Child labourers may be declining in sheer numbers yet more children are at work in the Asia-Pacific region than the rest of the world combined.
A global report has noted that while there was a 26% decline in the number of children employed (between the age group of 5-14 years) from 122.3 million to 96.4 million across the world, but in absolute terms, Asia-Pacific region had the most child labourers at 113.6 million (aged 5-17 years) compared to sub-Saharan Africa (65.1 million) and Latin America and Caribbean (14.1 million).
The International Labour Organisation’s ‘Accelerating action against child labour’ report said that 42% of these children were employed in hazardous work. The global estimate for child labourers according to ILO is about 215 million in 2008, down from 222 million in 2004. India has 445 million children, Bangladesh 64 million, and Pakistan 70 million, as compared to, for example, China’s 348 million. ‘‘In sheer numbers, India and Pakistan have by far the largest out-of-school child population in the world,’’ the report said.
The study said there was a ‘‘stark contrast in political commitment’’ to universal education and poverty reduction. While China took more people out of poverty than any other country since 1979, and put most of its children into basic education, this goal had often proved elusive in South Asia.
For one, India still devotes about the same proportion of national income to education (about 3.5%) that it did in the mid-1980s. The report also pointed out that institutional capacity to implement policies and programmes and enforce legislation remained a major challenge with rural indebtedness and poverty crippling the economy.
Of India’s 370 million informal economy workers, 236 million are found in agriculture. According to official data, nearly 25% of the rural population are reported to be below the poverty line. By World Bank definitions of poverty, over 75% of Indians are probably below the poverty line. As a consequence, there is a huge problem of rural indebtedness affecting 82% of farmers in Andhra, and around 50% of farmers nationwide.
Incidentally, four states account for 40% of the country’s child workers. The report cites data collected by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, which reported in 2007, that a much larger labour pool of out-of-school children could be considered as potential child labourers.