Child labour in the handicrafts home industry in Kashmir: a sociological study

Abstract

The study has been undertaken among child labourers in the handicrafts home industry in Kashmir (2008), in order to establish the phenomenon of child labour in its proper perspective. The objectives of the study have been fulfilled by projecting appropriate variables in the process of data analysis and discussion. Any social problem as an empirical reality has various aspects, such as demographic, economic, geographic, psychological and social. This study has tried to highlight the social aspect of the problem of the working children using techniques of data collection accepted by sociologists and presenting it in terms and concepts used in sociological writings. A wider range of aspects such as family, economic status, parental perception, education, gender discrimination, middle men dimension and exploitation, relations of production, cultural acceptance and issues of health and recreation, etc. have been covered. The study also examines existing rules and regulations and pin points the loopholes in the laws which the employers exploit while engaging children in their business units. This framework was applied to generate data on family structure, poverty and its indexes including level of education, occupation and health, as parameters of understanding the life of these children. The health conditions are bad generally which affects the life chances of these children who work on carpets, papier mache and other objects which are an integral part of the tourist trade. Infact, the careful statistical analysis of many different aspects of child labourers in Kashmir, with focus on more qualitative indexes gives a sense of the relations between town and country, between tourism and political environments, between commerce, consumption and human rights.

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