Child labour: Remove with social participation

An individual with a clear vision can make a big difference in society. Anal Arasu is one such person trying to change the destiny of the villagers in Kancheepuram district.

The Project Manager for Hand in Hand, an NGO at Kancheepuram, Arasu strains to bring about a change, improve education among children, eradicate child labour and get micro financing take over the role of the money lender.

At a training centre in Chinna Kancheepuram where he addressed a seminar on, “Child Labour Elimination” he emphasised how parents and children needed to be aware of a world outside in order to aim for a better future. He explained, “A child drops out of school and starts working for a meagre amount, because staying in the school seems a waste of time. There are no guarantees, even after completing school; he will do the same job so he starts to supplement the family income. And with no one in the community to suggest otherwise, the child becomes a labourer. It is lack of social responsibility more than poverty that causes child labour.”

Amongst many projects that Arasu managed, giving ration supplies to the children in schools had yielded best results. Under the project funded by Hand in Hand, Sweden, each student’s family was granted ration worth Rs.500 every month. This rations included rice, millets, toothpaste, soap etc. Arasu said that he did not believe in forcibly keeping the children in school, he said, “There has to be incentive and motivation to go to school instead of punishment in failing to go.”

A firm believer in participatory learning, Arasu said that education needed to be associated with happiness instead of boredom. Keeping track of attendance and lecturing on the evils of child labour was not effective in solving the problem because it was just a link in the vicious circle of poverty, he explained. He added that because child labour was only a link, one had to pay attention to all the other links like occupation, poverty, health, micro credit etc. Arasu is also heading projects involving Women self help groups (SHGs), Citizen Centres, Health and hygiene and Solid waste management.

Although the government considered children to be child labourers if they belonged to the age group nine-14 yrs, in reality, he said, the age group involved all those upto-20 years. Child labour is prevalent in poverty stricken households where each member of the family added to the family income.

According to Arasu, “We lose sight of our goal if we segregate it from the larger picture, if you aim to eradicate only child labour in a community you will never succeed unless you improve the finances of the community by micro credit, assist them in setting up institutions like citizen centres and schools and provide them with basic health and hygiene facilities.”

Arasu was all for creating awareness because awareness generated action. He believed that instead of having inspectors to check child labour it was more effective to create Child Right Protection Communities. Because when the community felt responsible for the future of the children it would take affirmative action. It is only when an entire community feels responsible that an issue, as complex as child labour, can be tackled.

Tags: child labour, India, social responsibility