Child-and-adult-labour-in-the-export-oriented-garment-and-gem-polishing-industry-of-India

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Child and adult labour in the gem polishing export industry of Jaipur
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parents to send their children to work. But these wages were still a very small percentage of what
adult workers got for carrying out the same job.
Next to the child labourers who worked full-time outside their house and who did not work for
their father, there were many children who worked with their father. These children were
exploited as badly as the children who worked for employers other than their father. The fathers
who still taught their sons let the child work the same number of hours as himself to earn the
family income. The child did also perform the same processes as his father during the same
number of hours per day. (This form of family business, where the child works with his father,
however traditional, is also a disguised form of exploitation where their own children are used for
earning income. These children are also deprived of education and play).
The employment of the likely increased number of child labourers in the gem polishing industry
today seemed to involve more 'labour' than 'work'. The children who were employed full-time
were deprived of education and play, and were economically exploited by employers who only
thought of profit maximization. The profit made by the employer was bigger than the profit made
by the parents. These children could not raise their voice against being deprived of playing with
friends and/or learning in school.
The majority of these children will end up either as adult workers in the same job or as a unitowner
employing little children again for making higher profits. The child labourers, like their
fathers and employers, are again subject to the destructive vicious circle of exploitation and
repetitive impoverishment.
6.6 Former Government's Scheme to eliminate child labourers from the gem
polishing industry of Jaipur
The Central Government was aware of the child labour problem in the gem processing units in
Jaipur long before the announcement of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of
1986. The Gurupadaswamy Committee Report of 1979 (GOI, 1981) came to the conclusion that
there were at least 10,000 children in the gem polishing industry in Jaipur. Jaipur is one of the
areas with a high concentration of child labourers which needed special attention. The National
Child Policy of 1987 was launched to wean the child labourers from the gem industry. In 1987,
the Ministry of Labour, Government of India, asked ILO for assistance in the formulation and design
of the project. The ILO, in consultation with the Ministry of Labour, recruited a consultant,
Dr. Usha Naidu of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, to carry out the groundwork in
Jaipur. Dr. Usha Naidu, by means of observations and discussions with key persons in the city of
Jaipur in 1988, found that the number of child labourers in the gem industry may be about
15,000, overwhelmingly boys. The Child Labour Project in Jaipur, had therefore taken the figure
of 15,000 child labourers as a bench mark for the design of the project 165 .
165 ILO, Geneva, 1988, Report to the Government of India on a Programme of Action on Child Labour in Jaipur, Mandsaur and Markapur,
by Assefa Bequele, p. 4.