Revision summary
Poverty and informal production are the main causes of child labour. Caste crafts and girls’ unpaid care add hidden work. RTE, bans and meals are the policy spine. Hazardous visible work fell more than home and farm work. COVID shocks showed how thin elimination still is.
Model answer
Introduction
Child labour in India is caused by poverty, informal production, and a family system that treats the child’s body as extra hands. State policy has reduced some of the most visible forms. It has not eliminated the work of children in homes, farms, and workshops.
Body
Main causes
- Agrarian and urban informal class structure: mazdoor households need the child’s wage or unpaid help.
- Caste-occupational inheritance: some crafts and sanitation still recruit children as a Ghurye-type lack of free occupation.
- Weak schooling: disparity that NEP names, plus costs and caste humiliation, push dropouts to work.
- Household patriarchy: girls’ care labour is child labour that statistics often miss.
- Migration and trafficking corridors supply cheap child hands to cities.
State policies
- Constitutional duties, the Child Labour Act as amended, RTE, and bans on hazardous work are the legal spine.
- Mid-day meals, ICDS, and scholarships try to change the incentive.
- Rescue and NCLP-type projects exist as missions.
How far elimination
- Hazardous factory visibility declined in some inspected sectors.
- Home-based, agricultural, and domestic child work persist, especially after COVID income shocks.
- Enforcement meets the same rural-development capture and informal employer.
- Success is real as a norm and partial as a count.
Sociological close
- Elimination needs social security for adults, not only a police van for children.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD P[Poverty informal caste] --> CL[Child labour] SCH[Weak school] --> CL POL[RTE bans meals] --> R[Partial reduction] INF[Home farm workshop] --> CL
Conclusion
Child labour’s causes are class, caste occupation, school failure, and gendered household work. State policies have named and reduced some hazardous forms. Elimination fails while informal India still needs the child’s time.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Is all help on the family farm child labour?
Hazard, hours, and lost school are the tests, not a single harvest day.
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Can bans work without wages for parents?
Poorly. Adult social security is the missing half of elimination.
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