Just as India has the highest number of children in the world, its number of working children is equally high - around 12.6 million, according to government figures. The Right to Education Act aims to ensure free and compulsory education to all children up to 14, yet children are found toiling as semi-slaves in every imaginable and unimaginable place.
Child labor robs children their childhood and their chance to grow in a healthy and wholesome atmosphere. Not only is their present in danger, but also their future and their offspring’s future, as the cycle of ignorance-poverty is perpetuated by their lack of education or training.
The fight against child labor needs to be long and sustained, and has to address all strata of society. Mindsets must be changed universally so that something commonplace can be seen as an aberrant practice by the same eyes that now consider it ‘normal’.
