Habibullah, 13, (name changed) remembers the day he went to work at the tailoring shop in his village. Covid-19 was sweeping through West Bengal in India devastating families already living on the edge of poverty.
“I felt like crying,” Habib said of that traumatic time in March last year. “I wanted to continue with my studies, but there I was at the shop, getting bullied by senior employees for not being able to hold scissors properly.”
His father Asaad (45) and mother Firdausi (39) are farm labourers who did not attend school, but they dreamed of giving their son an education. Their hopes were dashed as the pandemic persisted through 2021.
Asaad had found work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a national government scheme that ensures people living below the poverty line receive 100 days of work in a calendar year. But that work dried up during India’s second pandemic lockdown, plunging the family into crisis again.
The family’s ration from the Public Distribution System, a government programme to help ease food insecurity was not enough to feed Habib, his parents and 17-year-old sister Rabiya. His brother Asadullah (19) had left to work as a labourer in a neighbouring state. With the family under severe strain, Habib had to quit school and go to work in the tailoring shop.
“I do not want my son to have the same fate as ours,” recalled Firdausi. “What parents would want their children to start earning at this tender age? But the present situation forced us to send Habib to work. We would have starved otherwise.”
As Covid-19 destroyed jobs and livelihoods in the past two years, many low-income families faced the same dilemma and sent their children out to work or into early marriages.
As schools now reopen after prolonged lockdowns, authorities and child aid agencies fear the pandemic has left behind a lost generation. This has prompted calls for urgent action to aid low-income families, help children catch up as they return to school, and accelerate efforts to stamp out child labour by 2025 – a global target agreed by India and other United Nations members.
The number of child workers worldwide rose to 160 million worldwide in 2020, the first increase in two decades, United Nations agencies said in a June report released as part of the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour. Without urgent action, nine million more children are at risk of being pushed into the workforce by the end of 2022, the report said, likely delaying the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 to eliminate all forms of child labour by 2025.
Pandemic and poverty
Poverty is a primary cause of child labour and the pandemic made things worse. The World Bank in 2020 warned that 12 million Indians could face extreme poverty due to pandemic-related job losses. Campaign against Child Labour, an NGO focused on child rights, said in a report that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 per cent increase in child labour.
The pandemic has also skewed the labour market. As Indian factories reopened after two years of financial losses, there was a shortage of adult labour due to migration during the pandemic. Factories also sought cheaper sources of labour, including children and adolescents. With schools closed due to pandemic lockdowns and many family incomes under strain, sons and daughters were sent to work in garment factories, sweetshops, brick kilns, farms and restaurants. They work long hours, earn low wages and are mostly unaware of their rights or unable to challenge their employers over harsh working conditions.
For example, Habibullah worked 8 to 10 hours a day and earned up to 150-200 rupees ($1.97-2.63) a day, stitching, sewing and colouring clothing that is collected every evening and sent to larger factories in the cities.
Authorities across India are working to gather national data on child labour, early marriages and school dropout rates during the pandemic. But evidence from one rural district visited by News Sense in West Bengal suggests 30-50% of students have not yet returned to the classroom.
Child rights advocates and teachers are contacting students at home to determine if they are working and help them find a way back to school. Those who do come back often have difficulty reading and writing as they could not maintain their studies at home during lockdowns.
In urban schools visited by News Sense, teachers gave similar accounts of students struggling to catch up with their studies after a two-year absence.
“Schools are just opening now after being closed for two years and it will take some time to assess the damage,” Ananya Chakraborti, Chairperson of the West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, told News Sense.
“We have been encouraging children to come back to schools, individual teachers are reaching out to students at home to find out why they are not coming,” she said, adding that it would take three months to collect data of school dropout rates and confirm what teachers are already seeing in their classrooms.
Child marriages
Child rights experts also worry about the impacts from a rise in child marriages during the pandemic.
Amina, a 15-year-old student, had always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. But her hopes were dashed when Covid-19 struck West Bengal. Her father, Md. Karim Molla, a 47-year-old seasonal farm worker, said his financial worries had started when employers began paying lower wages as migrant workers returned to their district last year. The reduced pay meant Karim could no longer afford to pay 1,000 INR ($13) for Amina’s school fees and other educational needs.
Amina soon had to leave school to help with the household chores and care for her two brothers and sister living in the family’s two-room mud hut. The family saw a ray of hope in February 2021 when Karim found work through the MGNREGA programme, but he was unemployed by April when another pandemic wave forced India to lock down again.
With the family’s income under strain, Karim decided to accept a friend’s marriage proposal for Amina, who was 14 at the time.
Lost childhoods
We have been observing a growing trend of increase in child labor in West Bengal and we are trying to create awareness about more aspirational goals for both boys and girls,” said UNICEF India’s State Chief for West Bengal Mohammad Mohiuddin.
He is also concerned about the pandemic impacts on access to education, child development and safety, particularly for girls pushed into early marriages.
“According to our U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), every child has the right to have a safe and happy childhood. But if in that age she is being married off, it not only affects her physically but also her mental wellbeing,” Mohiuddin said, adding that child brides face the risk of violence because they are not prepared for a physical relationship or are too young to understand the social responsibilities that come with marriage. These young brides are ending up with teenage pregnancy with complications of delivery and often become victims of maternal mortality and morbidity.
In West Bengal, youth clubs can play a key role in keeping boys and girls in school, “Our biggest strengths are Kanyashree Clubs and Nina Macha,” said Chakraborti. “Child members of the club have done exemplary work, but during the lockdown the schools were closed, so these clubs couldn’t function properly and now…it will take at least 3 months to assess the situation and how much we can repair things initially and then policy level decisions will be taken.”
Call to action
Experts suggest better access to social protection schemes, direct benefit transfers and livelihood support for poor and vulnerable families can help children escape the workplace and return to the classroom. Attention has turned to the corporate sector and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes can be re-tooled to address child labour and access to education.
Observers note that most CSR activities were focused on distributing masks and sanitizers to children during the pandemic and, in some cases, providing meals to underprivileged children. These activities should now be re-directed to reducing child labour and return children to the classroom, child advocates say.
Save the Children, a nonprofit child rights group, said its “Safe Back to School” initiative works with donor partners, the private sector and governments to address child labour and other barriers to access to learning.
Prabhat Kumar, Deputy Director for Child Protection at Save the Children described the “Safe Back to School” initiative to News Sense
“The model aims to adopt a ‘continuum of care’ approach towards effectively rehabilitating and preventing child labour. The strategy consists of:
Direct action with working children, youth and those at risk to improve their existing situations and offer them opportunities for schooling and learning vocational skills to provide them with a better future. Further, specific categories of children in labour found to be in need of care and protection (abandoned, orphaned, abused) and extensive support, to be referred to Child Welfare Committees& District Child Protection Units of the district for institutionalization and further support as per the law of the land (ie: Juvenile Justice Act 2015).
Sensitisation with institutions, employers, manufacturers, communities and other stakeholders to improve awareness of their responsibilities and build their capacity in combating child labour. This includes working with business houses on recognising child rights in business principles and working with them to make their supply chain ‘safe for children’.
Advocacy and capacity building with key institutions and duty bearers, both directly and indirectly, responsible for the eradication of child labour in country, in order to develop linkages within existing institutions, strengthen their capacities to implement child labour legislation and policies, and bring about progressive changes in the methods used to tackle child labour.
Other child rights experts suggested additional actions:
- Expand food and social security schemes for poor and marginalized communities
- Provide skills training and employment opportunities for adult family members to ensure households are economically secure
- Tighten labour laws against children in the workforce, increase inspections at factories and small enterprises
- Strengthen the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) and District Child Labour Task Forces to identify incidents of forced labour, trafficking and rescue and/or rehabilitate child workers
- Provide Gram Panchayat and other self-governing or local authorities with adequate resources to eliminate child labour practices in their jurisdictions.
“I will protect every child”
Meanwhile, activists and local protection committees are already showing what can be done to save children like Amina, who was rescued after authorities were alerted to her impending marriage and intervened. She is now back in school.
In Habibullah’s case, Sima Mal, a community frontline worker for Save the Children, heard about his situation and reached out to his parents and teacher to discuss the former Class 5 student’s rights and return him to school.
“As soon as I came to know about Habibullah, I immediately raised the alarm with the Village-Level Child Protection Committee. Joining the labour force at this age is illegal. It’s his right to complete his elementary education,” recalled Sima Mal.
She also discussed child protection and labour laws with the owner of the tailoring shop, and requested the village Panchayat and Village-Level Child Protection Committee step up their monitoring of vulnerable children.
“I will protect every child from my village. Whatever it takes. I’ll ensure a good life for every child,” she said.
Meanwhile, Habibullah is happily back in school although he still works at the shop 15 hours a week to fulfill the remainder of his contract. “I am happy with my studies and friends in school, but I will never forget the nightmare I have gone through,” he said.
Report and Photographs: Joydeep Dasgupta
This story was written and produced as part of a media skills development programme delivered by Thomson Reuters Foundation. The content is the sole responsibility of the author and the publisher
Very good story