Child Development

The children are very important for any nation. Their needs and right should not be attended merely as a bye product of progress. They should be attended as an end and means of progress. Unless this change is achieved all investments in food production, community service and human resource development would remain less effective because the children constitute a significant proportion of the people and they would not be able to contribute fully to them nor benefit full from them. WE must not forget that the children are the ultimate goal for development and also the most effective tool for development. WE must also realize that the efforts for advance in the human condition must start as early as possible beginning with the child and with

Children who are brought up in an environment, which is conducive to their intellectual, physical and social health, grow up to be responsible and productive members of society. Every nation links its future with the present status of its children. By performing work when they are too young for the task, children unduly reduce their present welfare or their future income earning capabilities, either by shrinking their future external choice sets or by reducing their own future individual productive capabilities. Under extreme economic distress, children are forced to forego educational opportunities and take up jobs which are mostly exploitative as they are usually underpaid and engaged in hazardous conditions. Parents decide to send their child for engaging in a job as a desperate measure due to poor economic conditions. It is, therefore, no wonder that the poor households predominantly send their children to work in early ages of their life.

One of the disconcerting aspects of child labour is that children are sent to work at the expense of education. There is a strong effect of child labour on school attendance rates and the length of a child’s work day is negatively associated with his or her capacity to attend

If we include the part time workers, this number shoots up to 3.22 mn. The working children are primarily boys who carry the burden of the patriarchal social construct in their roles as protectors/ providers of the family and at that young age have to shoulder the responsibilities of the family. Still India has for education and development of a girl child and not for a boy child. Child Labour, consisting of children below 14 years of age, is defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as the type of work performed by children that deprives them of their childhood and their dignity, which hampers their access to education and acquisition of skills and which is performed under conditions harmful to their health and their development. Children are the greatest gift to humanity and the same gift is being misused for personal gains as child labour. They constitute 36% of India population but a large majority of children in the age group of 5-14 years continue to remain in distress and turmoil. One in every five children below the age of 14 is a