Educating Girls – countering child labour
The mercury edges close to 40 degree Celsius as Vinita and her mother wipe the sweat from their foreheads then go back to breaking the stones in the quarry. It is gruesome to work like this, especially for children of this age, but choices are very few for most of the children and their families in Rajhmundry, Andhra Pradesh. Vinita says how difficult it is to break the stones, “When I hit it with the hammer, small pieces of stones spatter my face and eyes and I develop cuts on my fingers”, says this ten-year old.
Child labour is a societal issue that does not lend itself to easy solutions. According to the Census 2001, poverty has trapped over 12.59 million children in labour in India. Untold numbers of these are girls like Vinita who because of age-old traditions and discrimination against her gender are doubly marginalized. In a family living in a poverty situation, it is easy to decide that the girl will be the one to drop out of school, help in the kitchen, take care of her siblings and give up her childhood. Just like the mother had to. Why is it that we still have to grapple with basics like protecting our children, even after 60 years of Independence?
And the ‘unkindest cut’ of all of these deprivations is when a girl child is denied education. - Sixteen-year-old Tamizhselvi was recently brought out of bonded labour in Gudiyatham. She was forced to drop out of school and start working to pay for her father’s sickness while her elder brother continued to stay in school. These girls are the hidden face of child labour, often ignored by popular child labour statistics.
UNICEF, in its report ‘'Excluded and Invisible', State of the World's Children 2006 report’ contends that the number of girl children enrolled in schools in India, between the ages of 6 and 10 is 70% while the number of boys in the same age bracket is 76%. And the number gets dismal as the children’s age goes up. In the upper primary level, less than 40% of girls are in school.
‘At the Cost of Childhood’ is a World Vision India report on its learnings from decades of responding to child labour. This document also lays out the strategy for child labour initiatives in the shaped majorly by child labourers. One of the learnings from this cherished experience is that education is a key weapon in fighting child labour. More so among girls.
World Vision believes that every child who is not in school is a sure candidate for child labour. This brings us to the natural conclusion of the heightened vulnerability for girls, being kept out of schools falling into labour. There are many hundreds, who drop out of school to take care of siblings, cook and clean, work in the fields and toil at hard labour. Each of these girls will grow into a mother who may not know or agree that child labour ‘deprives a child of her ‘childhood’.
The benefits of investing in girls’ education are many, of which several international learnings are listed below;
- It eases the strain on health-care systems by reducing child and maternal mortality, by keeping children healthier, preventing early marriage and by reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS.
- It increases women’s productivity, strengthening the economy in the long term.
- Supplying safe water and sanitation to schools brings more girls into the classroom and improves the health and hygiene of the community.
The promise of compulsory education for girls and boys up to the primary level is the first step to keeping children out of child labour. The need is for the extension of this benefit to the secondary level, with a special focus on girls so that children stay in school, and get an opportunity for a better future.
Addressing the Parliament on February 16, 2006, the President announced that the Government has sanctioned the creation of over 1000 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas in educationally backward blocks of 21 States to provide free residential education to underprivileged girls at the upper primary level. In his budget speech, the Finance Minister announced his proposal to provide a further incentive to the girl child who passes the VIII Standard Examination and enrols in a secondary school. A sum of Rs.3,000 will be deposited in her name, and she would be entitled to withdraw it on reaching 18 years of age.
This commitment to girl child education needs to be extended to all states where children, especially girls are out of school. Well-know development practitioner and expert Vandana Siva brings out the link between the lack of women’s education and the issues that come out of it: "Lack of education among women has caused the patriarchal system to grow strong roots in India. Educating women about gender equity and economic sustainability is universal education. We should model the economy on the premise that educated women help to build equitable and sustainable societies.”
Empowerment of women and affirmative action should begin with every girl child in our primary and middle schools in our villages. It should protect our girls – protection is their right in a free Inida. We need to make universal education a reality for every girl in our villages and slums. An economy that is built on the innocent shoulders and nimble fingers of a child labourers is a weak economy that lacks morals.
As for Vinita, with every swing of the hammer, she is not simply chipping away stones, by destroying her childhood. Would Free India rise up and replace the hammer with a pencil.
Stand up and restore Vinita’s childhood – fifty years is embarrassingly too long.
