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Money still talks as middle-class Indians demand child labour
The Australian - November 12, 2011
The miserable girl, one of six children of a dirt-poor farm labourer from Orissa, has been unable to sit or stand since she injured her back in the middle-class Indian home where she has worked as maid and nanny for the past 15 months.
For 1000 rupees ($20) a month – paid in a lump sum to her father – she has worked every day of those months, cooking, washing clothes and caring for two small children.
But after fracturing her spine last week – she says from being forced to lift a heavy metal chest by her employers; they say she slipped in the bathroom – it is not clear whether she will ever work, let alone walk, again.
Kalpana's predicament is not uncommon in this rapidly developing nation. The rise of the Indian middle class has led to a pernicious increase in demand for child domestic labour, with as many as 50,000 children working in homes across the Indian capital alone.
"They're paid anywhere between R500 and R1500 a month. They're sleeping on the balconies or the kitchen floor," says child welfare advocate Bhuwan Ribhu, who this month will appeal to Delhi's High Court seeking tighter enforcement of child labour laws.
His organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has rescued almost 1400 child labourers this year, 60 of whom were domestic workers in Delhi homes.
India formally outlawed the hiring of children under 14 as domestics six years ago. But Mr Ribhu says large parts of Indian society are yet to grasp the criminality of child labour.
"People here pride themselves on the number of domestic staff they have. If they have three or four people working for them, that is an indication of status. Go to any mall in this city and you will easily see five to 10 families with child workers," he says.
Kalpana's employer, Abinav Arya, a successful Delhi businessman facing charges of keeping bonded child labour, told The Weekend Australian he had not hired the girl, but rather took her in out of pity because her family could not afford to feed her. Mr Arya says he was unaware of the girl's true age and would not have allowed her to look after his children had he known she was only 12 or 13.
"We have been taking good care of her," he said. "I am ready to help her because she has spent a lot of time with our family, but this is a lesson for me and for my entire family. We got convinced of the story and got trapped."
Mr Ribhu says he has heard it all before. "If he took on the child and treated her as one of his own, why was she not going to school? Why was he not paying her a minimum wage, forget about living wage?
"If this girl had been getting R6000 a month and been treated properly, we would not be having this conversation. But her back is broken, for god's sake – and the man says he was trying to do her a favour?"
He concedes the case highlights the failings not just of the law to protect children from exploitation, but of the state to ensure that millions of destitute parents are spared the agonising decision to sell one child into labour to feed the rest.
Meanwhile, Kalpana's father Nimai Mandal has been sleeping in the hospital stairwell – and earning no money for his family – while he awaits his daughter's prognosis.
At the hospital earlier this week, The Weekend Australian watched on as a friend of the Arya family approached Mr Mandal with a bag of sandwiches and a wad of cash.
Two days later, Mr Mandal told The Weekend Australian he did not want Mr Arya to be charged.
Instead, he has asked the family for R500,000 compensation – a figure Mr Ribhu says will likely be whittled down to as little as one-tenth of that – so that he can take Kalpana home and put her back in school.
"I am happy with the way the employer is taking care of her and am ready to take back the case," Mr Mandal said. "Just let him pay the money."
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