What's going on?

With all laws, India's stance on child labour seems pretty firm. The reality, though, isn't quite as simple. While the nation has child labour laws, they're hard to enforce, particularly in the rural areas of India where child labour is most prevalent and where many villages are barely connected to state infrastructure. Officially, each state of India (India has 29 states) is responsible for enforcing child labour within its own borders but many face issues of funding and administration.

On top of this, India's judicial system is dramatically overwhelmed and severely backlogged and child labour violations can easily slip through the cracks. Even when cases are prosecuted correctly, in some places the penalties for those using child labour is as little as a $160 fine and 3 months in jail, which isn't enough to serve as a practical deterrent.

So, what's going on? Why don't the people of India just stop using child labour? As much as the international community dislikes the practice, we can't ignore that it's a firmly-established tradition in many places. Traditions are hard enough to change as it is but this is especially true when families have few economic opportunities. For many families in India, giving up child labour means giving up an entire income, which could plunge them into absolute poverty. For some employers, particularly in less-developed areas, using child labour is the only way to create local products cheap enough to be competitive with international mass-produced goods. So, it's a tricky subject.

Live in poverty

Work and begging are different categories of children’s activities that give them an identity through their communication with costumers and other working children. As the author Antonella Invernizzi puts it, child work has three functions:

• The function of support: The child brings home some money with which s/he supports the family income or with which the family can finance her/his education.
• The function of socialisation: The child learns new abilities and learns to appreciate the value of work. Furthermore s/he learns to appreciate the solidarity within the family.
• The function of continuation: With the learned abilities the child is able to support the family with her/his earnings and can be autonomous if the parents die. 

However, due to cultural and economic factors, these goals remain difficult to meet. For instance, the act does nothing to protect children who perform domestic or unreported labor, which is very common in India. In almost all Indian industries girls are unrecognized laborers because they are seen as helpers and not workers. Therefore, girls are therefore not protected by the law. Children are often exploited and deprived of their rights in India, and until further measures are taken, many Indian children will continue to live in poverty.

Poor children in India

Poor children in India begin working at a very young and tender age. Many children have to work to help their families and some families expect their children to continue the family business at a young age.

India has always stood for constitutional, statutory and developmental measures that are required to eliminate child labour in India. Indian Constitution consciously incorporated relevant provisions in the Constitution to secure compulsory universal elementary education as well as labor protection for children. Though most children begin working at a young age due to economic reasons, doing so allows them to break from some social constraints.

India’s policy on child labour has evolved over the years against this backdrop. The present regime of laws relating to Child Labor in India have a pragmatic foundation and are consistent with the International Labour Conference resolution of 1979.

The policy of the government is to ban employment of children below the age of fourteen years in factories, mines and hazardous employment and to regulate the working conditions of children in other employment. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 seeks to achieve this basic objective.