Mocking Child Labour

All Fool’s Day is about having some fun at the expense of others. Mockery, however, has become so routine in our country with TV news dishing it out 24x7 that the day dedicated to practical jokes and general foolishness now needs to scratch notice by taking recourse to black humour. The darker recesses of implausibility need to be accessed to get noticed in these scam-driven times, so here goes an attempt to recount some absurdities, which, because they are done and over, can be received only with some shocked disgust and wry smiles; or maybe not, let’s see. This is not an April Fool’s prank. The example of preposterousness recounted below is an audited fact, included in the Comptroller & Auditor General of India’s Report on Sikkim for the year ended 31 March 2010.

The Labour Department, yes, Sikkim has one, received an enquiry from the Union Ministry of Labour in March 2007 asking it to suggest names of “reputed and independent” agencies of Sikkim [does such a thing exist?], to conduct an “intensive child labour survey”. The Department was to send its recommendation by 15 May 2007. Even till January 2008, the Labour Department could not furnish this recommendation list, which is hardly surprising given the funds-driven, issue-flexible nature of such “agencies” in Sikkim. So what does the Department do? It goes right ahead and selects an organisation for the job on its own. It entrusts the Department of Economics, Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation [DESME] to carry out the survey at an estimated cost of Rs. 51.25 lakhs. The Ministry probably did not mean a government agency when it said “reputed and independent”, but that was obviously lost on the Labour Department. In March 2008, the Department transferred Rs. 33 lakhs as advance to DESME to carry out the survey. It did not bother to set a deadline for the work. Data might be cold, but people age. Child labour relates to children below the age of 14 years made to work, even as domestic help. Data on them needs to be detailed and refreshed every year because many of them would cross the protected age every year as would many more join the ranks. But these things probably don’t matter when no one is serious about the issue at hand. So, a year down the line, DESME intimated Labour Department that it had utilised all of the Rs. 33 lakh released to it and submitted its provisional report on child labour in Sikkim. DESME has spent Rs. 33 lakh to discover and certify, hold your breath, that Sikkim had 213 child labourers. This, in 2009 when the Census of 2001 had already recorded 16,457 children under the age of 14 as being illegally made to labour. When the funds to survey findings are broken down, it transpires that DESME billed Labour Department Rs. 15,493 per child labour discovered! The fact that this number is condemnably erroneous is obvious, and DESME had to still pad it up with domestic workers recorded in its own “provisional list” as being up to 58 years old!
As one would have noticed, none of what is shared above is funny. The listlessness with which a social challenge as staggering as child labour [now that domestic servants are included in the list, this number is huge in Sikkim] is being approached by the nodal department is distressing. The Act banning child labour has been around for some years now, but it has done nothing to curtail the practice. Having a base data to start work from is necessary before an action plan can even be mooted. For that to happen, the government agency shouldered with the responsibility to look out for the abused young ones [and child labour is the abuse of both, the law and the child] will have to dust itself awake. As for the civil society here, well, it can present itself as and when one is fabricated...