Child Labor Persists in India Despite New Laws

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Voa News

By Steve Herman

It has been one year since laws went into effect in India banning children from working in homes, hotels and restaurants. But as VOA correspondent Steve Herman reports from New Delhi, there appears to be little progress in reducing the number of working children in India, believed to have more young laborers than any other nation in the world.

India has had laws since the 1930s banning children from working. Lawmakers pass new laws to protect children and ensure that even the most disadvantaged can receive an education.


Indian child sells jewelry on the street

But the pressure on poor children - often from their own parents - to work remains strong.

Pradeep Narayanan is in charge of policy and research at the advocacy group, Child Rights and You (CRY). "They stay back in villages and continue to work within their own family helping their parents, thus being deprived of various development opportunities," says Narayanan, "or they migrate with their parents, or they run away from the homes into the urban or semi-urban areas, where they start looking for various job options."

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