A Critical Study of the Official Policies on Child Labour in India 1947-1979

Abstract

This article essentially analyses the different constitutional provisions, all the laws and regulations, committee resolutions regarding child labour during the period from 1947(the year of India’s Independence) to 1979 (International Year of the Child) to tease out the actual official attitudes of the post-colonial Indian nation-state to the problem of child labour. We have also resorted to critical reading and deconstruction of texts as official policies are largely reflected in the drafts and final texts of the Five Year Plans, other policy documents and the wrings, speeches and comments of ministers, legislators and policy-makers. In order to situate the Plans, policies and official programmes discussed in this article in their appropriate economic and political context, we have also drawn upon the relevant gamut of social-scientific literature. The child labourers were obviously elided by the State’s policy makers as they were exposed to successive links in a chain of exploitation. The poorer sections were being systematically exploited because an unequal economic system was pinning the lower classes down to poverty.