Emotional Behaviour of the Child Labour: An Explorative Study in India

Introduction

A balanced child is a base of a balanced adult and a balanced adult is a future of a country. They form the human work force, for a solid economy and a strong nation. Every family, society and country gives special emphasis on the growth and development of this resource. For a society to be developed into a rich civilization, its children are to be groomed in totality. They need to be nourished, educated, and skilled in a harmonious way. Balanced diet in the form of nutritious food, leisure and play in the form of enabling environment and good quality education to become a cultured citizen of the society are fundamental basics. Once they grow up, they are required to be vocationally trained and equipped with skills to become productive citizens of a country. On the contrary if they are not groomed with these basic fundamentals of a healthy life, they may turn into social delinquent adults (Ahuja, 2018).

Unfortunately not all children grow into a balanced adult because of the various reasons. It may be deprivation of education, nutrition, psychological support, medical aid or love and affection. This paper does not go into the details of these physical reasons, the goal of this paper is to explore the emotional impact of such deprivations of a child labour. Thus a study was conducted in Delhi amongst the Child labour and school going children of the same socio-economic background, in this case the slums of Delhi (India) to study the behavior patterns of the children. International Labour Organisation which is well accepted globally and it says, child labour is often defined as work that deprives childhood of children, their potential and their dignity, and it is harmful to physical and mental development”.

For the part of the study the definition of the child labour was considered as the definition given by “The Child Labour Act 1986 in India” which states child means a person who has not completed his fourteenth year of age; It further regulates the conditions of work. The act was amended on 30^th July, 2016 and it has been named as Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016.

The act also included the adolescents in its ambit. It exercises prohibition of adolescents in hazardous occupations. It also prohibits the children below 14 years of age to work for economic reasons, what so ever except in the family settings.