Children - Terre des Hommes

38
“My name is Sudeep. I am working with my father here
in the stone quarries since 3-4 years. Now I am 18 years
old. I come from Panna village. There is no fixed rate of
payment for the work I do. For digging out one plate of
stone we get Rs. 70-120 per day. In a day we can take
out 5-6 plates of the stone, as a group. I can say that I
earn Rs.100-120 in one day. But I can only work for 12-
15 days in a month as the work is very strenuous. I have
never been to school”.
Source:: Interview carried out in Purna panna stone and diamond quarries, 18
state alone. In Karnataka, estimates suggest that there are
at least a few lakh children engaged in mining there.
So the number of children working in mining in India is
,in fact, likely to be much closer to the one million that the
ILO gives as the worldwide figure. The blurring of children
and women’s labour has been cited as one impediment
to accurate data on children working in mining in India,
as often in reports and statistics women and children are
lumped together.
In Kallali, in Bellary district, Karnataka, large numbers of
children from the Madiga community (a Scheduled Caste)
are engaged in stone crushing work, prescribed to be their
traditional occupation. Over 20 percent of the children aged
be working at the mining sites. According to the children
interviewed, there are over 100 crushing machines in the
surrounding area, and at each crushing site at least 20-25
children are working, most of them girls, earning around
Rs.100-110 per day for their labour.
In Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, locals explained how
most of the boys and girls start working by the age of 10.
In Bador village, the community elders said that there were
about 200 children in the village, of which around 100 attend
the primary school. However, they drop out by fifth grade
and join the mine labour. Parent explained that as future
breadwinners of families, they have to learn the work early
in life. At a diamond mine in Panna district, the research
of the children were below 12 years of age and were helping
their parents throw the soil away. The parents stated that the
children are enrolled in school, but they work half the day in
the mines and then attend school in the afternoon.
In Mannor village, which has a child population of around
300, only 20 are reported to be attending school. When
children reach the age of 10 or 12, they join daily wage work
in the diamond mines. It is claimed that only 2 children have
studied up to class V in this village.
Cases of state and industry irresponsibility are seen even
where a precious stone like diamond is concerned, children
are working in Madhya Pradesh to find diamonds for local
contractors, where the stakes are extremely high but the
trade routes are deliberately made elusive. The Obulapuram
mines and the child labour in Bellary is another clear
example of this. The local contractors who hire child labour
do not even make a pretention of hiding the facts. In Bellary
they stated that they are immune from laws and regulations,
which they flout openly because “it is taken care of ” by the
Obulapuram Mines. This reflects the arrogant defiance to
law as law-keepers can be easily purchased to the highest
levels of power. In most of the areas we found that mining,
undoubtedly, was a dirty business with more illegal than
legal modes of operation.
Poverty is often presented as the only factor that explains
child labour in the mining sector. However, the actual
picture is far more complex than this. A multitude of socioeconomic
factors have led to a situation where, in the 21st
century, large numbers of children can still be seen toiling
in our mines and quarries. The systemic and deliberate
reason is that child labour is cheap, and this cheap labour
is welcomed by contractors in the mining and quarrying
sector. Children are also compliant, easier to control and
have no bargaining power. Children are often forced into
mining because of the low wages received by their parents.
They are pushed into the labour force in order to enable the
family to survive, particularly in difficult times, such as that
of family injury or illness.
139. One lakh is equal to 100,000.
140. Fact-finding Team, Our Mining Children, April 2005. http://rimmrights.org/Documents/2005-India-Bellary%20fact%20finding%20report.pdf, uploaded: 10
February 2010.
141. K. Lahiri-Dutt, Digging to Survive: Women's Livelihoods in South Asia's Small Mines and Quarries, 2008.
142. Interviews with children, Kallali, Bellary district, Karnataka, June 2009.
143. Interviews with mining-affected community, Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, September 2009.
144. Interviews at diamond mine, Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, September 2009.