Child Labour in Cottonseed Production by Ashok Khandelwal

work proper. The most important of all the reasons is criticality
of labour coupled with shortage of labour and involvement of
large number of child labour behind the early transportation and
placement of the labour on the fields. Invariably most of the
labour that is posted in the fields much before the start of the
actual work is young. In the present study 71 percent children said
that work did not start immediately after their arrival. These
workers are not paid any wages during the wait-period. The
owners also encourage this to ensure the cheap labour supply.
And therefore they don't mind providing certain facilities like
cooked vegetables to idle workers.
The workers travel a distance of many hundred kilometres for
work. Private jeeps are the most important means of transport.
Most of these vehicles operate illegally. Most of the movement is
in the dead of the night through interior routes. In response to the
mode of transportation 93.5 percent workers said that they
travelled by jeeps.
(h) Work Environment
Farmers often complain that workers do not work properly and
make many kinds of mistakes. In response to our question as to
what kind of mistakes workers make and what action they take,
there were in all 45 responses. They listed total nine kinds of
mistakes that the children make (Table 2.12). The most common
mistakes the workers make relate to improper crossing. This is
either in terms of improper rubbing or crossing without granules.
Another common mistake identified related to spoiling of female
buds. Many times when child worker slits the female bud for
emasculation, the bud gets spoiled by the nail. This leads to the
third problem of plucking flowers or buds. Sometimes the
workers forget to put tag on the emasculated female flower.
Farmers also complain that the workers many times simply break
part of a plant. It appears that because of the problems the farmers
face they abuse children and there misplaced anger get diverted
towards such obnoxious intolerable behaviour which may
ultimately lead to running away. On specific question included in
worker's schedule, two child workers out of 29 valid responses
reported running away of workers this year. We however could
not get any further details about these left-work-in-between
workers - whether they got their wages are not, what made them
leave work and so on.
40 :: Child Labour in Cottonseed Production