Child Labor on Indian Minister's Farm

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

NEW DELHI -

A television station broadcast a video of young boys plowing fields on a farm owned by India's rural development minister, an embarrassing revelation for a government that has tried to combat the country's widespread child labor problem.

Two boys were shown dragging a makeshift plow made from the trunk of a banana tree through rain-sodden fields owned by Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh in Bihar, a poor state in eastern India. Both the boys were barefoot and were wearing dirty, tattered clothing.

"It rained so much this year that the fields are still muddy and oxen and tractors cannot move on them," the minister's brother and farm manager, Raghuraj Prasad Singh, explains in the video broadcast on a number of television stations Monday and Tuesday.

Using children under 14 for farm work is illegal in India, and authorities in Bihar said they were investigating the matter. The boys in the video appeared to be around that age, but their exact ages were not stated.

Read more: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/12/12/ap4431970.html