LIBERATION OF THE CHILD DOMESTIC

The closets of millions in middle class South Asia contain a dirty little secret, – the treatment of children who are harnessed to work as domestics. Can we go beyond bemoaning the situation, and do something about a human rights abuse that is not really talked about because practically every urban middle class family keeps a child domestic? What does it take for a family to see its own child in the eyes of the boy or girl who shoulders the burden of its household chores?

Published on:

01 Nov 2002, 6:03 am

In the last two decades, enormous sums of money, more perhaps than has been earned by all the child workers of South Asia put together in the corresponding period, have been channelled into the enterprise of mitigating and eventually eliminating the practice. After all these years and despite all that money, there is little indication of any progress.

Missionary enthusiasm, moral vehemence and financial commitment have clearly not sufficed, and so, far from eliminating the practice, the number of working children has actually increased. It remains a moot and ultimately unverifiable point whether the rate of growth of child employment has come down or not. The abysmal inadequacy of the statistical record renders that an idle speculation. What matters simply is that the total numbers have increased and continue to increase. Clearly, the sweeping objective of completely eliminating all forms of child labour was based on too many virtuous presumptions, untouched by real circumstances, to ever rise above empty rhetoric.

Loading content, please wait...