Implications of Child Labour in Rural Punjab: A Sociological Study

Published by: Admin

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Authors: Baljeet Kaur, Shalini Sharma and Gaganpreet Kaur

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Abstract

Child labour is a complex and contentious issue. Millions of children work in outrageous and exploitative conditions that are clearly dangerous to them which affected their physical and psychological health. A lot of attention has been paid to child labour from the Government, social scientists, voluntary organizations, etc. The present study investigates the implications of child labour in rural Punjab. Multistage random sampling technique was used to select the 120 working children (60 farm and 60 off farm) from eight villages of Punjab. The most notable positive implication was perceived role of child labour in the eradication of extreme poverty, reported by 80 per cent of farm workers and 86.67 per cent of off-farm workers. Among negative implications, the cycle of poverty was acknowledged by all the respondents. The findings showed the perception of respondent related to social emotional securities. Poverty of family (ranked 1) and dark future (ranked II) were the insecurities reported by respondents. Emotional maturity was observed among 43 per cent of respondents and another 51.34 per cent of respondents felt social insecurity related to their future, financial condition of family etc. That is why, the present study suggested that NGOs should arrange awareness generation camps to make child labour aware of their rights and free and compulsory education, government should provide some financial aid at primary education level to curb the menace of child labour.

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