The Kerala difference

A boy working in a hotel in Thiruvananthapuram. Though child labour is declining in the State, children of school-going age still work as domestics and street vendors, in hotels and in various other occupations. - S. MAHINSHA

AS Kerala celebrates the 50th anniversary of its formation, it can be proud of an important facet of its society: the determination among all sections of people to send children to school.

Consider this anecdote quoted in a recent survey report titled "Kerala Study: How Kerala Lives, How Kerala Thinks" by the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the people's science movement. It says: "Joseph is a labourer. He got a house and a small piece of land [from the government] during the decentralisation campaign. But the building is incomplete. He works hard as a habit. But his home does not have basic amenities. Asked why, Joseph said: `I work hard for the educational progress of my children. Other things can wait.'"

All over the State, one can see such people, especially among the poor, belonging to all castes and religions, proclaiming the prime reason behind their everyday toil: the education of their children, the one factor that often gets priority over almost all other needs.

Such a pervasive determination in society finds most of the children in the 6-14 age group in schools rather than in places of hazardous, menial occupations. Kerala has a very low incidence of child labour, in spite of widespread poverty and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

Census figures show that there were 1.11 lakh child labourers in Kerala in 1971, 92,854 in 1981, 34,800 in 1991 and 26,156 in 2001. A State government survey in 1996 concluded that there were only 10,067 child labourers; another one, conducted in 2004 by the State Statistics Department, said there were only 375 children, but it was rejected by the Labour Department as "unreliable".

The Department is about to organise a survey that will aim at providing a reasonable estimate of the number of children still involved in hazardous jobs after the amended law came into force on October 10.

The trend is declining, all agree, but children of school-going age in the State still work as domestics and street traders and in wayside restaurants and hotels, the construction sector, the cashew industry, brick kilns, railway yards, marble-polishing and prawn-peeling sheds and in the fisheries sector.

"Poverty, broken families, sick parents, poor educational attainments and destitution still drive children to work for a living in Kerala. Some are there to learn a family trade. A silent lot work as maids. Most are migrants to the urban centres and many come from neighbouring States," says Celine Sunny, chief coordinator of the Research Institute of the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in Kochi, which has conducted studies on child labour in Kerala, including one sponsored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Fr. Philip Parakatt of the Don Bosco Society (an agency engaged in the rehabilitation of children) and director of Childline in Thiruvananthapuram told Frontline that the number of child labourers in Kerala today would definitely be "over 10,000" but 90 per cent of them, significantly, are migrants from States such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Bihar.

According to Prakash S. Oliver, Additional Labour Commissioner and Nodal Officer for the Prevention of Child Labour in the State, children below the age of 14 are still employed as domestics and in dhabas, restaurants, hotels, motels, teashops, resorts and recreational centres. Raids conducted by the Labour Department since the amendment to the 1986 Act came into force on October 10 have indicated that the case of boys and girls engaged in domestic work is especially rampant and well established through a network of agents in the Muslim-dominated northern districts.

In south Kerala, migrant businessmen from neighbouring States bring with them children "of relatives" to work 12 to 18 hours in restaurants or as attendants in provision shops. About 5,000 such children from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have returned home in the first two weeks after the raids began in the southern districts, according to the official.

Only 22 children were "rescued" by the Department, mostly in Thiruvananthapuram, and were sent home to their parents.

Traders who descend on tourist centres such as Kovalam from Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka similarly bring groups of children to work for them in massage parlours and in handicraft and petty trades during the peak tourist season. They invariably refer to the children as "relatives" but most of them are "physically, mentally and sexually exploited". In an inquiry conducted in early October, the Department identified 300 such children in the tourist resort of Kovalam, Prakash said.

There are a sizeable number of children working in cashew factories, brick kilns and mosaic-polishing units too. However, in most cases, the government finds it hard to rehabilitate rescued children, even though the State has, in addition to the juvenile homes and welfare centres run by the government, a variety of support structures run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and religious groups. For example, there are over 2.5 lakh cashew workers in Kollam district,and in most cases, since women too are employed in the factories, they find it safer to take their children - especially the girls - along when they go to work, rather than leave them alone in the housing colonies. In the case of migrant children, though temporary shelters may be available, education is a problem as most of them do not understand the local language, Prakash said. They are forced to return to poverty and hunger in their native States.

According to Fr. Philip, among the most paying options available to children is beggary organised by agents or families, especially on trains, in railway stations and at bus stops.

Day-long `labour' on seven or eight crowded trains, with 10 to 12 bogies, that shuttle between two major stops would fetch a child a total of at least Rs.200 to Rs.300 a day. Back-breaking work in hotels fetches Rs.40 to Rs.70 a day. In many cases where agents are involved, a bulk amount is paid to the child's family in advance after deducting the agent's commission. The children earn nothing for themselves.

Street children have been found to spend their entire day's wages immediately on food, watching adult movies, or buying drugs, alcohol and other addictive substances; they feel insecure carrying money on them. These children are a challenge to those involved in their rehabilitation, he said. But such a microscopic, critical view of the child labour scene in Kerala should not deflect attention from the larger picture that the State offers in comparison to other regions in India.

Kerala's low incidence of child labour undoubtedly presents a lesson on how an entire society can be tuned to send its children to school even though it may still be struggling with poverty and relatively low family incomes.

The State achieved it by dismantling extreme forms of gender and caste discrimination and class oppression that had all along been a curse of universal education. It is the result of a historical process that is at the very root of all the acclaimed social and development achievements of Kerala. It includes the late 19th century activities of Christian (mainly Protestant) missionaries that bore the seeds of educational and social reforms, the wholehearted support that they received from the enlightened rulers of the State, the importance that a largely matrilineal society gave to the health and education of women, and the various social reforms and Left movements that had helped demolish social and class barriers and eventually led to a revolutionary transformation of agrarian relations in the State.

At the centre of all this is the progressive attitude Kerala society had displayed towards the survival and education of women. Today, Kerala has achieved a demographic transition (low birth rate-low death rate) that has effectively reduced the school-age population. The State has one lower primary school for every square kilometre and a high school for every 4 sq. km.

Enrolment at the primary level is near universal, and there has been an impressive growth in the average years of schooling, with parents showing no gender bias in educating their children.

"What the State needs is a committed resolve not to rest on its laurels. It requires a concerted effort from the various agencies involved to weed out the vestiges of the evil practice of child labour in Kerala. It also needs to find solutions to new problems, especially of those of migrant child labourers. That is no easy task," Fr. Philip said.

R. Krishnakumar