Barrier of lack of data in response to child labor & more related news here

The merger of the National Child Labor Project (NCLP) with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) marked a strategic shift in the prevention of child labor 2 in India. The merger of the NCLP with the SSA in 2022 brought about a major change in the way child labor is addressed, as it led to the closure of special schools for rescued child workers, and the new policy states that all rescued children must now go to regular schools under the SSA system. The parliamentary standing committee on labour, textiles and skills development has noted that the merger may not effectively handle the specific tasks of enforcing laws, rescuing and rehabilitating child labourers, raising concerns over whether focusing solely on school enrollment can really solve the problem of child labour. The parliamentary panel noted that child labor is a complicated issue that needs a clear plan and funding, along with a specific structure within the Ministry of Labor and Employment, which is responsible for enforcing the Child and Adolescent Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. The ongoing rescue of many child laborers across the country, even after the major policy change, supports the Committee’s suggestion that the ministry should reconsider the merger of the NCLP Scheme with the SSA and study the possibility of re-establishing a specific program to eliminate and rehabilitate child labor. The institutional recalibration recommended by the parliamentary committee justifies urgent government action. The commission has rightly observed that the effective elimination of child labor depends mainly on timely identification and rescue operations, which are the responsibility of labor control mechanisms. Fears are justified that the discontinuation of the NCLP as a stand-alone project to strengthen identification, rescue and rehabilitation mechanisms could potentially weaken the capacity of the states built in recent years. Children’s rights activists and educators argue that regular schools cannot provide the specialized care needed by a rescued child worker, which can only be provided by trained professionals in a specialized ecosystem. Once these children gradually get used to the classroom environment, they prepare and gain the confidence to enter the regular school ecosystem. Due to the closure of parallel schools, the Ministry of Labor stopped maintaining data on child workers, and updated data will only be available after the 2027 census. The available data on child labor dates back to the 2011 Census data, which does not provide a true picture. The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2024-25 report on school education released by the Ministry of Education highlighted that the country had seen a notable reduction in school dropout rates at the Preparatory, Middle and Secondary levels. The UDISE report shows that in the preparatory stage the rate decreased from 3.7% to 2.3%; in the intermediate stage, from 5.2% to 3.5%; and in the secondary stage, from 10.9% to 8.2% in 2024-25 compared to the previous years, 2022-23 and 2023-24. The government stated that the decline in dropout rates reflects the effectiveness of initiatives designed to keep children in schools, which is commendable. However, the figures also indicate that a large number of children remain out of school, and a considerable proportion of them could be working in restaurants, brick kilns, factories or domestic industrial units, which is a cause for serious concern. The lack of reliable data on child labor makes it difficult to adequately evaluate and improve policies and programs aimed at stopping it. Sensitizing parents to send their children to school alone cannot eliminate child labor unless the financial needs of households struggling with poverty and who see the income of children in the family as an important contribution to daily survival are addressed through income replacement plans and projects. Interventions such as cash transfer schemes, subsidized rations, midday meals, etc., play a crucial role in income replacement and reducing family burdens, which encourage downtrodden households to send their children to school and complete their education. Identifying the genuine beneficiaries of such interventions is critical to achieving the desired objectives as deprivation of needy households due to irregularities or anomalies in implementation can trap them in a vicious cycle of poverty and child labour. This calls for a strong monitoring and supervision mechanism of various social welfare schemes, including those aimed at curbing child labour. If a State still suffers from a lot of child labor, there is no reason to be complacent about reducing it there. This is because child labor anywhere makes children from other areas more likely to be trafficked for cheap labor. Closing administrative and data gaps is essential to ensure a coordinated response from various ministries and departments, such as education, labour, women and children, and social welfare. Eliminating child labor requires decisive action, carried out with speed and determination.