– ‘Laws must be strengthened’ –
The tally of child workers in India is a matter of debate, but Unicef, the UN children’s agency, estimates around 28 million Indian children are employed.
In 2010, India passed a landmark Right to Education law, which provides free, compulsory schooling to children up to 14, but the law is only patchily enforced.
“Things have improved in India but the laws must be enforced and strengthened,” Satyarthi said.
The Nobel award “shines the light on these voiceless” child workers employed in such jobs as mining, agriculture and construction, making carpets and jewellery and as store helpers and servants, he said.
Children routinely work at least 12 hours a day while many are sexually exploited, according to Indian activists and police.
The Bachpan Bachao Andolan website says the group has “rescued more than 82,800 victims of trafficking, slavery and child labour” and helped them “find promising futures”.
The group said it rescued nine boys in a raid last month on automobile repair shops in New Delhi.
“Ironically, thousands of people who see children every day in tea stalls and workshops don’t have any empathy with them,” the website notes.
While India’s expanding economy is burnishing the middle class, there is also desperate misery. Poor families sometimes sell their children for work or as workers because they cannot feed them at home.
Some 24.7 percent of India’s 1.2 billion population live on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank, leading critics to argue that outlawing child labour is impractical.
But Satyarthi insists otherwise.
“I strongly maintain poverty must not be used as an excuse to perpetuate child labour and if no education is given to children, they remain poor,” he said.
“Child labour, illiteracy and poverty can be seen as a triangle,” Satyarthi added.
The Nobel prize is “something to fire all of us to carry on the fight against child-trafficking and servitude”.
