Poor people have lost faith in education and we have to restore that faith. In a recently launched book, even our Prime Minister has said that there are two major challenges facing our country. One is decreasing agrarian productivity and second is to make our unskilled employable.
So, in response to your question I would say that definitely there is some illegal money generated by children but if the law enforcement machinery is strong, if all of us - the civil society, the local government and the citizens - play the role of raising awareness on the issue, the problem can be attacked.
There are several studies which show that a child who completes 10th standard is seven times more productive than a child who goes for labour at an early age. These children become vulnerable to exploitation and many get addicted to bad habits including drug abuse.
I think, if India has to become a super power like China then it has to ensure that each child continues basic education even after 10th standard.
In our work to stop child labour, we faced many of challenges. The [weaving] looms used to hire child labours. The local NGOs merely used the child labourers to obtain foreign aid. Initially, it was hard to convince the children to leave their work and attend schools.
Then we built up our documentation. We used to identify the children who don't go to school in each village in Tamil Nadu's Kancheepuram district. A committee collected the data which was presented before the Panchayats of the villages. We also presented our data to representative of the District Collector, and in the end, we could prove the validity of our data.
We feel that it is difficult for a lone NGO to address the issue of child labour. We have to partner with other like-minded NGOs. We also need to make the community more responsible to address the issue of child labour and bring about a behavioural change within the society. The government should directly engage with the NGOs and the community to tackle child labour. A right approach of working with the volunteers in the village and promoting information on importance of education can act as powerful tools to eradicate this problem.
