The INDUS Child Labour Project
| Time-frame |
Donor(s) |
Duration: 3 years
Starting date: May 2003 |
Government of India
US Department of Labour (USDOL) |
Introduction
INDUS is a technical cooperation project jointly funded by the Government of India and the Government
of the United States of America. It was developed within the framework of the Joint Statement on
Enhanced Indo-US Cooperation on Elimination of Child Labour signed between the two governments
on 31 August 2000. The project is a collaborative effort to provide programme support in a coordinated
manner to ongoing efforts undertaken by the Government of India, through the NCLPs, towards a
progressively child labour free country.
The project focuses on selected districts within the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and targets 80,000 children at risk of hazardous employment in the
following sectors: brick manufacturing, stone quarrying, bidi manufacturing, footwear manufacturing,
fireworks manufacturing, manufacturing of matches, silk manufacturing, lock making, brassware and
glassware production. The selected states have some of the highest rates of child labour, as well as
a high proportion of children working in these sectors. The project also addresses the employment
generation and skills development needs of 10,000 parents.
Approach
The overall approach of the project is to create an enabling environment
where children will be motivated to enrol in schools, induced to
refrain from working, and households provided with income generation
alternatives that will not make it necessary for them to send their
children to work. It seeks to work with two major programmes of
the Government of India: the NCLPs and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
(SSA) ( 6 ).
Strategy of intervention
The intervention strategy of the project consists of developing a comprehensive child labour elimination
model for India by integrating four components. These are:
- Strengthening public education as a measure to prevent child
labour;
- Providing vocational skills training to adolescents in the age
group of 14-17 years;
- Monitoring the impact of child labour elimination efforts by
tracking each beneficiary on the one hand and developing a child
labour monitoring system on the other, to capture the shifts in
child labour across different sectors;
- Providing income generating opportunities to the families of child labour. In addition, it seeks to
support various initiatives aimed at ending child labour through social mobilization and awareness
raising. This is combined with the building of capacities and training of government agencies and
civil society partners.
The project seeks to develop this model by working in partnership with the NCLP scheme of the
Government of India. Several initiatives are being implemented to develop a model which can be
replicated in all the NCLP districts.
Achievements and challenges
Key achievements to date
- Mobilization of key actors at the state and district level:
- Communications with the state governments and key government
departments and civil society partners in all the four project
states and 20 targeted districts;
- Extensive consultations and ownership exercises in all 20 districts.
- Establishment of the project coordination mechanism at the state
level in all four project states, in the form of state resource
cells.
- Review of the implementation framework and the existing rationalization
plans of the NCLP, as well as the guidelines for the selection
and capacity building of NCLP staff.
- Completion of baseline surveys for identification of children
in all project districts after the development of a survey methodology
and field-testing of survey tools.
- Finalization of a labour market survey methodology and tools, as well as a strategy for the
provision of vocational training, in consultation with stakeholders at the district, state, and
national levels.
- Completion of labour market surveys in 18 districts.
- Development of an integrated child labour monitoring strategy. The strategy is currently in the
process of being adapted to local requirements in one state.
- Development of 5 action programmes for the key components of the project: national and state
resource cells, transitional education and vocational training and for work with trade unions.
- Implementation of comprehensive district level action programmes.
- Advocacy on introducing child labour concerns into the public education agenda/system.
- Selection of partner agencies to develop awareness raising and advocacy strategy and tools
at the state and district level.
- Mobilization of employers' and workers' organizations for active collaboration in the project
activities at all levels.
- Raising awareness of child labour in the project districts, particularly among the key
government departments, employers' and workers' organizations, and media.
Key challenges
- Expansion of the coverage of the NCLPs to achieve the objective of total elimination of
hazardous child labour.
- Development of appropriate curriculum and teaching learning materials in order to attract and
then retain children in schools.
- Setting up systematic training programmes/facilities to initiate teachers to student centred
teaching methods.
- Implementation of large-scale comprehensive vocational/skills training programmes to enable
older children who cannot be mainstreamed into the formal education system to take up suitable
vocations.
- Provision of healthcare to child workers in transitional schools to reduce the child's and families'
vulnerability to diseases, thus strengthening their employability.
- Design of economic alternatives for the families of child workers.
- Development of an effective strategy to raise community awareness and convince parents
about the importance of school and the deleterious, long-term effects of child labour.
- Improvement of the enforcement of laws and policies through specialised training and
preparation of labour inspectors.
Institutional and management structure
The project management team at the national level is located at the ILO Subregional Office for South
Asia in New Delhi.
At the state level, State Project Steering Committees (SPSCs) have been set up in the four project states
to coordinate project activities and ensure policy coherence with other ongoing initiatives in the field
of child labour and education. State resource cells have been established in the four states to assist
the SPSCs in their functioning. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan society is responsible for the implementation
of the education component of the project in the states.
At the same time, the National Child Labour Project Society is responsible
for implementing the project at the district levels.
Note 6 - The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is a time-bound integrated approach, which, in partnership with state governments, aims at achieving the
goal of universalisation of elementary education. It aims at providing useful and quality elementary education to all children in the 6-14
years' age group by 2010.
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