CHILD Protection & Rights > Child Protection Issues.

Situation in India
India has the largest number of children under the age of 15 in work in the world: 13 million. Some estimates put the figure at 100 million children. An estimated 8.4 million children in India are trapped in the worst forms of child labour.
Combination of poverty and the lack of a social security network are the two main factors responsible for the problem of child labor in India. The increasing gap between the rich and the poor, privatization of basic services and the neo-liberal economic policies are throwing vast numbers of population out of the social security net and the impact on children is the worst.

Hazardous forms of child labor
The overwhelming majority of working children in India are rural children in the unorganized, agricultural and allied sectors (the traditional sectors of the Indian economy that often provides employment for all members of a family: cultivation, livestock, forestry and fisheries, etc.). But they also work in hazardous conditions in the footwear industry, the carpet industry, the garment industry, the silk thread industry. They are also employed in the diamond and gemstone industry, cutting and polishing diamond chips.

Child domestic workers
There is a growing phenomenon of rampant and systematic exploitation of children in domestic work in urban areas.
A survey in India, noted that 17% of domestic workers were under 15 years old and also reported that girls aged 12 to 15 were the preferred choice of 90% of employing households. In Chennai, a study found that 25% of the children became child domestic workers before they completed eight years. 65% of the children entered the work force between the ages of 9 and 12 years.
The employment of children in domestic work is an age-old practice and it continues, sanctioned by the upper and middle class families. In many cases, such children have been forced to work for long durations, without food, and/or have worked for very low wages.

Bonded child labor.
There are as many as 15 million bonded child laborers in India, most of whom are Dalits or from lower castes. More than half, and possibly as many as 87 percent of these bonded child laborers work in agriculture, tending crops, herding cattle, and performing other tasks for their "masters."
Entry of Multi-Nationals Companies in India without mechanisms to hold them accountable has also played its toll on children. Some companies like Hindustan Lever Ltd., the Indian subsidiary of British-Dutch multinational company Unilever, as well as the American multinational Monsanto are making use of hazardous forms of child labor in cotton seed production in India on a large scale.