Over 131 children were rescued from a mushroom cultivation unit in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh on Tuesday. Among the rescued were 86 girls and 45 boys, all in their teens.
The rescue operation was conducted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Women and Child Development (WCD) department and the local police.
Most of the rescued children were from the tribal areas of the region, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam.
The Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) and in-charge of Anti-Human Trafficking Unit in Raipur police, Nandini Thakur, said that the children were trafficked from their home states to a Mojo Mushroom manufacturing unit by a local agent.
Child labour crisis in India
The child labour incident in Chhattisgarh is not an isolated one. The issue is grimmer than it appears.
As per the 2021 national census, the child population aged between 5 to 17 years stands at 259.6 million. Over 10 million children work as main or marginal workers in India's unregulated sector and over 42 million are out of schools and vulnerable to child labour.
A UNICEF report has also found that over 53 percent of child labour in India works in agriculture sector, 33 percent in industrial and 14 percent in other sectors.
The children are being forced to work in India’s unregulated sectors are often subjected to harsh conditions. Experts suggest that the child laborers are being forced to work without food and are paid low wages, conditions that experts say resemble slavery.
Many cases of physical, sexual and emotional abuse of these children have been widely reported throughout the country.
India's action against child labour
Indian government has taken steps to eliminate child labour. In over past 5 years, more than 50,000 children have been saved from trafficking by the Railway Protection Forces. In Tamil Nadu, the government has rescued over 330 bonded labourers which including children.
Over 10 percent of the rescued children were subjected to sexual exploitation.
Pertinently, child labour is not an India-specific issue. Globally, over 138 million are trapped in child labour.
Under the UN Sustainable Development Goals, India has committed to eliminate child labour in all its forms by 2025. But the nation has a long way to go to achieve this target.
