Child Labor and Education in South Asia

Rekha Pappu and Duggirala Vasanta

ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2International Policies and Perspectives on Child Labor and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Ensuring Education for Working Children: The South Asian Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

National Policies and Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Role of Nongovernmental Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Normative Childhood and South Asian Childhoods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Child Labor and Education: Critical Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Ways Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

AbstractThis chapter provides an overview of the issues involved in ensuring educationfor working children in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal. The manner inwhich children’s educational rights, as articulated in the UNCRC, areoperationalized within specific policy frameworks in these countries is examinedin the light of discussions on child rights and Southern childhoods. We point outthat notwithstanding the introduction of many policies and measures at thenational and international levels, the conception as well as the provision ofeducation is yet to make meaningful connections with the lifeworlds and aspira-tions of working children. We argue that there is a need to re-vision the schoolingsystem in order to evolve ways and means of offering education that is inclusiveand relevant for working children in South Asia.

R. Pappu (*)Azim Premji School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, Indiae-mail: rekha.pappu@tiss.edu; rekhapappu@yahoo.com

D. VasantaDepartment of Linguistics, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Indiae-mail: vasantad@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020P. M. Sarangapani, R. Pappu (eds.), Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia,Global Education Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3309-5_73-1

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KeywordsChild labor · Child rights · Southern childhoods · Working children · UNCRC

Introduction

South Asia has over 16 million child laborers of which a large majority, in absoluteterms, are from India (5.8 million), Bangladesh (5.0 million), Pakistan (3.4 million),and Nepal (2.0 million) (ILO 2015). The lives of these children are of concern bothto the governments of these countries that are committed to internationally acceptednorms vis-à-vis children and to the civil society organizations and individuals whowork for child rights and the overall well-being of children. The governments andthe nongovernmental organizations have mostly intervened in the situation with theunderstanding that child labor impedes the development of a child and that free andcompulsory schooling is the most effective way to prevent and eventually eliminatechild labor. Since a disproportionately large number of the children who prioritizework rather than school are from very poor families, the strategy that regardsschooling as providing a way out of child labor and as essential thus has itsjustification in principles of social justice as well.

Over the years, the notion that education is the best way of mitigating andultimately eliminating child labor has acquired the status of the commonsensicalas far as international and national policy prescriptions are concerned. However, thecomplexities underlying the matter in a region such as South Asia have led to furtherdiscussions that have problematized the nature of the link that is posited betweenchild labor and education, both in its conceptualization and its operationalization(Balagopalan 2002, 2019; Nieuwenhuys 1999, 2009). This chapter elaborates on thefraught nature of the relationship between child labor and education in South Asia.

Before proceeding further, some statistics about children’s work and education isprovided for all the countries of South Asia through Table 1 in order to provide asnapshot of the situation. The table draws from the data compiled by UnderstandingChildren’s Work (UCW), an inter-agency project which was set up in December2000 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Children’sFund (UNICEF), and the World Bank. Drawing upon the data gathered by UCW, thetable focuses in particular on three aspects of working children in South Asia: (i)school attendance of children between the ages of 5 and 14 years, (ii) involvement ineconomic activities of this same age group of children, and (iii) involvement of thechildren in household chores.

It needs to be noted that most official statistics miss out crucial data about thechildren working in unorganized sectors and in worst forms of labor. Yet, even theinformation that is available is instructive to understand the connections betweeneducation and child work. Some quick conclusions therefore may be drawn fromTable 1. Except for Afghanistan and Mauritius, school attendance in all the otherSouth Asian countries is well above average. The involvement of children ineconomic activities is the highest in Nepal (37.2%) and is followed by Mauritius

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(12.5%), Pakistan (10.9%), and Sri Lanka (9.2) in that order. Where data is available,children’s involvement in household chores is close to 50% in most countries exceptin Maldives (35.6%) and Myanmar (28.6%) where it is below 50% and in Nepal(81%) and Sri Lanka (80.7%) where it is way above 50%. In all the South Asiancountries, except for Afghanistan and Myanmar, the involvement of girls is morethan that of boys with regard to household chores. On the other hand, except forBhutan and Nepal, more boys than girls are involved in economic activities in therest of South Asia. On the whole it is clear from the data that a large majority ofchildren in South Asia are both school-going and also working. The data reveals thatchildren in the South Asian countries are less involved in direct economic activitiesbut are nevertheless working.

Similar to the data obtained from UCW, data from different sources too clearlyshows the widespread prevalence of children in labor and employment in all thecountries of South Asia (Khan and Lyon 2015; ILO 2015; O’Driscoll 2017). Thefocus of this chapter, however, is on India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal, whichas mentioned earlier are the countries that have the highest number of child laborersin absolute terms. Since the discourse on child labor and education in these fourSouth Asian countries is embedded within and influenced by the internationalcontext, a review of international policies and measures that address the issue ofeducation for laboring children is provided in the next section. The third sectionthereafter provides details of national policy frameworks that define and determinethe nature of the relationship between education and child labor within the fourSouth Asian countries selected. This section also includes details of the interventionsof nongovernmental organizations in addressing the combined issues of child laborand education.

Table 1 School attendance and children’s work in South Asia

Name of thecountry

School attendance(5–14 years) (inpercentage)

Children’s involvementin economic activities(5–14 years) (inpercentage)

Children’s involvementin household chores(5–14 years)

Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Total

Afghanistan 48.1 34.9 41.8 10.6 4.2 7.5 52.5 49 56.4

Bangladesh 86.9 92 89.4 4.7 3.8 4.3 Data not available

Bhutan 84.7 84.6 84.8 3.3 4.4 3.9 44.3 56.6 50.6

India 91.4 89.9 90.7 1.5 1.3 1.4 Data not available

Maldives 79.1 80.3 79.7 4.1 3.7 3.9 29.9 41.6 35.6

Mauritius 53.5 54.9 53.5 14.1 11 12.5 40 57.9 49.2

Myanmar 85.7 86.8 86.2 3.3 3.2 3.3 31.9 25.2 28.6

Pakistan 80.5 69.5 75.3 10.3 9.9 10.9 Data not available

Nepal 89.9 93.7 91.7 36.4 38 37.2 79.3 82.6 81

Sri Lanka 97.6 98 97.8 10.9 7.4 9.2 78.7 82.7 80.7

Source: Compiled from data collected by Understanding Children’s Work. http://www.ucw-project.org/info-country.aspx (Retrieved on 19th October 2019)

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 3

A key premise of this chapter is that conceptions of childhood and child rightshave a critical bearing on how both child labor and education are regarded. In otherwords, the underlying argument is that the conceptual understanding of childhoodshapes the approach that is adopted both toward child labor and education. Thereforethe fourth section, which focuses on childhoods, juxtaposes the conception ofnormative childhood with the reality of multiple childhoods in the four SouthAsian countries that have been selected, i.e., Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, andNepal, before going on to highlight issues related to education in the section thatfollows. The fifth section thus draws on different studies and reports to review andproblematize the challenges involved in the education of working children. Criticalperspectives on child rights and childhoods inform this section. The sixth and finalsection discusses the possible ways forward for ensuring educational rights as wellas rights in education for working children.

International Policies and Perspectives on Child Labor andEducation

Modern societies have established schools as the ideal and default location wherechildren are expected to spend most of their time so that the processes of the schoolscan transform them into modern bourgeois citizens (Balagopalan 2003). It has alsobeen argued that the developed countries, without exception, have reached theirpresent stage only by making compulsory primary education an essential require-ment within their national boundaries (Weiner 1991). Others have pointed out that acombination involving changed societal attitudes, the prohibition of child labor, theintroduction of compulsory schooling, and rising living standards is what hasresulted in creating a situation of more schooling and less child labor across theindustrialized world even as the specific combination of the catalytic forces hasvaried across countries, time periods, and contexts (Quattri and Watkins 2016).There are also viewpoints that are skeptical about the advisability of abolishingchild labor so that children can attend schools. For example, Smolin (1999) haspointed out that the abolitionist definitions of child labor and its goals are notpractically obtainable in the foreseeable future in many parts of the world. As heputs it, “not every society agrees on what is good for children or on the correct mix ofwork and education which best fulfils children’s present duties towards their familieswhile preparing them for adulthood” (p. 448).

Differences of opinion notwithstanding, there is a widespread affirmation ofschools as an important loci of education and furthermore of compulsory schoolingas being a significant solution to the problem of child labor. The report of UNICEFand UNESCO Institute for Statistics titled Fixing the Broken Promise of Educationfor All (2015), for instance, foregrounds the strong link or mutuality that existsbetween education and child labor. The report highlights the fact that child labor isantithetical to schooling, i.e., school attendance and school performance are bothnegatively impacted by child labor. The obverse of the situation too is as stronglyemphasized by the report – that increased and full-time school attendance is an

4 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

effective deterrent to child labor. This understanding of the link between child laborand education is an unambiguous and recurrent theme in various internationalpolicies, studies, and reports.

At the international level, the approach that connects child labor to schooleducation can be traced back to the Minimum Age Convention No. 138 (1973) ofthe International Labour Organization (ILO). The minimum age of employmentproposed by ILO is linked to the age at completion of compulsory schooling, whichthe Convention notes should not be less than 15 years. The Convention however alsoprovides the option for developing countries with insufficient economic and educa-tional facilities to stipulate an initial age of 14 years and to permit the employment ofchildren who are aged 13–15 (or 12–14 where the minimum age is 14) in limitedlight work, which does not interfere with their development or affect their atten-dance at school. It is worth noting that school attendance is considered as animportant component of Convention No. 138. Along with Convention No. 138,ILO’s Convention No. 182, which targets the worst forms of child labor that are to beeliminated, is regarded as a significant policy instrument for eradicating child labor.

While the ILO Conventions are mainly about child labor, the most commonlyused international framework for addressing the issue of schooling provisions for allchildren, including children who are working, has been the United Nations Conven-tion on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which was adopted in 1989 by the GeneralAssembly of the United Nations. With 195 countries around the world ratifying theconvention in the 1990s, the CRC has been hailed as the most widely ratifiedinternational human rights treaty in the world. The CRC is a very comprehensivedocument with a substantive preamble followed by 54 separate articles detailingprotection, provision, and participation (PPP) rights of children around the world.The protection rights are aimed at shielding children from harmful decisions ofothers with regard to, for example, torture, sale, trafficking, abduction, and childlabor. The provision rights ensure children’s health, development, right to education,social security, leisure, recreation, etc. Finally, the participation rights deal withchildren’s participation in society including the freedom to express their opinionsand thoughts, freedom to practice religion, and access to information.

One of the most positive aspects of the CRC with respect to educational rightsrelates to the explicit and implicit links the document makes between access toeducation, quality of education, and the treatment of children in education (Lundy etal. 2017). Referring to the ILO Conventions as well as CRC, Quattri and Watkinspoint out, “Implicit in each of these Conventions is a recognition of the strong linkbetween child work and education. Indeed, the boundaries for legitimate work aredefined in part by the requirement that children should be able to develop theirpotential through education” (Quattri and Watkins 2016, p. 14).

A reiteration of the need to simultaneously address the two key issues, i.e., childlabor and education, is also found in the formation of the Global Taskforce on ChildLabour and Education For All, which was launched in 2005 as a collaborativepartnership of the key international stakeholders such as the ILO, UNESCO,UNICEF, World Bank, and Global March Against Child Labour. In more recenttimes, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and the Sustainable

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 5

Development Goals (SDG) have provided an overarching vision for developmentwith targets set for 2015 and 2030, respectively, and have become significantinternational referents. While child labor or children’s work does not figure explicitlyeither in the MDG or the SDG, education for out-of-school children is includedamong the key goals defined by them.

A significant feature of the international discourse on child labor and children’swork is about how the terms are defined. These definitions determine decisions aboutwhether to mitigate, regulate, or eliminate child labor and therefore have been thesubject of a great deal of discussion. In fact, the distinction made between the twoterms, i.e., “child labor” and “children’s work,” is a consequence of wide-rangingdebates on the subject among international organizations, child rights activists, civilsociety organizations, academics, and working children’s movements (Nieuwenhuys2009). Over the years, and through these discussions, a consensus has graduallyemerged, according to which “children’s work” is used to refer to the entire range ofwork-related tasks that children perform. This includes work that has both direct andindirect economic implications. “Child labor,” on the other hand, is identified as asubset of work that is injurious or harmful for children and which has to be targetedfor elimination by the governments (UCW 2003, 2011). Notwithstanding the claritythat is to be found in international treaties like UNCRC and ILO Conventions on“light work” and “worst forms of child labor,” there is no common and singleapproach among the developing countries on what forms of work are to be regardedas benign or beneficial and which ones to be treated as hazardous and therefore to beeliminated (UCW 2003).

A corollary of the distinction made between “child labor” and “children’s work”is the growing acknowledgment globally that work in itself is not harmful forchildren. Some advocates have in fact forcefully argued that in addition to thematerial benefits that work makes possible, children can even gain from work insocial and educational terms. They go on to emphasize that education should beconceived for the majority of the world’s children in terms of appropriate work aswell as appropriate schooling (Bourdillon 2014). However, various working chil-dren’s groups and movements such as in Bangladesh, Bolivia, and India haveemphatically rejected the distinction posited between child labor and beneficialwork (Liebel 2014; Nieuwenhuys 2009; Williams 2004). They have argued thatchildren are not innately vulnerable but that their exploitation commonly occurs dueto the poor conditions of work that involve long working hours, lack of properwages, insufficient ventilation, inadequate safety measures and medical services, noprovision for holidays or training facilities, and the lack of freedom of association(Nieuwenhuys 2009).

Discussions that are focused on the need for the education of working childrenuse the term “child labor” in an overarching sense to include children (mostly till theage of 14 years) involved in “legitimate” as well as “illegitimate” work. In thesediscussions, the distinctions found in policy documents and the law are blurred, andthe term “child labor” alone is used. This chapter is mindful of the diverse discus-sions on the use of the terms child labor and children’s work. Both the terms arevariously used in the chapter depending on the context of their use and their original

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usage in policy documents as well as the different studies on child labor andchildren’s work.

With respect to terminology, the use in this chapter of another set of terms that areclosely related, i.e., “education” and “schooling,” also needs to be clarified. Educa-tion is broadly understood as encompassing a range of activities and involvementsthat enable and enhance learning, whereas schooling is regarded as but one form ofinstitutionalized activity through which education is made possible. The debates anddiscussions in relation to child labor have invoked both education and schooling, butnot necessarily in a differentiated manner. Unless indicated otherwise, this chaptertoo uses the terms “schooling” and “education” interchangeably in discussing aboutthe education of laboring children in South Asia.

Ensuring Education for Working Children: The South AsianContext

The nation-states of South Asia are legally committed to eradicating child labor asalso providing education for all within their countries. These commitments weremade as early as when the countries adopted their own Constitution, which in mostcases was soon after they gained independence from colonial rule. The legalguarantees were further amended within the Constitution itself or strengthenedthrough the introduction of separate legislations that clarified or expanded the intentexpressed in the Constitution. As mentioned earlier, international conventions andcommitments too have exerted a significant influence on the manner in whichcountries within South Asia shaped their own legal instruments. Within the SouthAsian context, the non-state civil society organizations, more commonly referred toas nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), have also been involved in the efforts toaddress the issue of providing education for working children.

National Policies and Measures

The objective of prohibiting child labor as well as ensuring universal education isenshrined in the Constitutions of all the four countries under consideration. Forinstance, Article 24 of the Indian Constitution lays down that no child below the ageof 14 years shall be in hazardous employment. At the time when the Constitutionwas adopted in 1950, Article 45, which was the Directive Principle of state policy,stipulated that the state shall endeavor to provide free and compulsory education tochildren until the age of 14 years. Later, through the enactment of the Right to Freeand Compulsory Education Act of 2009, the government of India committed itself toproviding free and compulsory education for all children between the ages of 6 and14 years. Similarly, the Constitution of Nepal, both in 1990 and in 2015, guaranteedthe fundamental rights of children. These fundamental rights of children includedprohibition of trafficking and employment of minors in hazardous worksites. In2018, the government of Nepal enacted the landmark Act Relating to Compulsory

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 7

and Free Education, 2075 (2018), which gave every citizen the right to becomeliterate and get early childhood education and development, basic education, sec-ondary education, and higher education.

Traversing along similar pathways, the Constitution of Bangladesh (1972) tooprohibits forced labor as a fundamental right of all its citizens. Moreover, thefundamental principles of state policy through Article 17 emphasize compulsoryprimary education for all children. With regard to Pakistan, the Constitution of theIslamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973, laid down through Article 37-B that “State shallbe responsible for eradication of illiteracy and provision of free and compulsoryeducation up to secondary level, within minimum possible time.” Later, through aConstitutional amendment, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2012,was introduced for the education of all children between 5 and 16 years of age.

With regard to child labor in particular, India had not ratified ILO Convention No.138 and Convention No. 182 for a long time arguing that it needs to first put in placeenforcement mechanisms and processes in order to ensure compliance. It eventuallyratified both the Conventions in 2017. Nepal too has ratified both the ILO Conven-tions; Convention No. 138 was ratified in 1997 and Convention No. 182 in 2002. Onthe other hand, while Bangladesh ratified ILO Convention No. 182 in 2001, it hasnot yet ratified Convention 138, which is about the minimum age for work. Pakistanfirst ratified Convention No. 182 in 2001 and later in 2006 ratified Convention No.138. In contrast to the unevenness of approach in relation to the ratification of theILO conventions, all the four countries ratified the Convention on the Rights of theChild (CRC) around 1990, soon after it was adopted by the UN.

Furthermore, the governments of all the four countries, i.e., Bangladesh, India,Pakistan, and Nepal, have passed laws to regulate child labor. Through the ChildLabour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986, the Indian government prohibitedthe employment of children in 13 occupations and 57 processes. This Act wasamended in 2016 as a result of which all children below the age of 14 years wereprohibited from engaging in labor and adolescents under the age of 18 preventedfrom undertaking hazardous work. However, the amended Act allowed children towork in the family or family enterprises after school or during vacations.

In the context of Bangladesh, its Labour Act 2006 is regarded as the mostsignificant legislation since discussions about child labor for the country proceedfrom it. Along with providing the definition of “child” and “adolescent,” the Actdeals with matters of their employment. The Act prohibits children from beingemployed in the formal sector and requires the government to publish the list ofhazardous work, which children and adolescents are prohibited from taking up. TheChildren’s Act, 2013 (Act No. 24 of 2013), was enacted by repealing the Children’sAct of 1974 in order to implement UNCRC.

Even in the case of Pakistan, the Employment of Children Act 1991 was enactedfollowing upon the ratification of the CRC in order to protect working children(below the age of 14 years) from exploitation. The 18th Amendment to the PakistanConstitution that was introduced in 2010 transfers from the federal government tothe four provincial governments all issues related to child welfare and labor. The fourprovinces have subsequently been legislating to regulate matters related to children’s

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employment as well as to provide for free and compulsory education for children. InNepal, the Children’s Act (1992) and Labour Act (1992) followed up the Constitu-tional mandate of the country by rendering illegal the employment of children underthe age of 14 years. The Child Labour (Regulation and Prohibition) Act of 2000amended the Labour Act of 1992 by providing a list of hazardous tasks andprohibiting the employment of children under 16 years of age in these worksites.Table 2 summarizes the different provisions available at the national level withreference to child labor and universal access to education.

Given the commitments of all four countries to regulate children’s work, elimi-nate worst forms of child labor, and provide education for all children, includingworking children, the governments of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Nepal haveintroduced a number of programs that have sought to address precisely theseconcerns. Notable among these are the programs “Reaching Out-of-School Children(ROSC) project” and the “Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban WorkingChildren (BEHTRUWC),” which were launched in Bangladesh in 2004 to createeducational opportunities especially for out-of-school and working children. TheTechnical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Reform project wasintroduced in 2007 with the aim of reforming technical and vocational educationsuch that it could empower marginalized youth, including child laborers.

Table 2 National provisions with regard to child labor and education for all

Bangladesh India Nepal Pakistan

Ratificationof ILOConventions138 and 182

Not ratifiedConvention No.138RatifiedConvention No.182 in 2001

RatifiedConvention No.138 andConvention No.182 in 2017

RatifiedConventionNo. 138 in1997RatifiedConventionNo. 182 in2002

RatifiedConvention No.138 in 2006RatifiedConvention No.182 in 2001

ChildLabourProhibitionAct

BangladeshLabour Act of2006Children’s Act,2013 (Act No.24 of 2013)

Child Labour(Prohibition andRegulation) Act of1986Amended in 2016

ChildLabour(ProhibitionandRegulation)Act of 2000

Employment ofChildren Act, 1991

Ratificationof UNCRC

Ratified in 1990 Ratified in 1992 Ratified in1990

Ratified in 1990

Right toeducation

Article 17 of theConstitutionurges provisionof free andcompulsoryeducationThe PrimaryEducation(Compulsory)Act, 1990

The Right ofChildren to Freeand CompulsoryEducation (RTE)Act, 2009,covering childrenbetween 6 and14 years of age

Act RelatingtoCompulsoryand FreeEducation,2075 (2018)

The Right to Freeand CompulsoryEducation Act,2012, for childrenbetween 5 and16 years of age

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 9

In Nepal, education for all was sought to be ensured through programs such as theBasic Primary Education Programme (BPEP I 1992–1997) and BPEP II(1997–2002), Education for All (EFA 2004–2009), Community School SupportProject (CSSP 2003–2007), and School Sector Reform Programme (SSRP2009–2015). In India, the National Policy on Child Labour announced in 1987was aimed at rehabilitating child laborers by establishing non-formal educationalcenters from where they were sought to be mainstreamed into schools. Later, theDistrict Primary Education Programme (DPEP 1994–2009) and Sarva ShikshaAbhiyan (SSA 2000–2018) became the flagship programs of the Indian governmentthrough which it sought to achieve the objective of providing education for all.

In Pakistan, the government has sought to stop child labor and increase vulner-able children’s access to education through programs of Bait-ul-Mal through whichNational Centres for Rehabilitation of Child Labour and Child Support Programs arefunctioning. Through the Sabaoon Rehabilitation Centres, the Pakistan Army pro-vides educational opportunities and psychological counseling to children recruitedand ideologically influenced by militant groups. Over and above these, the PunjabProvince has taken up the project “Elimination of Child Labour and BondedLabour,” in 2017 through which the government aims to rehabilitate bonded laborersand provide education for them.

Notwithstanding the various measures adopted by the governments of the fourSouth Asian countries as outlined above, the issue of out-of-school children, includ-ing child laborers, remains in all the four countries. The mismatch between the visionand intent of the state policy on the one hand and the situation on the groundbecomes a measure of the state’s failure. Within such a situation, the role of theNGOs has been significant. They have performed multiple and critical roles thathave ranged from delivering services on behalf of the government to mobilizingworking children and even opposing the approach of the state and advocatingalternate thinking on the subject of child labor and education.

Role of Nongovernmental Organizations

A large number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been working toaddress issues related to the prevalence of child labor in South Asia. Given thatSouth Asia has a huge number of child laborers, the number of NGOs working in thisarea too is quite large. For instance, it is reported that Bangladesh has more than 700NGOs that offer some or the other kind of non-formal education program for out-of-school children, including working children (Ahsan 2011).

The NGOs functioning at the conjunction of child labor- and education-relatedissues can broadly be classified into two categories. The first category is of organi-zations working from a rights-based perspective who complement the government’sefforts to realize the right to education of every child. The second category comprisesorganizations that intervene in the existing situation of poverty and vulnerability ofthe children and their families by providing alternate or non-formal kinds of educa-tion to working children. Kabeer (2003) refers to the first category of organizations

10 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

as “idealist” and the second one as “realist.” The category referred to as “idealist” isdesignated as such since the position adopted by these organizations is that childlabor is a violation of child rights and therefore all forms of child labor must bebanned and that the children must be provided free and compulsory education. Onthe other hand, the group of organizations referred to as “realist” believe that povertyis the unfortunate reality of South Asia and that children therefore have to necessar-ily contribute toward family expenditures.

The first set of organizations (or even network of organizations) work towardcreating a demand for school education, while the latter provide alternate forms ofeducation that enable children to learn while they earn. Organizations such asBachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), Child in Need Institute (CINI), and M.V. Foun-dation (MVF) in India and Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN) inNepal belong to the former category, whereas the Bangladesh Rural AdvancementCommittee (BRAC), Goroshahajjo Sangstha (GSS), and Proshika in Bangladesh andSocial Work and Research Centre (SWRC) in Rajasthan and Concerned for WorkingChildren in Karnataka in India belong to the latter category. Among the well-knownNGOs focusing on the education of vulnerable children in Pakistan are Sudhaar,Bunyad Literacy Community Council, and Child Care Foundation, which havedeveloped models of non-formal community schooling for children working incarpet manufacturing and other industries. Another group, including NGOs suchas the Sindh Education Foundation, Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), and Coopera-tion for Advancement, Rehabilitation and Education (CARE), have been involved inrunning government schools themselves through the initiative Adopt-a-School.

The rights-based organizations strongly argue that the limitations of the educationsystem cannot be regarded as justification for the continuance of child labor (Kabeeret al. 2003). These organizations are staunch opponents of non-formal educationsince they believe that such non-formal education helps perpetuate child labor. Theyhave therefore adopted the slogan that “all out-of-school children are child laborers.”These organizations have sought to influence the decision of parents such that theyfavor the schooling option for their children as against involving them in labor.Through their advocacy efforts, the organizations have sought to end the family’sdependence on the earnings of the child and to remove them from the worksites.

Collaborations between the governments and the NGOs have been documentedhighlighting the achievements as well as the challenges involved (Kabeer et al. 2003;Shah et al. 2005; Wazir 2000, 2004). Such collaborative efforts have been lauded bysome for their accomplishments, especially the fact that through the support of theNGOs, the government has been able to reach communities and locations that arelargely underserved (Ahsan 2011; Shah et al. 2005; Wazir 2004). However, there hasalso been skepticism in equal measure with regard to the role of NGOs. Kabeer(2003) points to the apprehension that by subcontracting NGOs to take up the task ofengaging with working and other children who do not fit the norm of the schoolchild, the state perpetuates hierarchical forms of educational provisioning.Nieuwenhuys (1999) too has been particularly sharp in her critique of organizationsfrom the North for the manner of their use of NGOs to intervene in issues of childlabor and education in the South. Referring to the period in the 1980s when structural

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 11

adjustment programs (SAPs) were imposed on a number of developing countries,Nieuwenhuys points out, “[T]his period was marked by the entry of NGOs on thescene of ‘development,’ an entry that had the added advantage of privatizing foreignaid interventions in the South in order to circumvent state apparatuses increasinglybelieved to be inefficient, expensive and unreliable” (Nieuwenhuys 1999, pp.39–40).

International NGOs such as Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Save theChildren, and Terre des Hommes (TdH) have had an influential presence in SouthAsia in terms of having partnered local NGOs for ground-level interventions and forconducting research. These international organizations have worked strictly withinthe frameworks provided by ILO and the belief that work deprives children of theirchildhood and is harmful to their physical and mental development (O’Driscoll2017, p. 1).

The introduction in some of the South Asian countries of laws ensuring thefundamental right to education has necessarily changed the nature of involvementof the NGOs in relation to education, especially the education of working children.The earlier laws such as the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of India(the initial Act of 1986) and Nepal (Act of 2000), for instance, recommended theprovision of non-formal education for children “freed” from child labor. In such asituation, the NGOs, together with the Labour Departments of the governments,were involved in providing non-formal education that took on different formsdepending on the vision of the NGO. After the introduction of the Right to Education(RTE) Act, in India, for instance, the government’s obligation to provide educationfor all children between the ages of 6 and 14 years meant that children had tomandatorily receive only formal education through schools recognized by thegovernment. In this changed scenario, the interaction of NGOs with children as faras education is concerned is largely limited to providing bridge courses that will helpthe children transition to mainstream schools or to working with adolescents andproviding vocational training for them.

In the post-RTE scenario, various NGOs and education service providers havebeen working with government and private schools in diverse ways such as forproviding teacher training or developing curricular materials, rather than interactingdirectly with the children to provide education. The earlier modes of non-formal oralternate forms of education offered by NGOs for working children between the agesof 6 and 14 years are therefore now almost nonexistent in countries like India.Instead, there is a clear dominance of the “schooled child” in the policy discoursessuch as the kind emanating from the Right to Education Acts, which as argued byvarious academics and activists is closely tied to a normative conception ofchildhood.

12 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

Normative Childhood and South Asian Childhoods

The dominant developmental discourse on children is based on the assumption that“childhood” is a gender-neutral universal stage of life that is marked by innocenceand vulnerability of children who are always in need of protection and who need tobe prepared for taking on future responsibilities as adults. According to the UNICEFreport, The State of the World’s Children 2005: Childhood under Threat (2004),childhood is regarded as the time when children are supposed to be in school and atplay, a time when they are not under any threat of violence or abuse or exploitationbut instead receive love and encouragement from their families. Such a perception ofchildhood emerging from specific historic circumstances of the West has nowbecome a global norm and has influenced social and educational policies in SouthAsia (Khan 2010; Nieuwenhuys 2008; Raman 2018; Sadgopal 2011). These notionsof childhood with a focus on features such as biological age, innocence, and physicalvulnerability also build on “scientifically” developed measures of children’s well-being (World Vision India 2019; Save the Children 2019). Several internationalchild-focused organizations have also used statistical indices to rate governments ontheir child-friendliness with respect to protection, provision, and participation rightsof the CRC (South Asian Report 2013). It has been noted that as with most suchstatistical measures, there is always the risk of children becoming only numbersstripped off their real-life identities, which are derived from their familial, social, andcultural contexts (Levison 2007; Balagopalan 2019).

In response to the growing global trend of relying on large-scale data sets, someresearchers have drawn attention to the tension that exists on the one hand betweenthe “objective” set of measures that stand for the notion of normative/global child-hood and the thick descriptions on the other hand that emerge in ethnographicstudies about children from marginalized communities (Balagopalan 2002, 2014;Hopkins and Sriprakash 2016; Menon and Saraswathi 2018; Viruru 2008). Some ofthese studies, which present the details of the lived realities of children in the SouthAsian context, are reviewed in this section. These studies have explored the categoryof childhood within the South Asian context largely by adopting an ethnographicapproach that is in contrast with a statistics-centered approach.

Among the few published studies that have reflected on the social constructionsof childhood and children’s rights in the context of Bangladesh, the one by SusanBissell (2003) provides the strongest critique of the dominant notion of childhood.Bissell points out that there is no simple word or phrase in Bangla to denote thenotion, “childhood.” The interviews she conducted with working children in Ban-gladesh under the age of 14 years reveal that while the children are aware of theirlack of autonomy, they also feel that their responsibilities to the family and thecontributions they make are significant and important. Specifically, Bissell discussesthe impact of the Harkin Bill that was passed in the Senate of the USA in 1993,which prohibited importation of goods produced with child labor. As a result of theHarkin Bill, 50,000 to 200,000 Bangladeshi children lost their livelihood in thegarment industry. Commenting on the situation, Bissell points out that the notion of“ideal childhood” that is adopted by both the scholarly community and the popular

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 13

media became the benchmark for discussions about the Harkin Bill. While it wasexpected that the ban on child labor would lead to children going to schools, therewas instead clear evidence that children did not go back to schools but instead wereforced to get into worst forms of employments. Bissell thus argues for social policiesthat are contextually applied rather than seeking to conform to a singular anduniversal understanding.

Similar to the study conducted by Bissell, but conducted prior to it in the 1990s,Woodhead’s study sought to understand children’s perspectives on their own livesbased on a large-scale multicountry study. The study involved over 300 children inthe age group 10–14 years. Bangladesh was one of the six countries included in thisstudy (Woodhead 1998). Based on an analysis of the personal narratives of thechildren, Woodhead concluded that “these children are not part of work-free child-hood because of their poverty, limited educational opportunities compounded bysocial discrimination. For these children, work was the major activity in their livesthat is shaped by family traditions and expectations” (p. 109). In a subsequentpublication, Woodhead (1999) describes the Children’s Perspectives Protocol usedin his research and comments that the model of “work harms development” thatdominates UNCRC is inadequate for studying personal experiences of workingchildren. Work, he argues, is situated within the context of cultural norms andexpectations in which children’s contribution is valued by their parents and commu-nities. Childhood, according to Woodhead, is not a static concept, nor is it to benarrowly prescribed. According to him, each generation reconstructs notions ofchildhood by structuring children’s experiences in specific circumstances.

In an inquiry taken up by Khan (2010) of the issue of the representation of childlabor in the football manufacturing center of Sialkot in Pakistan during the 1990s,the issue that comes to fore once again is about the tension between internationalperceptions that unilaterally denounce child labor and the indigenous attitudes thatare accommodative of working children. Khan points out that the effects of theAtlanta Agreement that the Pakistan government had to sign in 1997 following thehighly publicized international campaign against children stitching footballs inSialkot manufacturing units were akin to the adverse fallout from the applicationof the Harkin Bill to Bangladesh: the lives of the children did not improve, andinstead women who were supposed to take up the job of stitching footballs were alsoadversely effected by the terms of the agreement, which misrecognized the culturalcontext of Pakistan. Khan points out that the hegemonic notion of childhoodconstructs it as a phase where children are valued purely for their emotional worthdue to the attachments they form with the adults. In contrast, he argues, in develop-ing countries such as Pakistan, children are additionally perceived and valued aseconomic agents. Khan also provides an important caveat that experiences ofchildhood do not vary only across countries but also within the same country acrosssocial classes and ethnic groups.

In relation to Nepal, Onta-Bhatta (2001) discusses two very different approachesto understanding what childhood means: one, legislative history (codified in legaldocument, Muluki Ain, 1854) that informs the ways in the which the state hasparticipated in the process of constructing specific notions of childhood and, two,

14 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

social history of childhood as evident in written and oral narratives of lived child-hood experiences. Her study based on legal history shows that the state does not relyconsistently on age as a criterion for deciding on the phase of childhood. As a result,the laws pertaining to marriage, crime, punishment, and work mention different agesthat are regarded as relevant. The autobiographies and oral narratives she examinessuggest that work is an integral part of growing up and that children were perceivedto have the ability to carry out various household chores from an age as early as5 years. However, she observes that social class plays a critical role in whether or notwork becomes part of children’s childhood. Specifically, children from upper clas-ses/castes had longer childhoods filled with play and leisure, while middle-class andworking-class children worked for long hours every day. She observes that legaldiscourse and centrally controlled school education (with standardized textbooks)are two factors that are primarily responsible for creating a homogenized notion ofnational childhood. She concludes by stating that childhood is configured, under-stood, and experienced differently by people from different classes, ethnicity, gen-der, and geographical locations (Onta-Bhatta 2001, p. 266).

In terms of research on childhood in India, Krishna Kumar (2016) noted that it is aresearch-starved area when delivering the key note address in 2015 at a seminartitled “Contested Sites: Construction of Childhoods.” Notwithstanding this conten-tion, there does exist some scholarship that has provided useful insights on child-hood in India as well. Balagopalan (2002), for instance, offers a thick description ofCalcutta’s street children and their experience with vocational education within abroader historical framework of colonial and postcolonial discourses on education ofthe poor. Her study seeks to understand the childhoods of the poor not as pre-modern, but as significantly influenced by the formation of modernity under colo-nialism. Her study too leads her to the conclusion that “work is an integral aspect ofthe definition of Indian childhoods and that caste, with its rigid hierarchies anddebasement of certain groups, is constitutive of the very identity of Indian children”(Balagopalan 2002, p. 26).

A critique of the modern, Western childhood as the hegemonic ideal has been arunning thread in studies that have focused on the education of children who do notbelong to the mainstream in India. Sarangapani (2003) examines the framing ofIndian childhood and schooling through an ethnographic study of teacher authorityand discipline in a government primary school for boys in Kasimpur village innorthern India. She concludes her study by stating that “in India, the discourse onchildhood and education, whether academic or reform-activist type, has neither beenable to acknowledge the rationality of the voices and images with which teachers,parents and children speak, nor has it been able to respond to them in a language theyunderstand” (Sarangapani 2003, p. 416).

Vasanta (2004) too critiques the notion of “ideal childhood” that informs educa-tional discourse and policies in post-independent India when discussing a study of300 students (a majority belonging to BC, SC, and ST groups) in select governmentschools in the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The review of research shereports in this article demonstrates that the multiplicities of regional, religious, andcaste-based identities in India lead to the reality of a wide variety of childhoods.

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 15

Similarly, through an analysis of child protagonists in graphic novels in India, Mehra(2018) demonstrates that these children from marginalized backgrounds are shapednot only by their families but also by their caste, religion, and class all of which ininteraction with one another produce their childhoods. Raman (2018), on the otherhand, makes a different kind of argument when she draws attention to the dividedworld of Indian childhood. According to her, while the children of the educatedmiddle class experience a childhood that is closer to the Western norm, a largemajority of the children of subaltern groups and classes living in traditional Indiansocial milieu experience “Indian childhood” in all its diversity. She goes on to addthat the developmental model has consolidated the consumerist and upwardlymobile middle class as flag bearers for a globalized childhood (2018, p. 74).

The distance between the childhood of the upwardly mobile Indian middle-classchild, who represent the ideal Indian childhood, and the children from the lowerclasses/castes comes through in a very striking manner in the autobiographies ofDalits or the untouchable castes in India. Reading one such autobiographical narra-tive of Dalit Christian girl, Bama, from Tamil Nadu in India, Sreenivas (2010)focuses on her experience of school. Commenting on Bama’s experience, Sreenivasdraws out the implications of schooling for Dalits:

Dalit life narratives have repeatedly portrayed the school as an intimidating space, makingthe Dalit child feel like an “intruder.” There is a fundamental disjunction between the ways inwhich the school is structured – its rules, beliefs, arrangements, and disciplinary apparatuses– and the worlds of children from minoritized backgrounds. Concomitantly, there exists aseamless continuity between the school and the norms of the upper caste middle class –figuring not always as untouchability but –dispersed across practices of the body, family,work, play, hygiene, beauty, food, clothes, relationships and so on. The burden remains uponthe marginalized child to be smart, clean, and acceptable; s/he has to forever aspire to meetthe “norm.” This also throws up the soul-wrenching contradictions between the family/community that nourishes and gives identity to the child, and the school where this identitymust be continually eschewed in order to survive. (Sreenivas 2010, p. 276)

The review of the studies of Southern childhoods referred to above indicates thatwork is an integral part of most children’s lives in South Asia, that communities playa crucial role in preparing children to take on adult roles and responsibilities, and thatSouthern childhoods are social constructions in which class, caste, gender, andreligion intersect with each other in molding everyday life experiences of children.The review also reveals that there exists a clear distinction between the normativeidea of childhood expressed through international and national legal instruments onthe one hand and the realities of multiple childhoods in South Asia.

Furthermore, a difference can be marked even within South Asia between thechildhood broadly experienced by middle-class children on the one hand and that ofworking children from poor family backgrounds on the other. It is the middle-classchildren and their childhoods that have become the norm in textbooks, teachertraining, and pedagogic practices (Raman 2018; Mehra 2018; Sreenivas 2011).This idea of childhood, moreover, is closer to the global and normative notion ofchildhood that is marked by the belief that children should be shielded from doing

16 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

any kind of work. On the other hand, the childhoods of the poor in which childrenparticipate in some or the other kind of work in addition to attending school areoutside of these set of norms. Their childhoods, marked by participation in the worldof work, have become invisible in educational policies and practices. Figure 1captures the dominant configurations of childhoods in the present with a specificfocus on South Asia.

The figure suggests stronger influence of the global (normative) childhooddiscourse on middle- and upper-class/upper-caste children across the different coun-tries of South Asia. The notion of the ideal childhood at the national level in turnbecomes the dominant frame through which the childhoods of the poor are under-stood. Moreover, it is through this very frame that the forms of education for the poorand working children are imagined. As suggested by Onta-Bhatta (2001) andSreenivas (2010), it is through representations in textbooks that the national idealof childhood gets constructed, and this ideal rarely references the working or thelaboring child in a positive manner.

Child Labor and Education: Critical Perspectives

In his book The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy inComparative Perspective (1991), Myron Weiner presented a searing indictment ofthe attitudes in India toward the education of working children. He argued thatIndia’s low per capita income and economic backwardness were not the reason whyefforts to provide equitable education for all have failed. The reason instead, hecontended, is a set of beliefs shared by a large number of people in India across thesocial and political spectrum that block access to education for the laboring children.According to Weiner, “At the core of [the] beliefs are the Indian view of the socialorder, notions concerning the respective roles of upper and lower social strata, therole of education as a means of maintaining differentiations among social classes,and concerns that ‘excessive’ and ‘inappropriate’ education for the poor woulddisrupt existing social arrangements” (1991, p. 5).

That Weiner’s observations apply to other South Asian countries as well can bededuced from the fact that similar comments were made as far back as 1968 inrelation to Nepal. In tracking the emergence of national education in Nepal, UmaPradhan cites from the work of H. B. Reed and M. J. Reed who similarly commentedthat “in the opinion of some Nepalis, education carries dangerous potentialities, such

Fig. 1 Conceptions ofchildhood

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 17

as ruining the lower caste children for their role in life or rousing them to activedissatisfaction” (Pradhan 2018, p. 175). Khan (2010) too offers a similar analysisabout Pakistan. According to him, “The ‘fact’ that children of the poor should workand not go to school is widely accepted by members of society – upper class familieswho want docile servants, middle to lower classes who employ them as cheap labourin their small enterprises and workshops and who often see child labour as providingrelief for the poor and the child’s family, who not only need the extra income but whosee it as their lot in life that their children start work from an early age” (Khan 2010,p. 107). Quite clearly, the hierarchical nature of the South Asian societies has had aprofound impact on the very conception of educational provisioning for children ofthe poor.

The gradual and incremental adoption of measures to ensure that all childrenreceive education within South Asian societies has much to do with the emergence ofnation-states that sought to identify themselves as modern members of an interna-tional community. However, the attempts at inducting the populations into theproject of modernity through schooling have been fraught with complications ofvarious kinds. The problem is not just of tardy implementation but of the veryimagination of the state wherein the formal system of schooling that has beendeveloped for the normative upper-caste and middle-class child is regarded as thesolution for ending child labor as well. This same unreformed and unchangedschooling system is considered to be the panacea for all issues related to childrenfrom marginalized communities in all the South Asian countries. For instance,majority of the laboring children in India and Nepal belong to scheduled castes(SC) and scheduled tribes (ST). However, this significant aspect rarely shapes thestate’s approach to the education provided to them.

In her published work, based on ethnographic studies on the intertwined issues ofchildhoods, labor, and schooling, Sarada Balagopalan (2002, 2008, 2014, 2019) hasdrawn attention to the deeply flawed nature of the attempts made by the state to endchild labor through schooling. As she points out, the “drive to enrol all children inschool has not significantly altered the imagination of the ways in which schoolingneeds to adapt itself to the needs of these new populations who inhabit its space”(2008, p. 278). She cites the example of the school’s reliance on homework given tothese children with the assumption that they have literate home environments as wellas adequate time after school hours to complete the homework. The timing of theterm-end examinations in April too coincides with the migration patterns of thefamilies of these children. The schooling system has little understanding, if any, ofthe kinds of responsibilities that these children have at home because of the mistakenbelief that once in school, the children stop working. There is ample empiricalevidence though to show that a majority of school-going children in South Asiacombine school with work (Balagopalan and Subramanian 2003; Bandyopadhyayand Subrahmanian 2011, CINI-ASHA 2003; Nambissan 1996, 2000, 2003; Sinha2000; Sinha and Reddy 2011; Stromquist 1989; Pappu and Vasanta 2010; UCW2003, 2011; Woodhead 1998). This reality of the children’s lives notwithstanding,within the frame that the formal schooling system adopts, the school-going child is

18 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

envisaged as one who has no history or baggage of any kind from the past, but only afuture to look forward to.

Moreover, the responsibility of ensuring a “better” future for the child laborerwho has now turned into a school-going child rests ironically on the efforts that thechild herself/himself has to put into the schooling processes (Balagopalan 2008). Butthe best efforts of the child are very often thwarted by the fundamental andhierarchized binary that is etched into the formal system of schooling between“mental work” and “manual work.”Mental abilities are hugely valued by the formalsystem of schooling, while manual work is regarded as inferior and not requiringskills or abilities of any kind. Attitudes of teachers discriminating against workingchildren and marking them as “slow learners” in such contexts have been variouslydocumented (Balagopalan and Subramanian 2003; Kumar 1989; Majumdar andMooij 2015; Ramachandran and Naorem 2013; Sinha and Reddy 2011; Talib 2003).

The need to undermine the hierarchy between mental and manual work that isentrenched in the schooling system too is being increasingly recognized. Forinstance, based on his study of the experiences of working-class children in a schoollocated on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, Talib (2003) has argued that thepedagogy and curriculum of schools should undergo a massive devolution ofmeaning in favor of the local context of the learner’s life settings with labor as thebasis of learning and livelihood. This would be especially relevant when work is aneveryday reality for a large number of children. He points out though that thetextbooks however project and promote values that undermine the kind of workthat the children and their families are involved in. According to Talib, the reflexiveand creative aspects that are a significant part of work could be incorporated into thelessons and the classroom sessions. Not only are schools unable to include theseaspects; they are not even equipped to address the mechanical and exploitativenature of some forms of widely prevalent labor.

The argument about valuing work is found in the Position Paper of the NationalFocus Group on Work and Education (NCERT 2007), which is a part of the NationalCurriculum Framework developed in India. Drawing from Gandhi’s elaboration in1937 of Nai Talim or a new education in which he emphasized that manual work wasan essential prerequisite for acquiring knowledge, the position paper highlights theneed for all children to recognize the dignity of work and labor. The formulation ofthe issue and the resolutions proposed in the position paper endorse the role of workin order for children to learn. However, the silence with regard to the work carriedout by children for earning seems to suggest that in spite of the best intentions ofpolicy makers, the imagination of schooling has not extended enough to includechildren who work for a living.

While policy frameworks, especially at the national level, have not yet been ableto conceive of ways to include laboring children in education such that it becomes anew norm, there have been attempts in recent times to expand the range of repre-sentation of children and childhoods, which could become resource materials foreducational purposes as well. Realizing the far-reaching influence that children’sliterature can have on shaping the perceptions and understanding of a child, anIndian nongovernmental organization, Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 19

Studies, published in 2008 a set of eight stories that emerged out of a project titledDifferent Tales. The stories included in Different Tales narrate an interesting range ofexperiences of children from marginalized communities, experiences that rarely findrepresentation in mainstream media. For instance, the story, Braveheart Badeyya, byGogu Shyamala (2008a) is about a boy from the madiga (SC) caste who goes toschool. As a first-generation learner, he is the pride of his community. And yet, inschool he is made to sit in the last row so that he does not pollute other children sincehe is from a lower caste that works with leather and makes footwear. As the storyproceeds, it becomes clear that Badeyya’s life in his community is in completecontrast to the treatment that he receives at school. His life in the communityincludes play and work in equal measure. He takes pride in the work that hiscommunity members do and seeks to prove his abilities in relation to it though theprofession is looked down upon by his schoolmates and teachers.

In another story, Tataki Wins Again by Gogu Shyamala (2008b), 11-year oldBalamma wakes up before the crack of dawn to water her family’s small plot beforethe canal that brings water to the fields dries up. In doing this, she flouts anunquestioned rule in the village – the land belonging to the village head (karnam)must be watered before anyone else’s. In this story, Balamma is an integral part of thefamily’s struggle for survival and a symbol of resistance to exploitation. In yetanother story, Textbook, written by Nuaiman (2008), young Saheer from the MapillaMuslim community in a South Indian village constantly looks for names, narrativesand contexts that he engages with outside the school. Mokkil and Jha (2019) pointout through a reading of the story that on not finding these familiar figures in histextbook Saheer tries on his own to fill in the blank in a curriculum that has no placefor his people or their community history, thereby alienating them further.

Commenting on the stories in the Different Tales project, Achar and Sreenivas(2010) draw attention to the diversity of childhoods and the need for greaterrepresentation of the lives of marginalized children. As they point out in the articletitled “Beyond the ‘national child,’” “set against the dominant culture, these child-hoods [represented in the stories] could only appear as deficient, deprived of play,pleasure and parental guidance. Children often drop out because the school remainsa forbidding place, identified not only with abuse from upper caste teachers but alsowith the absence of recognition and endorsement of themselves and their homelives” (2010, p. 38). Studies that have focused on textbooks to highlight the forms ofexclusion practiced in schools have also yielded valuable insights. Woodhead(2005), for instance, notes that most textbook writers construct images of childhoodas a period of life spent almost entirely in the context of family, preschool, andschool with an emphasis on care, play, learning, and teaching with a total neglect of“work” in children’s lives. In fact, the universal discourse on childhood views workas a potential threat to children’s well-being.

There are scholars and activists who have questioned the status of the formalschooling system as the only site for education (Raman 2000; Viruru 2008). Theyhave argued that for a significant majority of non-Western children across the world,school is not a crucial element of socialization or the only site of learning comparedto the family, extended kin, and community since children learn adult roles and

20 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

responsibilities in a wide variety of work situations. The need therefore for recog-nizing and valuing the kind of education children receive outside of school has beenemphasized in these arguments. For instance, organizations such as ShikshantarResource Centre in India have been strongly advocating the need for “unschooling.”

Most other organizations and individuals who critique the mainstream formalschooling system, however, are not arguing that laboring or working children shouldnot go to school. The concern in fact is that schools are not fulfilling their promise ofintroducing and mediating an understanding of the structures of modernity forworking children or equipping them with ways of engaging with modernity withoutbeing diminished by it. The desire for education and for schooling among thesechildren and their parents cannot be denied. Within such a situation, the “self-evidentseparation of a school-age child from income-earning activities should be re-exam-ined within the lens of multiple childhoods in order to explore the possibilities thatthis theoretical frame provides towards understanding the ‘failed’ experiences ofmarginal children with schooling” (Balagopalan 2008, p. 281). As part of suchexplorations, the voices of children themselves cannot be ignored.

Ways Forward

A majority of the studies and reports that have emphasized the importance ofschooling as an effective way of ending child labor have also stressed the need forproviding quality education for working children such that schooling becomes asignificant, meaningful, and viable option for these children and their guardians(Ahsan 2011; Burra 1995; de Groot 2007; Quattri and Watkins 2016; UCW 2003,2011). The unresolved point though is about how “quality education” is to beunderstood with reference to the education of working or laboring children. Infact, the mainstream approach to providing “quality” education for working childrenhas often ended up constructing their participation in education itself as inadequate atbest and as a failure at worst. This results in the blame getting shifted on to them withthe additional characterization of their childhoods as deficit forms when comparedwith the norm (Balagopalan 2003; Balagopalan and Subramanian 2003; Wyness2013).

According to Woodhead (2005), a combination involving social constructionistand sociocultural perspective that engages with the realities of working children’slives is the most promising way to go forward. The aims and objectives of educationoutlined in the National Curriculum Framework (2005) of India too emphasizeprecisely these points in relation to the education of all children. Where the issueof working children’s education is concerned, there is the additional need to recog-nize and acknowledge that child workers and child laborers have to often deal withthe debilitating conditions of poverty, humiliation, exploitation, oppression, as wellas alienation within their workplaces. In such a situation, it becomes imperative thatthe school too does not alienate them, albeit in ways different from what theyexperience at their worksites. In order to counter such a possibility, it would becritical to involve working children too in the process of revisioning and

Child Labor and Education in South Asia 21

reconstructing the education system such that it becomes far more inclusive than it isat present.

Scholars and activists who have emphasized the need for such an approach havelinked their position with the provision of participation rights that is already includedin the UNCRC (Lyon and Rosati 2014; Mason and Bolzan 2010; Nieuwenhuys2009, Williams 2004; Wyness 2013). The participation rights (Articles 12–16)referred to in the UNCRC deal with the right of children to express their opinion(“voice”) in the present on personal matters concerning their lives and interests. Inthe developed world, the exercise of these participation rights is often limited to thespace of the school and is aimed at training future citizens. When the perspectiveadopted in the developed countries is taken as the frame of reference, the range ofactivities that working children take up in the South are disregarded as legitimateforms of participation. The effort of some activists and scholars therefore has been toexpand the understanding of participation rights together with drawing attention tothe diverse modes through which children participate in the societies of the South.

Nieuwenhuys (2009) and Williams (2004) have documented instances fromIndia, Bangladesh, and Nepal of working children exercising their participationrights. In each of the cases discussed by them, the working children are clear interms of their opposition to the idea of complete ban on child labor. These childrenare as emphatic in endorsing their need for education. Nieuwenhuys (2009) cites ahistoric international meeting of working children held in the year 1996 in a smalltown called Kundapur in South India. One of the outcomes of this meeting was theworking child participants’ proposal that came to be known as “Kundapur TenPoints,” which are reproduced in the box item below. Of the ten points in the charter,three are directly related to education, i.e., points 4, 5, and 10.

Kundapur Ten Points1. We want recognition of our problems, our initiatives, proposals, and our

process of organization.2. We are against the boycott of products made by children.3. We want respect and security for ourselves and the work we do.4. We want an education system whose methodology and content are

adapted to our reality.5. We want professional training adapted to our reality and capabilities.6. We want access to good health care for working children.7. We want to be consulted in all decisions concerning us at local, national or

international level.8. We want the root causes of our situation, primarily poverty, to be

addressed and tackled.9. We want more activities in rural areas and decentralization in decision-

making, so that children will no longer be forced to migrate.10. We are against exploitation at work but we are for work with dignity with

hours adapted so that we have time for education and leisure.

22 R. Pappu and D. Vasanta

Clearly, if the right to education that has been enacted by most countries of SouthAsia is expected to contribute toward building an egalitarian society, then there isneed to re-vision the education system such that it becomes much more inclusive andis able to support the lives and aspirations of the working children. Such an approachwill necessarily have to take working children’s voice into serious consideration inthe process of revamping the system of education.

Cross-References

▶Education in Conflict Areas of South Asia▶Gender Equity in Education: Changes and Challenges in South Asia▶Learner Diversity and Marginality: An Introduction▶ Poverty and Education in South Asia▶ School Education System in Bangladesh▶ School Education System in Nepal▶ School Education Systems and Policies in Pakistan▶ School System and Education Policy in India

References

Achar, D., & Sreenivas, D. (2010, May). Beyond the ‘national child’: How to create storybooks fora plural world. Himal Southasian, 37–39.

Ahsan, T. (2011). Working children in Bangladesh: The status of un-served children in education.Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) report. http://www.campebd.org/page/Generic/0/6/25

Balagopalan, S. (2002). Constructing indigenous childhoods: Colonialism, vocational educationand the working child. Childhood, 9, 19.

Balagopalan, S. (2003). ‘Neither suited for the home nor for the fields’: Inclusion, formal schoolingand the Adivasi child. IDS Bulletin, 34(1), 55–62.

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