamarajanagar. The other sectors accounting for 5-10 per cent of child workers were small hotels and restaurant, shops and establishments, construction work and stone quarrying.

About one-third of boys in both Bidar and Chamrajanagar districts were involved in agricultural labour. The other sectors in which boys found employment were livestock rearing, garages, hotels, shops, construction, stone quarrying, sectors where girls often do not find work. Nearly 80 per cent of the girl child labourers in Bidar and 52 per cent of those in Chamarajanagar were agricultural labourers. The study found that a significant number of children employed in agriculture, besides livestock rearing and construction, was paying off their parents’ debts. Typically, the parents were themselves landless labourers and belonged to oppressed castes and minority communities.
The ILO brought out a pamphlet that focuses on hazardous child labour in agriculture on Anti-Child Labour Day earlier this week.

Hazardous

Sanjiv Kumar, National Project Coordinator of ILO’s Karnataka Child Labour Project, says that while participation in family farm activities helps children learn valuable skills, children working for wages or to pay off debts in other people’s farms is exploitative and hazardous.

The hazards involved in agriculture include handling of heavy machinery and tools, long hours of work, extreme weather conditions and handling of toxic material such as pesticides. As many as 22 per cent of those employing child labour said that they were not aware of the statutory ban on it.

But a more alarming discovery of the study is that that 78 per cent of the respondents employed children although they knew about the law. The Education Department’s census for 2006 showed that there were 75,825 children who are not going to schools in the State as a whole.

But the study shows a different picture. In Bidar district alone, the projected number of children who never attended school is 9,729 (5–14 years) and 6,112 (15–17 years). In Chamarajanagar district, it is 1,912 (5–14 years) and 2,181 (15–17 years).

The projected number of children who dropped out of schools were 12,752 (5–14 years) and 13,932 (15–17 years) in Bidar, and 8,464 (5-14 years) and 14,815 (15–17 years) in Chamarajanagar.