Policy document
Legislative provision with Respect to Child Labour
Meenu Meenu ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This document reviews India's legislative approach to child labour from 1881 onwards, examining laws designed to regulate working hours, set minimum age limits, and protect child workers' health and safety. The legislation restricts children below 14-15 years from certain occupations. Despite multiple laws and commission recommendations, including the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986, the document notes that child labour numbers continue to increase due to weak enforcement and limited political will.
Key points
- India has had child labour legislation for several decades, with laws dating back to 1881
- Main legislative concerns include regulating working hours, setting minimum age limits (14-15 years), and protecting child worker health and safety
- Key legislation includes the Child (Pledging of Labour) Act 1933 and the Employment of Child Act 1986
- Multiple commissions have made recommendations leading to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986
- Despite extensive legislation, child labour in the national labour force continues to increase due to lack of enforcement and political will
Limitations
This document is a policy review rather than an empirical study, so it provides no quantitative data on child labour prevalence, effectiveness of specific legislation, or comparative analysis of outcomes across different laws. It does not explain the specific provisions of individual acts or analyse barriers to implementation in detail.
Abstract
From several decades, legislation of India has tried to control and regulate labour.For several decades in India, laws exist to regulate and control to child labour.The main concern of the legislation was to regulate working hours for children, to prescribe the lowest age limit for working of children, to ensure the life, health of the child workers, and to restrict the working of children in dangerous work.Child Labour legislations are which restrict the working of children below the age group of 14 years and 15 years in some of the prescribed occupations.In absence of provisions to resolve the problem and due to lack of political will, the number of child labour in total labour force of the Nation is keeping on increasing.Since, 1881, an oversized numbers of laws were enacted that gives the legal protection to the operating youngsters.The Child (Pledging of Labour) Act, 1933 followed by the Employment of Child Act, 1986.Various recommendations given by a series of Commissions and because of which Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 enacted.