Agriculture is one of the most labour intensive sectors and engages the largest workforce. Today, with the advancement of economies and expansion of job opportunities there is an evident shift towards urban or non-farm sector. As a result, agriculture is being increasingly feminised with self-employed women farmers, waged agriculture women workers and sadly with the participation of child workers.
As per 1LO-2018, 218 million children in the age group 5-17 years are in labour market and almost 71% of them are primarily in agricultural activities. Despite agriculture being listed as one of the hazardous sectors as per the ILO convention, children in agriculture are almost 10 times higher than that in other sectors. The complex supply chain of the agriculture sector further worsens the situation. The agricultural produce and supply needs intensive labour requirements as a part of the demands in the global supply chain, which means cheap labour, hazardous and unregulated work conditions and more tender hands in the field. The supply chain does not have adequate transparency about their workforce. They could be forced children, trafficked women, or any other. As a result, the estimates of children in the fields in most of the developing countries remain scant, under-reported and therefore invisible.
Conceptual ambiguities and gender distortion in data have often led to the overestimation and underestimation of child labour. It is widely recognised that though girls do not enter the labour market in large proportion at an early age, yet a significant proportion of them are used in unpaid family activities (Jayaraj and Subramaniam, 1997; Burra, 1997; Dev and Ravi, 2002; Kak, 2004). Such forms of work have almost remained invisible in employment statistics.
In India, as per the estimates of National Sample Survey 2011-12, children working for wages in agriculture is about 3-4%, while children out of school in agricultural households is in the range of 15-20%. Clearly, discernible difference is observed in the estimates of child labour in India following the two concepts, i.e., ‘working for wage’ and ‘out of school’. It is here that the engendering of the development strategy links up with the rights of all children who are ‘out of school’.
Interestingly, as shown in the table below the gender distortion in data is evident when the concept of child labour is changed. The proportion of girl child in agricultural working for wage is less than that of boy child by about 1.5 percentage points. However, proportion of girl child in agricultural households ‘out of school’ is higher than that of boys by 6 percentage points.
Further, the gap between boys and girls of agricultural households staying ‘out of school’ widens with the increase in the age of the child. Evident from the table below, at a lower age, lesser proportion of girls compared to boys are ‘out of school’. Nonetheless, as the age increases the percentage of girls not attending school surpasses that of boys. For instance, at the age of 5 years, about 23% of girls in agricultural households remain ‘out of school’ while the corresponding figure for boys is 31%. This could be because at such a lower age child cannot be used productively in any form of gainful employment and therefore sent to school. However, as their age increases and get used to chores of family activities, a larger proportion of girls seen out of school. As indicated in the table below, at the age of 7, the proportion of girls out of school exceeds the proportion of boys by less than 1 percentage points, but as the age of the child increases to 14 years, the gap widens up to 3 percentage points.
There could be multiple reasons for a girl child not being sent to school. It could be reluctance to send girls to school as they tend to be married off early, social or religious beliefs about sending daughters to school or similar gender bias (Beutel and Axinn, 2002; Mier and Rauch, 2000; Holmes, 2003; Khan, 2007). It is understood that not all out of school children will be sent to work. However, these out of school children remain invisible from all targeted investment and government programmes that address their distinct needs. The path to progress, therefore, lies in inclusive development. The invisibility in agriculture will continue unless a targeted approach is made towards early investment on education of all children.
- Beutel, A.M. & Amin, W.G. (2002), “Gender, social change and educational attainment”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 5 (1), 109-134.
- Jayaraj, D and Subramaniam, S (1997), “Child Labour in Tamil Nadu: A Preliminary account of its nature, extent and distributions”, Working Paper No. 151, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.
- Meir, G and Rauch, J. (2000), “Leading Issues in Economic Development”, Oxford University Press, New York.
- Khan, S. (2007), “Negotiating the mochila: Exclusion, identity and Muslim women in Mumbai, Economic and Political Weekly, 42 (17), 237-249
- Holmes, J. (2003), “Measuring the determinants of school completion in Pakistan. Analysis of censoring and selection bias. Economics of Education Review, 22, 249-264.
- Burra, N. (1995), “Born to Work: Child Labour in India”, Oxford University Press.Dev, Mahendra S and Ravi, C. (2002), “Food security and child work in South India: Determinants and policies in Ramachandran and Massun, Eds, 192-215.
- Kak, S. (2004), Magnitude and profile of child labour in the 1990’s: Evidence from NSS data. Social Scientist, 32, p-51
- ILO (1973), ILO Convention No 138, Minimum Age Convention
- ILO (2018), Global Estimates of Child Labour
- NSSO (2013), “Employment and Unemployment, 68th Round -2011-12”
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Dr. Minakshi Chakraborty is an Economist in Mahindra & Mahindra. She had done Ph.D in Economics from North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. She has worked extensively on various development aspects of the economy. ...
