India is heading towards becoming a economic super power with its ever growing economy. Yesterday the sensex reached a new high of 14, 664 points. The PM and his finance minister keep reiterating that India is destined to grow at fast pace. They want high growth rates, as high as 9 per cent.

Town are burgeoning, city population increasing everyday with people migrating from rural to urban areas. The earning capacity as well as the purchasing power of Indian are gradually increasing. The younger generation is earning a decent amount as salary at tender ages. Shopping malls and luxury goods are gaining market. All this sound really good. We are on a development track.

Is it really so?

Everyday I take two bitter doses of misery of India with plain water that may not be safe for the rich, purified water drinking Indians.

I generally eat out in modest restaurants and messes owing to my inability to cook [Not because I don’t know cooking]. Lunch at around 1pm and dinner at 10 pm. Both the time I see underage children working in those small food outlets-serving food, cleaning tables, washing dishes and at times even cooking in big hearths. Though a law exists in India prohibiting employment of children below 14 years in restaurants, hotels, tea stalls, homes and other similar places, it is rampantly violated. Almost every food outlet on roads and other corners depend heavily on these young workers.

The law also has a provision of fining the employer and also punishing him with a jail term, I haven’t heard of a single incidence of the law being enforced. Is the government serious about the law? I think it is there just to keep the government’s head high. We have enforced a ban on child labour in our country, they can always say. It’s a different matter altogether that it is never implemented.

Child labour is just not restricted to restaurants and hotels but every where. In a building next to the one in which I live, the safaiwala (cleaner) is a small boy who accompanies his father.

The problem of child labour cannot be tackled by any law but requires ground work. The children are forced to work because they have no other option. Children from poor families need to add to the income of their families to enable the family eat two meals. Even if their parents want to educate and give them a good life, their poverty and economic background forbids them to do so. Some children who run away from their homes also end up working in these small roadside enterprises.

If the government wants to curb the rampant child labour, it will have to provide good employment opportunity that enables them to feed their families. Once the parents are able to meet their family’s basic needs, children won’t be forced to work. They would then be able to go to the schools where they can build their futures. The government should work for providing employment for parents and education for their children. Thats how our children would get what they desrve as children; food, shelter, care and education.

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