You will prepare and submit a term paper on Child Labor in India. Your paper should be a minimum of 2750 words in length.

You will prepare and submit a term paper on Child Labor in India. Your paper should be a minimum of 2750 words in length. It drops the children on the way, while the nearest village is 1 km. from the factory, the farthest one is about 20 km. The bus… reaches the last village from 8 to 9 p.m. The bus starts from that village between 3 to 4 a.m. with the last child and proceeds towards the factory. It reaches the factory premise around 6 a.m. The sleeping children are thereafter dumped into a hall to sleep up to 7 a.m. After that… they have their breakfast and start work” (Browne et al. 2005: 1).

After almost six decades of Independence and more than a decade after India joined the United Nations Convention on Child Rights, children in the country persist to be the most abandoned segment. Statistics show that India has 17 million child laborers, which is the highest in the world. Illiteracy regarding the fundamental rights of a child has resulted in a trouble-free violation of laws intended to safeguard and motivate children (Fan 2004). In homes, outside the safety of their houses, and in sweatshops, children are being oppressed and abused by many.

More than half of the laboring children, or 54%, are in the agricultural sector and mainly others are employed either in construction work, which is 15.5% or in a domestic occupation which is 18%. Approximately 5% are in manufacturing occupations, and the remaining, which is about 8%, are dispersed across other types of occupation. The table presents a gender-based division of working children and their educational circumstances. Please keep in mind that the data are for children in the age bracket of 5-14 years (Narayanan 2006, para 2).

Child labor in India is a serious and depressing problem. Children below the age of 14 are compelled to work in glass-blowing, pyrotechnics and most generally, carpet-manufacturing companies. While the Government of India discloses about 20 million children laborers, other NGO’s approximate the population to be near to 50 million. Most widespread in the northern section of India, the use of child labor has turned out to be a legitimate practice and is perceived by the local citizenry as fundamental to surpass the extreme poverty in the area (Murshed 2002).