According to a study conducted by Unnati in the year (2009), it is clear that due to poverty, cultural norms and lack of awareness, children in this region are vulnerable for all kinds of abuses and lack of opportunities. The practice of child labour is one of the realities in this area.
Many appalling realities like poverty (85 percent), illiteracy (80 percent),unemployment, low wages, ignorance, social prejudices, regressive traditions,poor standard of living, backwardness, superstition, alcoholism (60 percent of families), low status of women and children, large family size, small landholdings have combined to give birth to the terrible practice of child labour. Children in the age group of 6- 14 go for labour work, instead of going to schools.
Children are not compelled for compulsory education due to their parental ignorance and poor family support. Poverty and big size of families have been identified as the main cause of child labour in the area. Big size of families creates paucity of resources. When there are limited means and more mouths to feed children are driven to commercial activities and not provided their development needs including compulsory education.
In some cases parents are forced to send their small children for labour, in others, the network of agents taking children for labour entice and induce the head of the family and sometimes children themselves. Monetary constraints and the need for food, shelter, clothing and indebtedness, push the children into the trap of child labour, losing their childhood denied of their rights. Illiterate and ignorant parents do not understand the need for the overall physical, cognitive and emotional development of their children. In these villages mostly parents are uneducated and unexposed, so they don’t realize the importance of education for their children and often unaware of the harms of sending children for labour. It was observed during the survey, that there is a cyclic relationship between out of school/drop out and child labour. When the child is deprived of education (i.e. is out of school and forced out of school due to corporal punishment or poor quality of education or accessibility factor), they’re easily available as labour pool. Having dropped out of school, the children are pushed into labour to do something productive in their life. Once they enter the labour market, they remain out of school/drop out and thus barred from their right to education.
