The units in industrial clusters of firecrackers can be classified into registered and non-registered entities. One typical unit is household-based work. Though the law is clear on the use of child labour employment norms in registered/non-registered units, it does not include household-based works. Household-based work means children working under the supervision of their parents/relatives. To evade child labour norms, several units project themselves as household-based works but employ children from outside. Needless to say that employing children saves the costs for these units leading to higher profits to the owners. On your visit to one of the units at Sivakasi, the owner takes you around the unit which has about 10-15 children below 14 years of age. The owner tells you that in his household-based unit, the children are all his relatives. You notice that several children smirk, when the owner tells you this. On deeper enquiry, you figure out that neither the owner nor the children are able to satisfactorily establish their relationship with each other.1) Bring out and discuss the ethical issues involved in the above case.2) What would be your reaction after your above visit?
What the examiner wants
Identify the ethical issues when an owner passes off child workers in a hazardous unit as family, and decide the visiting official's response.
Demand-wise check
- 1Ethical issues: children's right to childhood, health and education vs family poverty; exploitation disguised through a legal loophole (household exemption); deceit by owner; hazard of explosives; complicity of inspectors and society≈60 words
- 2Stakeholders: children and parents, owner, labour inspector, local administration, consumers of firecrackers≈60 words
- 3Gap between law and spirit: law then allowed family-based work; international norms bar hazardous work under 18; the children's smirk shows the claim is false≈60 words
- 4Reaction: verify relationship through records and parents, treat doubt in favour of the child, rescue and prosecute, rehabilitate (school, bridge schools, family livelihood), report loophole for reform, follow-up inspections≈60 words
Open in about 30 words and close in about 30.
Answer plan
Where marks usually go
- Accepting the owner's family claim because it is legally convenient
- Rescue without rehabilitation, which pushes children back to work
Draw this
- Flow: inspection → verification → rescue → prosecution → rehabilitation → follow-up
Value addition
- CaseM.C. Mehta v State of Tamil Nadu (1996), on Sivakasi: offending employers pay ₹20,000 per child into a rehabilitation-cum-welfare fund.Supreme Court, 1996
- LawChild Labour Amendment Act 2016 bars under-14s from all work except family enterprises after school, and never in hazardous processes such as explosives.Child and Adolescent Labour Act, 2016
Mapped topper copies
Reviewed public-source references related to this PYQ. Same-syllabus references are labelled separately.
- Shakti Dubey · AIR 1 · Page 39 ↗Same syllabus reference
- Aakash Garg · AIR 5 · Page 31 ↗Same syllabus reference
- Shakti Dubey · AIR 1 · Page 35 ↗Same syllabus reference
- Shakti Dubey · AIR 1 · Page 33 ↗Same syllabus reference
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