Child Labour as a Human Security Problem: Evidence from India

Contemporary economists and demographers have discussed the phenomenon of child labour using a family strategy approach, focusing their attention primarily on family resources, family constraints and the cost-benefit calculus of the family head. Diverging somewhat from this conventional path and starting from the vantage point of human security and development, this study makes a case for considering child well-being as a separate problem of its own, much as it is related to family welfare. The paper argues that non-schooling and work of children reflect not only parental income constraints but also, more importantly, the paucity of publicly provided educational opportunities; they are the products of not just parental utilitarian calculus but of deficiencies in public policy and social institutions. With a particular empirical focus on India, it demonstrates that the burden of child labour as well as the onus of educational deprivation are disproportionately borne by different population groups in the country. The paper concludes that in considering strategies to combat child labour, the school reform point of view and correlatively the expansion of an educational opportunities perspective should enter the current political and policy consciousness in a significant way.