The Law against Child Labour

In one line

Before 2016 the Act prohibited a child from working in a list of occupations; since 2016 it prohibits a child from working at all, with two exceptions, and regulates adolescents instead.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 24 forbids the employment of a child below fourteen in a factory, mine or other hazardous employment. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 was renamed the CHILD AND ADOLESCENT LABOUR (PROHIBITION AND REGULATION) ACT by the Amendment Act 35 of 2016, in force 1 September 2016. Section 2(ii) now defines a child as a person who has not completed fourteen years or such age as the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 specifies, WHICHEVER IS MORE; and section 2(i) defines an ADOLESCENT as a person who has completed fourteen but not eighteen. Section 3 prohibits the employment of a child in ANY occupation or process, excepting only help to a family or family enterprise which is not hazardous, after school hours or during vacations, and work as an artist in the audio-visual entertainment industry other than the circus. Section 3A prohibits the employment of an adolescent in the hazardous occupations and processes in the Schedule. Section 14 fixes the penalties, section 14B creates a Child and Adolescent Labour Rehabilitation Fund, and section 17B requires periodic inspection.

Before and after 2016

Before. A child below fourteen could not be employed in the occupations in Part A and the processes in Part B of the Schedule, a list of some eighteen occupations and sixty-five processes. Everything else was lawful, and the Act REGULATED the hours and conditions of a child's work outside the Schedule.

After. All work by a child below fourteen is prohibited, subject to two exceptions; the Schedule now applies to ADOLESCENTS and, as substituted, lists three categories, mines, inflammable substances or explosives, and hazardous processes within the meaning of the Factories Act 1948; and the regulatory Part now governs adolescents only.

What is better. The general prohibition, which for the first time reaches domestic work, agriculture, roadside eating houses and small workshops; the alignment of the definition with the education Act, so that a child of compulsory school age cannot lawfully be at work; the raising of the penalty; the cognizability of the employer's offence; and the rehabilitation fund.

What is worse, and this is the criticism to state. The Schedule was cut from a long list to three broad heads, so an occupation dangerous in fact but outside those heads is now open to an adolescent; and the family enterprise exception in section 3(2)(a) permits a child of any age below fourteen to work in a family enterprise after school hours, which is exactly where most of the invisible, caste-linked and home-based child labour is.