Though Article 21(A) of the Indian Constitution ensures Right to Education, it has not been implemented in the true spirit.

Speaking at a one-day workshop on the role of the civil society organisation in child labour elimination held in Bangalore on Friday, Senior advocate Ravivarma Kumar, said that Article 21 (A) should be made more “absolute and inalienable.”

The Government of India has done a great disservice to the children by not framing any legislation to implement the Right to Education. It has left it to the State governments to frame the rules, he said.

Under the Article, each child up to the age of 14 should be given education, he added. Though the Supreme Court has banned child labour, there are no procedures to implement the ban or make the employer pay the compensation to the child employee, he said.

In her keynote address, Magsaysay awardee and Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Shanta Sinha said, there’s an “increasing demand for child labour as it is cheap and children can work for long hours.

They make the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the homes we live in. This is in contrast to the growing aspirations of parents, who want to send their children to schools,” she said. “The enrollment rate in schools are exploding and government schools are overcrowded.

They have poor infrastructure and there are hardly any teachers. It’s the responsibility of the civil society to build pressure on the government to ensure that all children are sent to school.

We also need to make an honest appeal to employers of children to not employ them in work; instead they should sponsor their education,” she added.

No BPL cards

Ms Sinha quoted an ongoing survey by the Government of India of families below poverty line (BPL), which shows that if a child is sent to school, they lose four points and their chances of getting a BPL card becomes less.

“One of the reasons why BPL families do not send their children to school is because they might lose out on the BPL cards. Government should come out with economic policies which address these issues. There’s no point in having ad hoc programmes,” she added.

Principal Secretary, Labour Department, B L Sridhar said that there should be “practical solutions” to the problems of working children.

Later there were group discussions on the role of civil society in protecting child rights and eliminating child labour, including lobbying for legislations protecting these.

REALITY CHECK

As per 2001 census, 85 million children don’t attend schools; 66 per cent don’t complete Class five and there are 12.6 million child labourers in the country.