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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proper education which are attractive to children'.
The study of the IDS revealed that 'poverty' was the main reason why children were sent to work.
This study and one other study, however, revealed that the positive attitude towards the labour of
children and the negative attitude towards existing formal education by mainly Muslim parents,
were the important reasons for the majority of children being sent to work in the gem polishing
industry (and not to school). The increased wages of child labourers over the years led to an extra
incentive for poor parents to send their children to the industry for work. The question is, who
would not send his child to work if the existing education facilities were inadequate and relatively
expensive? So, 'poverty' is rather easy and too simple an explanation for the phenomenon that
children worked in the gem polishing industry in Jaipur. According to the findings of one
study 169 , there were also parents who were only slightly better off than the fathers of the majority
of the children who insisted that their children should go to school.
(ii) Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Ms. Lal
In 1992, two years after the study undertaken by the IDS, the Indian Institute of Health Management
Research, another institute, conducted another study on the child labour problem in the gem
polishing industry in Jaipur. The research was done by order of the Planning Commission of the
former Government of India. Ms. Lal, the coordinator of the study, told the researcher of the
present study that 'the Special Schools had not reached their aims. The salaries of the teachers
were too low, the schools and class rooms were not properly built and maintained, and education
is not attractive to the children. The teachers are not motivated to work with the children'.
In their report 170 they quoted the Labour Commissioner of Rajasthan with the message that 'the
Labour Department did not have adequate funds to meet the demands of all the children. The special
schools did not have a permanent staff and the teachers worked on a part-time basis. The
class rooms were very congested. Unless these schools were properly funded, it was very difficult
to bring about the desired results'.
The above-mentioned report of the IIHMR, did not comment on the functioning of the Special
Schools. The IIHMR recommended in its report, however, that schooling should be ensured,
which would make it impossible to employ children in a full-time job, because the laws relating
to schools were easier to enforce than the factory laws. This recommendation was basically a
request for a law enacting compulsory primary education for all children with rules to implement
that law, but was not mentioned as such in their report. Another recommendation made by the
IIHMR was that the schools should make arrangements for placement of the children in the gem
polishing industry at the moment they had finished their studies or had reached adulthood. This
would help in inculcating a sense of economic security in them.
In the interview with Ms. Lal in March 1996 she pleaded, however, for a combination of learning
the skills of gem polishing for 2 to 4 hours per day and normal education implemented in a more
motivated way. The community and the employers should be made aware of the child labour
p. 88.
169 Neera Burra, Born to Work, Child Labour in India, pp. 99 and 106.
170 Nisha Lal, 1992. Child labour in Gem Polishing Industry in Jaipur. Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur, Rajasthan,