Child labour: Child labour is the employment of children below fourteen years of age in any work that deprives them of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful. For a very long time the Indian peasant has been helped by his children in all his functions both inside the house and outside on the farm. After industrialisation, these children are appointed as workers on a lesser pay. The capitalists or the moneyed proprietors look for opportunities to make use of child labour.
One of the root causes of child labour is poverty. The parents are too poor to protect and feed the children and hence send them away to find work for themselves and earn some money. To employ children is a crime against human rights and it is a greater crime to pay them low wages, and allow them to suffer several diseases which afflict them because of malnutrition and uneconomic living. Though the government has abolished child labour, the evil continues unabated in all the sectors.
