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World Food Programme - India the food aid arm of the United Nations |
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Food Insecurity and Child
Work in Rural India workshop
Food Insecurity and Child Work in Rural India Synthesis of Technical Documents and Conclusions
The term 'child work' encompasses all children who are denied their right to childhood in all its connotations – the freedom to play, to learn and to develop to their fullest potential. However, both international and country concerns remain focussed on a small segment of this group – the child labourer. The continued prevalence of child labour in India, as in other developing countries, is, no doubt, a matter of great concern. Despite concerted efforts by the Government, Non-Government Organisations and International Agencies, the phenomena of child labour persists across the country, and in the case of certain states, has even recorded resurgence between the early eighties and the nineties. Conventional approaches to the issue centre on legal action, provision of non-formal education and vocational training to the child worker, adult education and awareness campaigns, as well as support to vulnerable families in child labour - prone areas. The NGO initiative has largely focussed on weaning children away from work and into formal schooling through bridge courses and transit camps. While these efforts are certainly laudable and have succeeded in making a dent in the institution of child labour in specific micro situations, what perhaps, is needed now is a wider perspective and a broader strategy which could bring in sweeping changes across the country. Rehabilitating child labourers in isolation from the millions of other out of school children, who are not formally identified as workers, cannot succeed. The narrow focus on child labour must broaden to encompass all children who are denied their right to childhood. If all such ‘deprived children’ are to be brought into the mainstream and allowed to develop to the fullest of their capacities, one must first seek the reasons for them not being in school, whether or not they qualify for the tag of child labour. A review of child labour eradication efforts in the country reveals that a two- pronged approach comprising of anti-poverty strategy and universalisation of education underlies both Government and International efforts. An essential part of both these strategies is food-based interventions. The utilization of food based interventions implicitly acknowledges the significant role that food security plays in the prevention of child labour. The success of the Tamil Nadu Mid-day Meals Programme as an incentive to school enrolment and retention is often quoted. The experience of International Agencies and NGOs has also revealed that the food component of child labour rehabilitation packages overrides all other incentives. While food is the most basic of all needs and knows no regional boundaries, the role of food insecurity in the incidence of child labour or the importance of food assistance in its eradication have not been researched or formally stated. In this background, the Workshop was jointly organised by the Institute for Human Development and the World Food Programme. The workshop aimed to assess the dimensions and typology of child work and food insecurity in selected regions, review the generally accepted explanatory factors and variables, discuss the hypothesis of the existence of a strong causal link between food insecurity and high incidence of child work, and learn from the experience of food based interventions for school children, both at national and international level. Objectives and Issues The Workshop was organised with three basic objectives:
The concept paper prepared for the Workshop (Ramachandran, N. Food Insecurity and Child Work: A Concept Paper) underlined the role of food in reducing child work and increasing school enrolment and retention. Hunger, insufficient food or seasonal food distress, affect the lives and social behaviour of families hovering on the edge of the poverty line Not only actual food distress, but even the threat of future food shortages can become a powerful instrument shaping the behavioural patterns of those affected by it. Food insecure people devise their own coping mechanisms, the most basic of which is to have as many hands to work and earn as possible, furnishing a kind of insurance against future hunger. The direct result is large families and the induction of children into the labour force. Government estimates place the number of working children in the country at 11.3 million (Census of India,1991). However, other estimates place the number of child workers much higher. A recent study, using both Census and NSS data, estimates the number of working children (full time workers alone) in the country as 12.7 million in 1991. If estimated figures for marginal child labour (using 1981 proportions) are added to these, total child labour in the country stands at 23.2 million or an increase of 160 percent from 14.5 million in 1961(Chaudhri, 1996). The rural areas account for nearly 91% of the total child labour in the country. Taking the country as a whole, about 4% of the rural workforce is comprised of children below the age of 15. However, there are large-scale, inter- regional variations in the incidence of child labour. A child in the age group of 5-14 who undertakes paid work is defined as a child labourer. However, even a cursory glance at the statistics reveals that of the 230 million children in the 5-14 age group, only around 61% attend school. Thus the remaining 39 percent or a total of 90 million children in the school going age group are out of school. If only 11.3 million are recorded as child workers, the remaining 79 million ‘nowhere children’ make the issue assume alarming proportions. Thus the issue is not one of main and marginal child workers alone, but more correctly, it is the issue of all children in the school going years who are out of school. While the incidence of child labour has shown a steady decline at national level, an analysis of the trend for the rural girl child worker brings out the growing rates of girl -child work participation in rural areas. While it may be argued that this trend can be attributed to definitional differences between Censuses, the fact remains that the upward trend in the incidence of child labour can be seen only in the case of girl child workers and only those living in rural areas. An analysis of census data from 1971 to 1991 clearly reflects the increase in girl-child work participation rates in thirteen of twenty-one states. In some of the backward states like Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, girl child participation rates have doubled between 1981 and 1991. What is even more disturbing is the one hundred percent increase in developed states like Punjab and Gujarat. States like Bihar and Gujarat, which recorded a fall in rural girl child work participation between the seventies and the eighties, have again recorded an upward trend in the 1991 Census. In absolute terms, the number of girl child workers has increased from 2.8 million to 3.5 million since 1971. The underlying cause of child labour is undoubtedly poverty, but poverty alone is not a sufficient explanatory factor. Other socio-economic factors like food insecurity, adult literacy in general, and female literacy, in particular, fertility rates, family size, adult wage rates, diversification of the rural economy and female labour participation rates to name a few, all have a role to play. Food insecurity as an explanatory variable has emerged in the last few years as a result of the experiences of both government and non-government agencies involved in food assistance to school going children. The Tamil Nadu Mid-day Meals experience coupled with the provision of effective schooling facilities which has been successfully implemented over two decades, is a case in point. The impact of the scheme can be seen in the high enrolment rates (86 percent) in the state, as also the minimal gender differences in retention rates. Another side benefit of food assistance is derived from the positive impact of a full meal on the attention span and consequently, the cognitive development of a child used to functioning on an empty stomach. Hunger contributes to a child’s distractibility, inattentiveness to environmental stimuli and adaptive behaviours of passivity and inactivity. These effects are more apparent when the child who is hungry is also malnourished. Education, as has been noted, has both direct and indirect impact on child labour. In so far as children in school are kept away from the labour market, the relationship is obvious. However, the role of education in creating awareness among parents to choose school as against work for their children is equally important. This is particularly so in the case of women The above review raises a number of issues, the answers to which need further discussion:
Bearing these questions in mind, the workshop was organised in seven technical sessions focussed on different themes. Session I: Profiling the Issue: Space, Time and Gender Dimensions Session I focussed on the context, dimensions and typology of child work and food insecurity with a view to answering basic questions: How many are they? Where are they? What is their contribution to household activities/income? What do out of school children do? Three papers were presented covering the dimensions of space, time (seasonality) and gender. The paper on space dimensions (G. Daly and D. Bhattacharya, Food Insecurity and Child Work – Space Dimensions) brought out the spatial spread of child labour in the country. Beginning with macro aspects dealing with food security and targeted population, it mapped food insecurity and child work in rural India across the states. In doing so, it provided explanations for child work in different regions and the existing linkages between food security, school drop-outs and child work with a view to exploring possible interventions. Food security was explained in terms of availability, access, utilisation and vulnerability. Child work refers to any work by children under 14 years of age, paid or unpaid, that restricts their physical and mental development, their opportunities for a desirable level of education and recreation. Children who are not going to school (no where children) are conceived of as vulnerable to child work and are included in the analysis. Despite the wide variation in the estimates of the number of working children in India ranging between 11.2 million and 90 million, all the regional studies reveal similar trends and patterns and a high degree of correlation with negative nutritional indicators like chronic energy deficiency among the adults and wasting and stunting among under 5 children. Also, the incidence of child work shows positive correlation with the percent of people consuming less than 1890 Kcal. The correlation of the distribution of child work shows positive correlation with infant mortality rate. The estimates on child work also reveal positive and significant correlation with drought, seasonality, poverty and the percentage distribution of the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population, percentage of children out of school and drop outs among the children at the lower and upper primary level. Drawing from these, it can be said that the areas and people who are more vulnerable to child work are those where poverty, female illiteracy and under nutrition is high. Therefore, the linkages between incidence of child work and the level of food insecurity could established as follows: the majority of food insecure households are poor and as a result, are less able to send their children to schools. Also, as a result of the non availability food and nutrition, children are less likely to develop a positive attitude towards education and less able to concentrate on their studies, leading to high drop out rates among them. Child labour may also result from the intra-household distribution of income and food which disadvantages girl children, who are often engaged in more hazardous work and receive lower wages than boy child workers. The major policy recommendations that this paper put forward included the need for higher levels of geographical targeting so that the limited resources are effectively used, making elementary education and free schools, actually free, by assisting children with school books and uniforms, and participation of Panchayati Raj institutions for targetting. With regard to food interventions, the recommendations were to bridge the nutritional gap of the food insecure and child work prone households through ICDS centres and mid-day meals in primary schools. Provisioning of morning snacks was also suggested from the point of view of increasing the concentration levels of children in the forenoon, as most of the rural primary schools function only till noon. Issues raised during discussion emphasized the importance of examining pull factors like attractive working conditions at the workplace, easy availability of work, independence in earning and spending, etc. The spatial location of children at work needs to be identified in order to target the depressed pockets or the severe problem areas. It is equally important to identify the sectors that attract child labour and sustain them, so that mechanisms of intervention and incentives can be more realistic. Suggestions for further research included working out the probability of a child getting into work, across states. This could help in directing interventions. Further, a simple bi-variate analysis of states categorised on two axes consisting of poverty/food insecurity vs. the probability of the child getting into work, density of the service sector, infrastructure indicators, etc. was also suggested for establishing further linkages. The presentation by Pierre Spitz explored the time dimension of children’s work. It highlighted certain factors that impede the improvement in enrolment in rural areas. Children do not attend school or even if they do, eventually drop out due to the high degree of seasonality of work for adults in rural India. This seasonality factor is evident in income, expenditure and related economic patterns and can be attributed to high levels of dependency on agriculture, which in many cases is rain-fed. Because of this factor, there are periods of distress faced by a large section of the rural households. Another significant deterrent with regard to enrollment and attendance is the family-based traditional occupation. Communities that are engaged in such occupations, as their main economic activity, tend to accord less economic value to education especially when the cost of education is high. Against these observations, it was argued that the economics of child work needs to be understood from the vantage point of opportunity cost, whether the work is paid or unpaid. Also, the eventual damage to children due to work, irrespective of the nature of the work, needs to be recognised. With regard to food insecurity, it was observed that most of the interventions geared towards providing food security to house holds, are ineffective due to lack of regional understanding, which has resulted in improper targeting. The policy suggestions demanded an unconventional approach to education that could cater to the needs of the most vulnerable. For example, in many rural areas, the closure of schools coincides with the slack period in agriculture, which is the worst distress period for families. The vulnerability of the household coupled with the absence of meals from the school, push children into taking up work in the labour market, which is an almost irreversible process. If the school calendar is adjusted to prevent vacations from coinciding with periods of food distress, food interventions could be more effective in retaining children in school. Other suggestions included flexible time scheduling to match the needs of the local economy and the inclusion of agriculture in the school curriculum. Discussions brought out the need to perceive the issue of child labour in the context of the larger economy of the area, as the contributing factors to child labour, as well as to household food insecurity, are inextricably linked to the nature of the local economy. Therefore, a whole package of interventions is needed to make parents send children to school so as to access the noon meal scheme. Moreover, a large proportion of child labourers are outside agriculture related activities, therefore rescheduling the school timings to the agricultural calendar may have limited impact and needs to be carried out, if at all, in those areas where agriculture is the predominant employer. The paper on gender issues (Hirway, I. Understanding Children’s Work in India: An Analysis of their Time Use) introduced the time-use survey technique which is relatively new to India. On the basis of this technique, it is possible to estimate the time spent on economic work and other activities with the help of a well-designed activity classification. A time-use survey collects information on how people spend their time over twenty-four hours on different economic and non- economic activities. The study analysed 18,628 households drawn from six states representing different regions of the country. The system of classification was designed in the SNA (System of National Accounts) framework to classify activities into SNA (activities covered under National Income Accounts), extended SNA (activities not covered under National Accounts) and non-SNA (or personal) activities. Some of the major issues that emerge are that about 20% of children in the age-group 6-14 participate in economic activities, spending on an average, about three hours per day. Children in the age group 6-9 also participate in economic activities spending on an average 17 hours per week. The major activities in which children are engaged are animal husbandry including grazing and collection of fuel, fodder, water and fruit. The next most important are crop farming and petty services. Considering that the time spent on the first two activities is closely linked with environmental degradation, one implication is that environmental protection and ecological regeneration can help in reducing the burden of child work. Children, particularly girls, participate in extended SNA work also, but the numbers involved and the hours of work are significantly different for boys and girls. While one-third of the girls in the 6-14 age group participate in these activities, spending about three hours per day, for boys, it is only 6-8 percent and an average of one hour per day. With SNA and extended SNA work combined, the contribution of children to total work, particularly in the case of girls is more than marginal. Over 7 percent of girls (6-14) spend eight hours a day on sibling care alone. This burden on children has implications for children’s participation in school. The more than 32 percent ‘nowhere children’ are found to be largely engaged in economic and extended economic activities. Only about 70 percent boys and 64 percent girls attend school. The number of children attending non-formal schools is negligible, with less than one hour per day being spent there by those who do go. State-wise comparisons reveal that the lowest participation of children in economic activities is in Tamil Nadu, the highest in Orissa. As regards participation in educational activities, Meghalaya is at the top (78%), followed closely by Tamil Nadu (77%) and Haryana (73%). Madhya Pradesh is at the bottom with only 57 percent children attending school. Participation in non-formal education is less than 1 percent in all states, except in Meghalaya where 2 percent children go to non-formal schools. Gender discrimination against the girl child is evident in all states. The discussion suggested that a linear relationship between environmental degradation and child work needs to be substantiated as the involvement of children in such activities forms only a part of child work. Large numbers of children do engage in full time SNA activities paid or unpaid, with little or no connection to environmental degradation. It was also pointed out that, while dealing with the gender dimension of child work, the opportunity cost of the girl child worker must be taken into consideration. Session II: Understanding
the Links: A Causal Analysis Session II attempted to review the generally accepted explanatory factors and variables for child work and food insecurity with a view to establishing linkages between food insecurity, child work and low enrolment ratios. The session included four papers. The first paper (Chaudhri,D.P. and E.J. Wilson, Nutritional Poverty, School Education and Supply of Child Labour: Explorations with states, districts and household data for rural India) attempted to explore the interaction between poverty and child labour in the specific context of rural India. A battery of statistical and econometric techniques were used in the analysis of large data sets pertaining to rural households, districts and major states of India using NSS 50th Round (1993-94) rural household data, some 1991 Census based district data and time series and cross sectional data for major states. The analysis of 69,205 rural households reveals that there is a strong discernible inverse relationship between nutritional poverty and the number of children in a rural household. Data tabulation and formal regression analysis suggests that the poor and the ultra-poor do have larger numbers of children compared to their non-poor counterparts. Approximately more than half the rural poor are below the age of 15 years. Households with nutritional poverty also suffer from educational poverty and as per Radhakrishna et. al. (1998), health poverty as well. Thus four identifying characteristics of a rural household in poverty are: large numbers of children, educational and health facility deprivation on top of nutritional poverty. Econometric analysis of district data (374 districts) and state data (1970-1993) unambiguously brings out the strong influence of number of children on nowhere children and child labour. The interaction between nutritional poverty and child labour was examined through a set of simultaneous equations specified through a formal model. The results confirm the hypothesised interaction between nutritional poverty and child labour with positive and significant elasticities. The reinforcing nature of child labour and rural poverty is confirmed. The study also revealed that only 3-4 percent of rural children have never attended school. A large proportion, i.e. 64 percent girls and 49 percent boys among the poorest households drop out of school. Over 90 percent of them are not working (no-where), while others are in full time work. One-third of all children helped in household chores irrespective of expenditure class, the proportion of girls in this category being larger. Full time child labour participation rates are higher among children of poorer households and that of girls from these households, even higher. Deprivation of the girl child increases in intensity with poverty. Efficacy of school feeding programmes in increasing school enrolment is now well established. However, only 3-4 percent of children in rural India have never been to school, therefore the benefit of increased enrolment, though important, will be small in the Indian context. What is more relevant is school feeding programmes properly designed, implemented with long term commitment and orchestrated with other school improvements, community and family involvement to help increase retention and active learning capacity. International experience is positive, evidence from Gujarat is also encouraging. The second paper (Mahendra Dev, S. and C. Ravi, Food Security and Child Work in South India: Determinants and Policies) examined the determinants and policies regarding child labour and out of school children in South India. The share of child labour in the conventional sense in South India is the highest in the country, as compared to other regions (33 percent of the child labourers are in these states). However, as regards out of school children, the proportions are higher in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. The determinants of child labour and out of school children are examined at three levels: state level for major states of India and region level and district level for South India. The results at state level show that factors like work participation rates, percentage of indebted rural labour households, percentage of calories from non-cereal food, percentage of agricultural labour households, female literacy, etc. explain the variation in child labour across different states. Surprisingly, the poverty variable does not appear to have a strong relationship with child labour. In the case of out of school children, the results show that female literacy and per capita expenditure are the most important explanatory factors. Results at region level indicate that the value of major crops per hectare, irrigation, female literacy, and per capita expenditure explain most of the variations in child labour. In the case of out of school children, the same explanatory factors emerge. Food grains per capita surprisingly shows a positive relationship with child labour, probably due to the labour-intensive nature of food crops. District level results are similar to those at regional level. The results of the analysis indicate the importance of food security and human development variables for reducing child labour. In this respect, the experience of Kerala and Tamil Nadu are important. These two states have more or less taken care of the food security of the population and have also fared better in health and education as compared to states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The importance of supply side variables like the quality of education, teachers, etc. must also be emphasised. One has to go beyond the poverty argument and move towards the universalisation of primary education. Even poor families make adjustments when their children are given the opportunity to go to school. Paper III (Leclercq, F. Patterns and Determinants of Elementary School Enrolment in Rural North India), in contrast, focused on the North Indian states. The paper looked at school enrolment and child work as dichotomous activity statuses. Selected stylised facts describe patterns and correlates of school participation and child work. A standard unitary household framework is used to analyse the determinants of initial enrolment decisions, focussing on the extent of the gender gap, the impact of distinct aspects of school quality and the links between income and other household characteristics. The database for the study has been generated by merging information from two previous surveys, namely the NCAER-HDI and PROBE database collected in 1994 and 1996 respectively. The combined database forms a subset of both the larger sets covering about 2,500 households from four states, i.e. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. While the data is not particularly well suited to studying child labour, certain broad conclusions may be drawn. Only 4.7 percent of the 6-14 age group have a main occupation other than school. On disaggregation by gender, the data reveals that while fewer girls than boys attend school, more girls than boys work (7.9 percent vs. 2 percent), and more girls than boys fall in the nowhere category (48.3 percent vs. 33.4 percent). While wage labour and other occupations outside the household are insignificant for both boys and girls, household work is significant for girls (7.4 percent vs.0.8 percent) for boys). It is also clear that child work alone cannot explain non-enrolment, as 46.4 percent of households with at least one child in the 6-14 age group have non-school going children. Also, child work is concentrated among children aged 10+, so that its impact on at least primary school enrolment is unlikely to be significant. The prevalence of child work is highly variable from one district to another within states. It is probably concentrated geographically as it requires either non-agricultural employment opportunities or agricultural jobs suitable for child workers. It is also more frequent among the so called weaker sections of society: 9.2 percent among Muslims, 8.8 and 7.6 percent among STs and SCs, respectively versus 5.7 percent for others. In all these groups, there is a strong gender gap with the girl child work rates being above 10 percent for SC, ST and Muslims and reaching as high as 15 percent among the STs. In terms of relationships, child work is quite high at low levels of wealth, but declines rapidly as wealth increases to completely disappear at higher levels. Using log per capita income, child work is about 60 percent for girls, more than 30 percent for boys at the lowest levels and declines very sharply to 15 percent for girls and 5 percent for boys. This suggests, however, that while child labour is indeed a symptom of poverty, some other factors prevent it from disappearing completely even at relatively high levels of income. The nature of household income also matters, child work being less frequent in households whose members engage in formal employment, and most common among wage labourers. Parental education, particularly mother’s education, is associated with lower levels of child work, especially in the case of girls. While more than 10 percent of girls from households where parents have not completed primary schooling, work, less than 2 percent of girls whose mothers have completed it, work. Only 2.9 percent of girls whose parents are both literate, work as against 12.9 percent whose parents are both illiterate. Child work clearly rises with increasing child/adult ratios, and is more prevalent in nuclear families than in joint ones. As regards school enrolment, the key decision is initial enrolment. Age at initial enrolment and drop out/retention decisions during primary schooling years seem to matter less, as most children enroll at the age of 5 or 6 years and complete primary schooling, though often with much delay. On the whole, school participation is very low especially for girls, though the situation seems to be improving. Gender itself, is no longer a significant determinant of enrolment, but household variables seem to explain much of the gender gap. Unequal intra-household allocations of work and the favouring of boys over girls when facing budget constraints, is evident. Although school quality has been stressed in most field studies, it does not seem to impact on household variables, so is more likely to affect grade attainment rather than initial enrolment, especially for first generation learners. The last paper of the session (Gumber, A. and D.B. Gupta, Household Food Insecurity and Activity Status of Children in Rural India: Some Dimensions and Correlates), focussed on various dimensions of household food security and their likely effect on activity status of children. The study is based on data from a large-scale household survey covering more than 33,000 households from all major states of the country (the State of Jammu and Kashmir was not covered by the survey) conducted by the NCAER in 1994. The paper began with a presentation of the current food consumption and nutrition scenario on a state wise basis. For rural India as a whole, per capita consumption of food grain averages around 14 kg. per month or 467 gm per day which is marginally less than the norms laid down for the rural population. The fairly large variation between states can, however, be explained in terms of food habits. The lower consumption of foodgrains by landless labour, BPL families and larger households follows the expected response to lack of purchasing power. These findings are further borne out by the expenditure on food grains which averages about 31 percent across the country, but falls much lower in the developed states like Punjab and Haryana, and rises as high as 43 percent in the backward states like Bihar and Orissa. As regards child work, the data reveals positive findings with a decline in the number of child workers from 21.5 million in 1983 to 13 million in 1994. However, the disproportionate participation rate of girl children stands out sharply. An attempt to relate household food security with the incidence of child workers is made by relating food grain expenditure with the activity status of children. The analysis indicates a U-type relationship. However, when the expenditure on fats and edible oils, which better capture the vulnerability among households, is considered, a clear negative relationship is indicated. Gender differentials emerge again, as when the girl child alone is considered, the inverse relationship is less steep. Nutrition indicators in terms of calorific intake, however, do not seem to have any such inverse relationship with child labour. It should, however, be remembered that only 50-55 percent of the households are below the prescribed norms. Quantiles based on income security indicators also do not reveal any direct income effect on child workers, except for the top quintile where the percentage of child workers is distinctly low. The incidence of child labour also tends to decline with the size of land holdings, except for the large land-holder households, where perhaps, the children are employed on their own land. Issues for further research relate to examining whether differences in child work vary with food, nutrition and income security. The use of multivariate techniques to refine results is indicated. The discussion focussed on two issues: one, is poverty the main cause of child work? and two, does the correlation of variables indicate causality in the case of child labour? Other queries related to methodological issues of data and analysis. Certain indicators were unanimously agreed upon as contributing factors. First and foremost was the quality of schooling and physical access to schools. Secondly, parental education and awareness. The need to focus on the girl child and provision of noon-meals to aid retention also enjoyed unanimous support from the participants. Significant conclusions emerging from the discussion were that properly designed and well-implemented school feeding programmes could substantially increase retention rates, especially of girl children, and also positively impact on active learning capacities. Implementation of programmes with community participation could help safeguard against inefficient functioning. Programme design must address the specific problems of the most backward regions, which are more prone to child labour. Aggregate economic growth is not a sufficient condition for reducing child labour, dispersion of this growth is also necessary. Session III: Regional
Variations: Profiles of Vulnerable States Session III brought out inter-regional variations in the child work–food insecurity scenario in six of the most vulnerable states. The paper on Jharkhand (Ramachandran, N. and A. Karan, Food Insecurity and Child Work in Jharkhand) describes the newly created state of Jharkhand as characterised by sparse population with a high proportion of tribals, low literacy rates, high work participation, low productivity and a high degree of poverty. The paper is based on a survey of 1100 households including participatory analysis. The findings broadly indicate that the region has a high degree of food insecurity, essentially seasonal. Two-thirds of the households face at least two months of food distress every year. Food insecurity is highest among the SC groups. In terms of occupation, the agricultural labourers and the landless are the worst off. School enrolment and literacy also follow a caste-based pattern with 84 percent of the upper caste children being enrolled in school as against 45 percent of the SC children. A large proportion, i.e. 26.5 percent of the school going age group, are ‘no-where children’. Forty percent of the 5-14 age group are illiterate. The worst-off in terms of illiteracy are children belonging to agricultural labour households in terms of occupation and tribal households in terms of social structure. Thirty five percent of the 10-14 age group are main workers and almost 6 percent of the younger group. Socially, these children belong to the SC, ST Primitive Tribal Groups and Other Backward Classes. In terms of occupation, the agricultural labour households dominate. One significant finding is that one-third of all child workers come from illiterate households and 71 percent from households where all women are illiterate. The impact of literacy, particularly, female literacy, is dramatic with a sharp fall in child labour in households where even one woman has gone to school. In terms of occupation, half the child workers are engaged in the collection of fodder, fuel and animal grazing, while one-third work in their own households. Gender disparities are sharp, especially among the SCs and STs. In the age group 10-14, the proportion of girl workers is more than twice that of boys. The relationship between food insecurity and child work can be seen when the top 20 percent households ranked on the basis of per capita food consumption record no child labour, while among the bottom 20 percent, there is one child labourer in every alternate household. There is also a significant negative correlation between the number of food deficient months faced by a household and the ratio of school going children. A significant negative correlation exists between per capita food grain consumption and the ratio of child workers. Policy implications suggest the effectiveness of food-based interventions, as significant relationships have been established. Caste being a major determinant, interventions must be targetted to vulnerable caste groups. A clear focus on the girl child is indicated. Focus on adult literacy, especially for women may have dramatic impact. The paper on Bihar (Anthony, P. Child Work in Bihar: A Leeway for Household Food Insecurity) brought out the overwhelmingly rural character of Bihar, where 85% of the population live in rural areas. The majority of the rural households lead a subsistence life. Being a food – based economy, a shortfall in the production, consumption or distribution of food can lead to food insecurity. Rural households rely completely on the labour market and need more hands to work. The labour market is completely segmented with a strong class-caste nexus. There is a clear occupational stratification with a demarcation of occupations that certain castes/classes take up. Food insecurity of households has to be juxtaposed with the household’s access to other entitlements. There is a clear social composition of child labour, which is skewed towards the lower castes and classes. The main indicator of child work is poor economic status. Social situation also matters in this regard. For instance, there is a disparity between north and south Bihar as the north lacks proper infrastructure including educational facilities. Food insecurity has a strong connection with child labour. There is data to support this view. Child labour gets institutionalized in the age groups of 5-14 years. While the majority of Muslim child workers are engaged in non-agricultural work, child workers among the SCs and OBCs are involved in agricultural work. While talking about food security and the household, the concept of a social commodity becomes important in relating to any development indicators. In the study, the total exclusion from public places of certain caste groups, as well as their lack of social access to education and health was observed. There is a preconceived notion about the food basket, which differs for the lower and upper caste groups. Food insecurity is concentrated largely in the lower caste and class groups. The per capita consumption expenditure on food is higher for upper caste groups and lower for the lower caste ones. Most households that report food insecurity report higher child work. The maximum numbers of child workers are concentrated in the 10-14 age group. It was observed that food interventions do impact on the incidence of child labour. These interventions should be self-targeted. Though the noon meal scheme exists in some parts of Bihar, it has to be undertaken on a larger scale. Because of the high social dynamism that exists in all villages, the village communities have to be involved in any food-based interventions. The discussion focussed on the dominance of the caste factor in both Jharkhand and Bihar. The high fertility rate in Bihar is a major cause of food insecurity. The inability of the tribals to translate endowments into entitlements is another factor in food insecurity. Tribal food and cultural practices have changed over time affecting the food security of these households. Child labour in tribal areas is culturally determined. When a child assists in work, it is a training process for the future. Distinction has to be made between this kind of child work and child work in other forms. Thus a package of interventions become necessary, rather than a single thrust on food. Intra-household food insecurity must be studied in greater detail. Also, the processes behind these issues must be understood before attempting to tackle them. The paper on Rajasthan (Bhattacharya, D. Food Insecurity, Education and Child Work in Rural Rajasthan) was divided into three parts:
The incidence of child labour in Rajasthan is higher than the national average. The vulnerability of girl children is much higher that of boys. Among girl children, literacy and enrollment levels are low and drop out rates are high. Work participation rates among girls in rural areas are much higher than among boys. Girls are engaged in most of the hazardous occupations such as glass and tobacco manufacturing, etc. They also work in fields, in cotton collection and embroidery. Boys basically work in fields and in cotton collection. It was found that children work for very low wages. They earn around Rs.10-15 per day and sometimes are provided a meal by their employers. The factors influencing child work were found to be –
The map of working children in the state overlaps with the state’s food insecurity map. In terms of food insecurity, Rajasthan is one of the most food insecure states in India, next only to Bihar. Food insecurity can be correlated with different types of socio-cultural indicators like literacy, drop out rates, school attendance, caste, poverty, etc. The study basically attempted to:
Some steps that need to be taken are:
For this purpose the existing and available organisational structures should be used for:
Discussions re-emphasized the fact that gender discrimination was very evident in the state. Despite increasing literacy levels of girls, work participation rates are also rising. A difference must be made between wage earning and non-wage earning children. Girl children are more involved in the latter situation, and this is likely to persist. While looking at food security, nutritional poverty within the household must also be examined, as with the shift in food grain consumption from the more nutritious coarse grains to finer grains, nutritional levels are also falling. It is important to compare the child as an economic asset and as a consumption unit in the household. This raises the opportunity cost of the child. The midday meal scheme will directly lower this opportunity cost by reducing consumption. Indirectly, it will result in increase in the girl’s age at marriage and thereby, a decrease in the fertility levels. Therefore, in the long run it will have considerable impact. The paper on Andhra Pradesh (Nangia, P. et al. Education and Employment of Children in Rural Andhra Pradesh: Characteristics, Causes and Correlates) brought out many revealing facts about this state which houses the largest numbers of child labourers in the country. The study was based on NFHS-2 (National Health Survey II) data on the status of children in the age group of 6-14 years for rural areas. About one-sixth of the children in rural Andhra Pradesh never attended school, out of those who attended school, 12 per cent dropped out before completing the age of 14 years. Girls are at a greater disadvantage in terms of schooling. One in every seven children is working and most of them start working after the age of 10 years, largely in the agriculture sector. It was also pointed out that extraction of work from female children is more than from male children. The survey findings also show that the children of the SC and ST communities and those from households that do not own any agricultural land or own not more than 5 acres of land are more likely to work. Child labor is less likely to be found in the smaller families having up to four members. Deficiency of food in the households contributes to perpetuation of child labor and therefore, the survey findings indicate that a better food distribution system aimed at the households as well as at children in the school, could mitigate child labor. The discussions raised various issues regarding the linkages between the findings. With reference to the survey findings of ‘reasons for never attending school’ and ‘dropouts’, prominent factors seem to be the contribution of the child needed for household work, work outside and lack of interest in studies. Cost of education and lack of physical accessibility are also significant, though not to the extent of the above-mentioned factors. In such a scenario, the question of food based interventions in schools must take into account other factors. Awareness of parents and quality of schooling emerge as crucial in this context. This can be supplemented with food incentives in schools. Regarding food security, it is imperative to have a macro perspective to relate to the issue of household food insecurity. Food insecurity has two important aspects: economic access to adequate food grain and physical availability of the required food grain. Much of the discussion has treated food insecurity as synonymous with poverty and availability of food grains has not explicitly entered any discussion. This could be because of the belief that the country has surplus food grain stocks. This is, however, not a real surplus. It is surplus after meeting market demand and not need. There is enough evidence to show that inter-regional variations in food intake are largely determined by food availability, rather than income. Hence, there is a major scope for government food interventions to regulate food availability across regions. This has implications for child labour, because children are forced into economic activity to augment income and also into household chores like procuring food grains from distant markets or common property resources to promote physical access to food grains. Another major role for policy intervention is to regulate price fluctuations over time. Price instability implies income instability for agricultural and cultivator’s households. One major reason for child labour is the household’s need for diversifying the income portfolio and a strategy to minimise the risk of interruption of the income stream. With price and income stability, the need for child labour would reduce. The era of reforms is witnessing reduction in government expenditure on education, which will reduce the coverage of the noon meal scheme. In addition, this will increase the drop out ratio as the cost of education will also go up. The study on Orissa (Raj, N. and A.K. Satpathy, Household Food Insecurity and Child Labour: Some Evidences from Rural Orissa) is based on a household survey conducted in six representative villages in three western districts of the state. The main objective of the study was to analyse the problem of food insecurity and the incidence of child labour at the household level in these selected villages. Survey findings indicate that social and economic backwardness, reflected in terms of land ownership, caste status, literacy level of the head of the household and family size, determine the degree of food insecurity of households. The greater the intensity of this insecurity, the greater the chances of children being pushed into the work force. Though only one-fifth of the households reported involving children in paid or unpaid labour as the first option of their coping mechanism, the transition of households from perceived food insecurity through food insecurity with moderate hunger to food insecurity with hunger, needs to be arrested. Bereft of this, more children will be initiated into the work force. As there are about 25 child labourers for every 100 adults amongst the surveyed population, any food distress faced by the household can push children into paid or unpaid work. Another related point brought out by this study is that it is the "perceived threat of food insecurity" that contributes to child labour, rather than actual food insecurity. And, this perceived threat is determined by a host of factors - social and economic, affecting the household income. The discussion brought out the fact that lack of employment opportunities and low wages for adults contribute to the food insecurity of households. In the case of Orissa, one of the poorest states, any marginal fall in income or any other contingency such as the death or loss of job of the main wage earner can drastically affect the poorer households. The paper on Madhya Pradesh (Prakash, A. and C. Dattar, Food Insecurity and Children: An Absence of Genuine Initiative For Structural Change) pointed out that districts with a high incidence of child labour also have a very high drop out rate at the middle school level. Relating to the causes of child labour, it was mentioned that poverty does not seem to have direct linkages with child labour. The main contributing fact is that the opportunity cost of education is perceived to be greater than the current educational benefits. These findings invariably demand a political economy approach to the problem of child labour, as well as to the interventions thereof. Taking the case of watershed development programmes, undertaken on a large scale by the state government, the author brought out the need to make appropriate structural charges that can support these interventions. Unless, this is done, the experience of the watershed programme is that these interventions, with best intentions and design, fail to gain the expected results. Emanating from these observations, the author made recommendations to map the local political economy at the regional level in order to remove the structures that promote child labour. Another significant suggestion was to provide forward linkages to middle level education to avoid middle level dropouts. The discussion brought out the need for a pro-active government in the state that could concentrate on improving the growth response of the backward areas with innovative measures. Session IV: Food Based Interventions as a Solution Session IV involved the presentation and discussion of the positive and negative experience with food-assistance based or backed development programmes designed to promote child health and growth, as well as impact on school enrolment and attendance. Two papers were presented, one on the government run Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, the other on the multiple food-based interventions in the state of Kerala which among other positive human development indicators, also has the lowest incidence of child labour in the country. The paper on the ICDS (Gupta, D.B. et al. Averting Food Insecurity – the Case of the ICDS Programme) is based on the NCAER survey of ICDS beneficiaries in the major states of the country conducted in 1999. It tries to establish a relationship between the ICDS programme, food security and child work. The underlying rationale for doing this is that the first six years of life are the most critical period in a child’s growth, since 80 percent of the mental growth and 40 percent of the physical growth take place during this period. Malnourished children grow up to be unhealthy and disabled adults with poor productivity. Some important findings are as follows: While there is negligible difference in the registration of male and female children in Anganwadi centres, a distinct gender bias in favour of the boy child emerges in the actual utilisation of pre-school education. The female-male gender ratio is particularly low in states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Bihar. The fall in attendance of the girl child with increasing age indicates her involvement in household chores and sibling care. Attendance of children of working parents from the poorest groups is often found to be low. Provision of health services to children is essential to break the vicious cycle of poverty-malnutrition-infection-disease-poverty. The survey reveals that while 30-40 percent of the children availed of health checkups across the country, in the north-east and eastern states, the proportion is higher. As regards immunisation, on an average, about 75 percent of the children are covered. About one-third of the surveyed households recognised the contribution of the pre-school education component in the smooth transition of their children into formal schooling, as a major benefit of the ICDS. This was particularly true in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Assam and Nagaland. Select indicators show the positive impact of the ICDS on women’s empowerment, directly contributing towards better health care and child development as well as reduced infant mortality rates and malnutrition levels. The relevance of the ICDS lies in giving children a head start in learning thus reducing the incidence of school dropouts. The discussions questioned the efficiency of the ICDS structure, which is one of the largest structures of the kind, yet often fails to deliver its services. Also raised was the issue of linking the ICDS with other institutions working towards the elimination of child labour. One such link could be to activate the Mothers’ Forums to create awareness about child labour. Also suggested was a close interaction with the Panchayats to identify food insecure households for continued support. The paper on Kerala (Kannan, K.P. Food Security for Reducing Child Deprivation: Kerala’s Remarkable Record) documented Kerala’s remarkable record in reducing food insecurity and child deprivation at household level. A number of factors converged towards this end, despite slow economic and employment growth in the state. Of significance is the importance attached to education of children which was reflected in responsive state policies in the form of the spread of education, supplemented by primary health care and the public distribution system. The successes achieved in public health and the PDS gave rise to unintended but positive social externalities that benefited children. Equally important is the social and political mobilisation of the poor which made it possible to enhance the average earnings, first through obtaining minimum wages and then a higher than minimum rate of wages that reduced pressure on the family to set their children to work. These direct and indirect interventions to secure household food security, complemented by the noon meal scheme as an incentive for poor children to attend regular school worked towards curbing the `vested interests’ in perpetuating child labour. During the discussions, the positive experience of the state facilitating the empowerment of various trade unions of informal sector workers such as toddy tappers, coir workers, etc. was recalled. The empowerment - political, economic and social of these poor backward caste groups, who would have been the obvious providers of child labour, increased the adult wage rate and created a social taboo on child labour. Comparing this situation with that of Andhra Pradesh and other states that have a high concentration of child labour in agriculture and other sectors, it was felt that these states lack the political will to encounter the vested interests that perpetuate extraction of cheap labour from children. Unless this is attended to, either through state policies or through mass mobilisation, total elimination of child labour may not happen. Nevertheless, Kerala’s experience with the noon-meal scheme needs to be recognised for its self-targeted approach, quality of food, regularity in supply, and permanency of the programme. The experience of Tamil Nadu is also quite similar to that of Kerala, in terms of efficiency and impact. Session V: Panel
Discussions on Food Credit and Food Entitlements Session V consisted of a panel discussion on Food Credit and Food Entitlements. The panelists were Mr. Pravesh Sharma, PMO, Ms. Aooditti Mehtta, Rashtriya Mahila Kosh and Mr. Pedro Medrano, WFP. The discussion, initiated by Mr. P. Sharma emphasised the fact that in centrally sponsored schemes, only a very small proportion of the assistance reaches the vulnerable groups. This holds true for the PDS that has failed to ensure food security for the most food insecure groups. Thus a supplementary system is required which could utilise PDS stocks together with the only asset of the vulnerable households, i.e. labour. Ensuring food security, particularly in times of acute seasonal food distress can be attempted through food credit programmes. These programmes could be operationalised through self-help groups consisting of 10-15 families. The initial corpus, in the form of 50 kg. food grain per family could be created by the government. The grain from this food bank could be borrowed by members in times of need, and then repaid within a set period in the form of food grain of any kind, cash or labour. Once repaid, the family would again become eligible for a loan of fifty kg. food grain. The mode of circulation and procurement is best left to the SHGs to decide. This would help to ensure loan repayment and the sustainability of the scheme. A pilot project of the kind is operating in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. Ms. Mehta shared the experience of the Rashtriya Mahila Khosh (RMK). In one of the beneficiary assessment studies undertaken by the RMK, it was found that 36 % of the loans taken by women were utilised by men and 52 % of the total loan was used for consumption purposes. This raises a serious issue of concern with regard to the food credit program. The experience with the food grain programme reveals that women often do take loans from moneylenders to return the grain that they have taken from the food bank. Since this programme is at a pilot stage, this learning is quite significant. The implication is that unless grain banks or food credit programmes are supplemented by consumption loans, indebtedness or poverty levels will not be addressed. Experience shows that the management of food credit programmes is better left in the hands of women’s self-help groups, as food, for many reasons remains a woman's prerogative and is utilised in the best interest of the family. The discussion that followed raised questions about the interest rates on the loans and the terms of reference of partnership with NGOs. The RMK gives loans at 8 % to NGOs or SHGs, which is given to individual members at 12 % or more, depending upon the administrative and processing charge incurred by the NGOs/SHGs. However, caution is needed to see that the loans in cash (mostly for consumption purposes and often siphoned off by men) along with the food credit should not increase the debt burden of women. The pilot project, it was stressed, is working on developing effective links between the two. Suggestions from the participants included group insurance and crop insurance to safeguard the groups from the contingencies of crop failure, pest attack, etc. Another suggestion was that the food credit program should also provide the community with the infra-structural support for the grain bank. The question of the effectiveness of such a programme in addressing the issue of child labour and food insecurity of the household was posed. It was largely felt that the food credit programme could be a potential strategy, as the food insecurity of the household is mostly seasonal and children are pushed into the labour force during periods of distress or because of the perceived threat of food insecurity. It was also felt that the programme should be self-targetted. In other words, it should be designed to provide timely interventions to vulnerable families in the food insecure districts. The programme is replicable, provided it is preceded by community mobilization and carried out within the local/ cultural specifications of food consumption patterns. Food credit programmes in child labour-prone areas, it was felt, are better aimed at complete household units instead of targetting beneficiary groups of child workers. Session VI: Panel
Discussion on School Feeding Programmes: The International Experiences Session VI was a panel discussion on School Feeding Programmes: Country and International Experience. Five panelists representing UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services, the World Bank , USAID and the Delhi School of Economics presented their experience with school feeding interventions. Dr. A. K. Shivkumar, UNICEF presented the major findings of the UNICEF-ORG Report on the Mid-Day Meals Programme. Referring to the PROBE report, he highlighted some of its findings as pertinent with regard to the enrolment and retention of children. The report attributes high dropout rates to costs of education, absence of schools in the proximity, one-teacher schools, caste discrimination, etc. These factors referred to as the "discouragement effect"of schools, are some of the reasons why children do not go to school. In this background, the mid-day meal scheme was evaluated in order to estimate the impact of food interventions on enrolment, attendance and retention pattern in primary schools. The study found that enrolment rates have increased with the introduction of mid day meals. However, it also states that apart from the incentive of school meals, the programme of joyful learning has played an important role in empowering teachers and improving the quality of teaching, thus increasing retention. The mid-day meals scheme, according to the study also promotes community eating, which helps in diluting many of the unhealthy social practices like caste discrimination, which still persist. While emphasizing the significance of the mid day meals programme for enhancing enrolment and retention, Dr. Shivakumar stressed that the program should not be considered as a nutritional program. Malnutrition begins with low birth weight babies who become malnourished in the age group of 6-18 months and this is already established, well before the primary school stage. Other wise also, food intervention programmes in schools in the form of noon meal schemes cannot remove malnourishment. He also spoke about the challenges that the noon meal scheme has to face in the coming years. These include guarding the scheme against pilferage and corruption, besides making such schemes a political priority. He urged attention to the fact that resources are not adequate for this scheme in most of the states, and that part of the success of the Tamil Nadu mid day meals scheme may be attributed to the fact that it is the only state, which has made budgetary provision for the scheme. Mr. Sean Callahan, Catholic Relief Services pointed out that child labour has to be perceived in its legal context. However, effective spread of education can be a tool to reduce the incidence of child labour. It is not merely lack of education facilities in an area, but poor education, in terms of quality and infrastructure, meted out to the disadvantaged groups that needs to be considered a priority. In this context, creating structures for educational avenues in emergency situations like post- cyclone, earthquake or armed conflict becomes imperative. He suggested that civil society had an effective role to play by demanding better education facilities as a matter of right. Provision of better education implies institutional support, which is also a must for the success of the mid-day meals scheme. Certain critical areas like quality and number of teachers, adequate facilities and uninterrupted supply of food have to be given due attention, as failure in any one of these can defeat the very purpose of the program. As regards gender discrimination, he sounded a note of caution. Experience with an increase in take-home rations for girl students in Ghana increased the enrolment of girls, but impacted negatively on boys' enrollment. On the question of why food, not cash incentives, he emphasized that women feel that money is not under their control, while food is, and this does ensure more positive impact on the children in the household. Referring to experience with schooling in Burkina Faso, he mentioned that the quality of teachers, facilities in the school and food based interventions were the three legs of the school structure. A lack of any one of these could make the whole structure topple. The irrelevance of present day education is another reason why parents do not send their children to school. Adjusting the school calendar to the agricultural schedule would help to make school meals more attractive, as the incentive would be greater in times of food scarcity. Dr. Nalin Jena, USAID stated that the mid day meals scheme was based on the premise that the nutritional supplement of school meals helps undernourished children to perform better academically. Only five out of every ten children in India have normal nutrition status. Malnutrition is pervasive among school going children in the rural areas. Clearly, neither a child that is hungry, nor a child that is ill can be expected to be an active learner. The argument that school going children are relatively less vulnerable to malnutrition than pre-schoolers is difficult to refute, but equally difficult to agree with. A study conducted by CARE in Madhya Pradesh on the impact of the mid day meal programme reported that the most appealing aspect of the programme is its ability to satisfy the hunger of children who come to school on an empty stomach. Another study by Care in Karnataka found that month by month variations in enrolment levels and attendance rates tends to be significantly lower in schools providing mid day meals. The Gramodaya Sansthan, one of USAID’s partners under its Child Labour Prevention/Elimination through Education Programme found that there were sharp declines in enrolment and attendance after food incentives were withdrawn from the NFE centres in Banda area. Another study conducted by the NCERT (1984) with USAID support reported that school feeding, continued over a period of time, did work as an incentive that boosted enrolment and retention, particularly in the case of girls in Karnataka. In a country like India, where a large number of people do not get two square meals a day, a well targeted SFP may induce parents to send children to school, and children to attend regularly. However, it is necessary to examine the effectiveness of these programmes from the point of view of costs and benefits. Dr. Vineeta Kaul, World Bank stated that the mid-day meals scheme was necessary for three reasons – enrolment and retention, improving nutritional status of children and improving learning achievement. A cooked meal is a critical variable from the child’s point of view. Dry rations may increase enrolment, but they will not improve attendance. She further pointed out that the success of the scheme is dependent upon a few critical factors like the quality of the meal and regularity in the supply of food. The continuity of the scheme is another factor that contributes to the efficiency of the programme. However, all these need to be supplemented by good targeting mechanisms. While a cooked meal cannot be denied to some children on the basis of shortage of attendance, it is a self-targetting mechanism. This is because, children from the upper social classes and boys from even among lower class groups, are moving to private schools, and only the lower social groups and girl children in particular, avail of school feeding. She further dwelt upon some of the drawbacks of the scheme. One of the major drawbacks of the programme is that it puts the onus of procurement on teachers. This cuts drastically into their teaching time. Financial problems in several states and even transport problems can negatively impact on the programme. In terms of nutrition, mid day meals supply only about half the daily calorific requirement. Priorities for nutrition, as is known, must be focussed on the 0-2 years age group. However, supplemented by a comprehensive school health programme including health monitoring, the health and nutrition problems of school going children in rural areas can be addressed. Prof. Jean Dreze, Delhi School of Economics, emphasised the importance of mid-day meals in school as they can tackle a variety of problems. These are the low nutritional status of children, an incentive needed to bring in vast numbers of children who are out of school reduction of child labour and a good way of utilising the mounting food surplus in the country. He felt that free schooling implied more than no fees. It should mean no cost to the parents. The PROBE survey found that parents incur a cost of about Rs.300 a year per child. In this context, the provision of mid-day meals becomes extremely relevant. From the child’s point of view, dry rations have no meaning. From the families’ viewpoint, school meals benefit both the child and the family, particularly in the case of girls. It has been found that the probability of a girl not going to school comes down by 50 percent with the provision of a school meal. As with mounting food stocks, the opportunity cost of food to the government, is now close to zero, the cost effectiveness of school feeding is undisputed. It must now be looked at in terms of social costs alone. This further strengthens the case for school feeding. The discussions following the presentation stressed on linking stakeholders with the school-feeding programme. If teachers ate with the students, better quality food could be ensured, apart from creating rapport between teachers and children. Voluntary contribution of mothers in cooking or serving school meals could go a long way to ensuring the success of the programme. The idea of viewing food stocks as safety nets and social security systems was endorsed. Session VII: Maximising School Attendance and Rehabilitating Child Workers: Approaches and Experiences The last technical session, Session VII critically reviewed different approaches to the rehabilitation of child workers in rural areas. The focus was on school enrolment and retention and the role of food based interventions. The session consisted of five presentations representing International Agencies like the ILO and the UNDP as well as national NGOs like the M.V. Foundation and CREATE. The UNDP approach (Burra, N. Child Labour, Poverty and Development: UNDP’s Approach to Child Labour Elimination) raised the basic issue of whether poverty leads to child labour or child labour leads to poverty? The UNDP is inclined to favour the latter causal relationship. Child workers grow up to be illiterate, unskilled, burnt out through long hours of work and unable to demand their rights, thus perpetuating the downward spiral of exploitation and poverty. The UNDP strategy for child labour elimination has focussed on social mobilisation and community empowerment for getting children out of work and into school. A broader definition of child work to include all children out of school coupled with a rights-based approach and engendering of the development strategy has proved effective, as it goes beyond the instrumental approach to issues such as social exclusion and discrimination. Experience in a UNDP supported project in Uttar Pradesh, revealed that one of the major factors keeping children out of school was caste discrimination in schools. This is also expressed in the form of mind-sets. Vulnerable families believe that education is not for their children, while the elite firmly believe in the poverty argument. The bias against the education of the girl child is part of the same argument. The reality is that the poorest of parents are willing to make sacrifices for the education of their children. While UNDP’s projects do include food by way of a mid day meal in bridge schools, it is felt that such incentives are neither necessary, nor practical in the long run. Social mobilisation has emerged as the most effective approach. However, the appeal of the mid day meals scheme can be seen from the fact that even the poorest of families voluntarily contribute to the school meal in the form of vegetables or twigs and branches for fuel in the community schools of Mirzapur. In the case of the M.V. Foundation, parents contribute five rupees a month through ration shops for para-teachers. Rehabilitating child workers through any programme based on incentives, is necessarily limited by resources. Since the numbers involved are so large, other more self-sustaining solutions are required to address the problem. The ILO experience in Markapur district of Andhra Pradesh (Joseph, M.P. From Ideas to Action: Food Assisted Approaches for Rehabilitating Child Labour – The Markapur Experience) is based on a pilot project for the elimination of child labour launched by ILO-IPEC in October 1999. The project is an innovative one as it integrates 14 different strategies that combine to focus on the sustainable weaning away and rehabilitation of child workers. These interventions can be broadly categorised into mobilisation of government agencies, target communities and civil society, provision of education, seeking solutions to child employment through technology changes and addressing concerns of food insecurity within target families. Food security in the area results from low productivity, unreliable rainfall and limited employment opportunities (largely restricted to slate quarries). Three broad approaches were adopted to enhance food security in the project. Direct interventions within the project – provision of a hot, cooked meal to children being rehabilitated in its transitional education centres (TECs) and addressing long term food insecurity concerns by providing mothers with access to sustainable income generating activities. Indirect interventions focus on increasing food production through water management, crop intensification, diversification of production systems, converting waste land to agricultural land, providing non-farm employment opportunities and taking steps to deal with drought and disaster conditions. The mid day meal programme provides a complete balanced meal with adequate protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamin and mineral content. While the cost of the meal is high, Rs. 6.66 per meal per child, as against one rupee in government school feeding programmes, the results in terms of retention in school and the visible physical well-being of the child has had its impact on attendance increasing by a factor of 40-45 percent from the second month of implementation itself. It is felt that without a full meal of this kind, children were likely to drop out as their parents are neither physically, nor economically capable of providing food for them. The meal by ensuring food for their children, has also had the impact of breaking, over a period of time, the threat of future food insecurity which forces parents into adopting unhealthy coping mechanisms. As a long-term food security intervention, the project focuses on training mothers and assisting them to set up, run and sustain micro enterprises. The results can be seen in such empowered women from child labour prone families sending all their children to school. By focussing increased purchasing power on women, the chances of additional income being used to provide food security are greater. Converging the resources of different government departments, improved cropping systems and alternatives in the form of forestry, animal husbandry and non- farm occupations are being introduced. Watershed management programmes have led to an improvement in the water table and the vegetation. A critical assessment of the existing Public Distribution System has led to the conclusion that a large number of families below the poverty line have been by-passed by the PDS network. Even the 70 percent target families that are covered by the programme, have to purchase additional supplies from the market as families are large and the limit of 20 kg of rice per family is fixed. Food interventions focussed on strengthening the existing PDS with additional food grains at ration costs and extending its coverage to all eligible child labour families is suggested. Additionally, utilising the ICDS network of Anganwadis as a distribution network for foodgrains to focus exclusively on target group families is proposed. The provision of additional foodgrains in NCLP areas, for example, as an insurance against food insecurity, on the conditionality of putting and retaining all their children in school, could be an added incentive. The Markapur experience teaches that while food security is an important and necessary condition in the elimination of child labour in rural areas, it is not a sufficient condition. The provision of food security as an approach against child labour must be co-joined with a set of other imperatives including community mobilisation, sensitisation, quality of education, etc. The presentation by the M.V. Foundation (Venkat Reddy, Child Labour and Food Security) reiterated the UNDP position of the causes of child labour. The argument that, poverty does not necessarily lead to child labour, was supported by the fact that in large numbers of villages in Andhra Pradesh, where the M.V. Foundation works, some children from the poorest families are attending school, while others from relatively better off homes are in the work force. Some of the non-economic compulsions perpetuating child labour are lack of a social and cultural environment supporting child rights, lack of adequate school infrastructure, insensitivity of teachers to poor and backward families, lack of understanding that first generation learners come from families easily intimidated by the myriad rules and procedures governing schools and lack of parental confidence in schools as viable institutions. The fact that even the poorest of families are prepared to make sacrifices to ensure that their children are educated, particularly after some initial progress is made, was stressed. On the relevance of food based interventions, it was felt that food and nutrition must be seen as part of a total health package, not as an end in itself or a means for bringing children to school. However, the success of food based interventions in increasing school enrolment all over the country must be acknowledged. Where the issue of child rights is concerned, schools are recognised as the only institutions that can deliver to children their basic rights. As such, it becomes necessary to ensure the presence of all children in school. The presentation on behalf of CREATE, an NGO operating in Uttar Pradesh (Tandon, D. Possibility of Eliminating Child Labour from the Informal Sector by Ensuring Household Food Security) was based on the experience of CREATE with child labour in the glass bangle industry of Firozabad district and the Carpet industry of Mirzapur district. An impressionistic study of 150 households was also undertaken. The study revealed that amongst several reasons why children work, poverty ranked highest (77 percent). Eleven percent of parents stated that work is preferable to having their children loitering around. Other reasons included the child’s own interest in working or in helping their parents, lack of interest in studies, work as a better preparation for their future than formal education can provide, supplementing the family income or in certain jobs like glass bulb making, the perceived need for the deft fingers of children. The families of child labourers have the following characteristics: large family size (6-7 members), monthly income between Rs. 850-1775 only, no land of their own, income from traditional occupations alone, regular work available for only part of the year – 191 days in the glass sector and 207 days in the carpet industry, heavily indebted to local trader/money lender, children’s contribution to the family income between 15-20 percent, expenditure on food grain between 50-70 percent, and running short of food on a regular basis for at least a few days every month. All households have consumption expenditure over and above basic food needs, including expenditure on social obligations. As many of the poorest households have difficulty in meeting their basic food needs, they often have to make trade-offs between acquiring enough food and meeting non-food expenses. As regards existing school feeding programmes, while the advantages are well known, it is necessary to look at the limitations. These include creating imbalances in the family with the school-going child getting better food to eat than the others, denying the school-going child food at home in lieu of his school meal, and making the child work after school as the cost of the meal does not fully compensate the opportunity cost of the child’s work. Suggestions to overcome these problems include ensuring access to schools at all levels from pre-primary to secondary, so that children of all ages can access school meals, priority in giving admission to working children, ensuring the commitment of the parents to not burdening the child with work after school, full-day boarding schools which could ensure nutritious food and freedom from work, but would necessitate large investments. Another food based intervention suggested was family rations designed for child labour families that spend more than 60 percent of their monthly income on food and whose earnings are largely from job work in the industrial sector. The success of this intervention hinges on the programme running for a period long enough to break the vicious cycle of poverty (at least 4-5 years). The size of the ration given to the family should be equal to the difference between need and purchasing power. In return, the commitment of the family to send all their children regularly to school should be ensured. The third intervention put forward was the formation of a grain bank managed by women self help groups and based on an initial investment of a minimum quantity of food grain, which becomes a revolving resource. Loans to be repaid in cash or kind. Conclusions and Recommendations
1.1 Enough convincing evidence has been accumulated and presented by the contributors and participants to the, workshop to confirm that in rural India to-day, food insecurity still is a key explanatory factor, if not the only one, for the persistent presence of millions of deprived children, out-of-school and working, or prone to work. Indeed, recent statistical data shows remarkably similar patterns and trends in the spatial distribution of the incidence of child-work and food insecurity and econometric analysis generally confirms the hypothesis of an inter-action between nutritional poverty and child-work with positive and significant elasticities. All the estimates of child-work show highly positive and significant correlation with negative nutritional indicators like infant mortality rate, under-weight babies, wasting and stunting among under five children and chronic energy deficiencies among adults. 1.2 Geographical location of child-work has revealed the existence of depressed pockets, where this phenomenon of child work coincides and inter-relates with drought, seasonality, environmental degradation, nutritional poverty and adult illiteracy. These are also areas where the percentage distribution of the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population is significantly high, as well as, the percentage of out-of-school children and drop-out rates among children at lower and upper primary levels. 1.3 The seven state-level surveys confirm that food insecurity is concentrated largely in the lower caste and class groups and that most households that report food insecurity report higher incidence of child work. Those rural vulnerable households are less prone than others to send their children to school and more likely to put them to work. The children of these households are less likely to develop a positive attitude towards education and less able to concentrate on their studies due to malnutrition effects, temporary or permanent. Because of the persistent socio-cultural gender bias, girl-children are disadvantaged in the intra-household distribution of work, food and educational opportunities. Whether they are working at home or outside, girl-children are often engaged in more tedious, and sometimes, more hazardous work and, when paid, they receive lower wages than the boy-children. 1.4 For many landless labourers and small landholders, seasonality determines shortage of food or food insecurity at regular periods of the year. On the other hand, climatic or geological disaster (drought, cyclone, flood and earthquake) can occur in some areas at any time of the year, disrupting agricultural work and reducing or annihilating rural household incomes, thereby occasioning temporarily food-distress situations. These facts of nature trigger a perception of food insecurity and a feeling of vulnerability, which, over time, becomes a permanent attitudinal feature among households affected by these phenomena and a permanent component of the culture of poverty. Food insecurity and vulnerability of labourers and cultivators can be further aggravated by the instability of their incomes due to price fluctuations.. 1.5 It has been generally agreed that, faced with an actual situation of food distress or by the recurrent threat of it, most vulnerable households are likely to opt, consciously or by cultural reflex, for using several coping mechanisms. One of them is often the non-enrolment or withdrawal from school of their children, with a view to keeping them available for working on domestic or agricultural chores, or in wage labour. One major reason for child work is the household’s need for diversifying its sources of income as a strategy to minimise the risk of interruption of the income stream. Lack of parental education and literacy, and the high number of children in the household, generally aggravate this trend. 1.6 Data collected in Andhra Pradesh during the last National Health Sample Survey (2001), would seem to dilute the conclusion that food insecurity constitutes a root-cause of the existence of large numbers of rural out-of-school / working children. Indeed, more than 30 percent of the poorest households interviewed, cited the poor quality of the schooling facilities and the irrelevance of the teaching as the main reasons for not sending children to school. In fact, one can wonder whether this kind of answer genuinely reflects their real opinion as to the relevance and adequacy of the schooling system in their region, or rather that the answer simply translates or disguises, consciously or not, a feeling of insecurity as to their future livelihood and the perception of their vulnerability. 1.7 A minority view was that the persistence of child labour results from exploitation, social exclusion and discrimination, and the false consciousness of the poor concerning child labour. According to this view, vulnerable parents, from vulnerable communities, have built a wrong mind-set because they have been told for generations that education is not for their children." That mindset is compounded by the mind-set of the elite who have pre-decided that the only cause of child work is the highly visible factor of poverty and food insecurity. That wrong mind-sets are an important factor in the persistence of child labour is not to be denied. Strong and publicised political will and social mobilisation at all levels is obviously called for to operate a change in mind-sets and to effect positive changes. However, while these long term goals remain important, the immediate objective must be to withdraw children from work and assure them the right to food security and education. 2.
Whether
Food Assistance can effectively reduce child-work 2.1. This question has been answered almost unanimously, throughout the interventions of the participants, irrespective of the nature of their experience on this issue, academic, institutional or derived from field activities. Properly designed and well implemented school feeding programmes, and particularly the provision of a balanced cooked mid-day meal, exert a positive and direct influence on the level of school enrolment, regularity of attendance and retention rate of school age children. They have also a positive, if difficult to measure, impact on learning capacity and school performance. Upon reflection, one
could become inclined to consider that the starting question was maybe not
adequately formulated, or even, not worth being formulated. The starting
premise should have been that a pre-requisite for any activity performed by
children, be it learning or play, should be the absorption of food in
sufficient quantity and variety. This should be in the nature of an entitlement. 2.2 On the other hand, reaching an acceptable degree of satisfaction of this basic need and of food security in a rural household, is not necessarily a guarantee of the elimination of child labour. Not sending children to school or withdrawing them from school, and putting them to work, can be a shortsighted decision. The motivation may be adverse opinions as to the relevance of education and the quality of schooling, illiteracy of the parents, or the tradition-derived conviction that children must contribute to household incomes, even if hunger is not anymore an actual threat. In such cases, quite clearly the "wrong mindset", and lack of awareness of the deprivation of their children, could hardly be modified by food assistance programmes. 2.3 As it has been also generally accepted that, in rural India, out of school children are prone to become, sooner or later, working children, one should not be accused of jumping to conclusions, when affirming that, by preventing enrolled children from dropping out, school feeding programmes effectively contribute to preventing some portion of children from falling into the trap of child labour. 2.4 Since current statistical data reveal that the percentage of children enrolled in primary and secondary levels is in excess of 80 %, it would seem logical and advisable that school children be the first beneficiaries of the food assisted programmes or components and that, with a view to maximising retention rates and ensuring regularity of school attendance, such programmes be implemented in the school premises. The mid-day meal system should be extended to the largest possible scale and the standards of its nutritive qualities should be enhanced and checked continuously by the school /village committees. 3.
Should
food-based interventions be targeted at the school child or at his family? The consensus was that this question should not have been put in terms of either-or. The ideal solution would be to include both the cooked meal at school and a take-home dry ration to ensure that the whole family benefits from school attendance. This benefit could ideally be secured on a weekly or even, if possible, on a daily basis to ensure regularity of school attendance. However, it was generally agreed that the often referred to records of success in elimination of child work and high literacy achievements of Kerala could be attributed to a host of well designed and converging state policies. One of them is reducing the food insecurity of the household through the adequate functioning of the Public Distribution System and the ICDS. A recurring issue throughout the discussion was the effectiveness of a package of interventions, as against any one intervention, however significant it is. 4.
Would
special food interventions targeted at the girl child worker help to reverse
the growing trend of girl child work participation? Interventions with positive gender bias have been recommended by several participants, not only because the exiting anti girl-child bias affects adversely the situation of the girl child in terms of food distribution, household chores, work participation and schooling, but also because, at the general level, a clear correlation has been established between female literacy and the education of women with a lower percentage of child work among vulnerable rural households. However, no particular scheme of intervention was proposed for the specific case of the girl child kept at home or engaged in wage labour activities outside the household. The need to focus on the girl child enjoyed unanimous support from the participants under consideration that uneducated girls are prone to early marriage and child bearing and likely to beget underweight babies and to breed undernourished infants. In order to break the inter-generational cycle of hunger, special efforts and programs have to be concentrated on the plight of the girl child in rural areas, especially in order to encourage school enrolment and retention on a wider scale. However, a caveat was expressed concerning the school feeding mechanisms of "positive discrimination" for the girl child, as international experience has shown that successes achieved with girls retention policies at school have proved to be detrimental for boy’s school attendance. 5.
Could
the assurance of food assistance during seasonal food distress
periods/disasters break the food insecurity child work cycle? The decision to withdraw children from school and to put them to work is no doubt less easy than the decision not to enroll them initially, with a view to keeping them available for work when need arises. This temporary withdrawal decision can be motivated by recurrent seasonal need for extra hands for urgent agricultural tasks, a need which could not be met, for economic reasons, by hired adult work. The issue of seasonality was brought up, time and again. The state level presentations revealed the importance of seasonal food distress rather than situations of food insecurity during the whole year. One of the conclusions was that it was of the utmost importance to adjust the school calendar at the district level, to the seasonal rhythm of agricultural tasks in order to ensure that children · could be assured of a cooked meal during the lean season and · do not drop out of school during the peak period of agricultural work Alternatively, withdrawal can be caused by a food distress situation of the household due to a major natural disaster in the area, which constrains the family to migrate temporarily with their children. There was a general agreement that family oriented food assistance programmes are not entirely successful or even conclusive. Still, it was thought that they should be continued with an improved design and mechanism of distribution. This question is related to the question of the need for mapping, with much greater precision, the areas or pockets (at district or even block level) of highly vulnerable rural households. Food based interventions should be designed using micro-planning techniques on the basis of the answers to the following questions:
It was felt that design and implementation of the programme should be carried out by the stakeholders themselves and that the programme be implemented for a minimum period of four to five years to ensure that the vicious cycle of food insecurity/child work is broken. 6. Could food guarantee schemes be thought of on the lines of the existing employment guarantee and education guarantee schemes? It was agreed that a sound programme of food credit could be operationalised by mobilising food insecure families into self-help groups that would have to be endowed with the capital and know-how to form a food bank. Suggestions from the participants for improving the food credit scheme focused on safeguarding from the contingencies of crop failure, pest attack, etc. through group insurance and crop insurance in order to avoid falling back into the debt trap. Another suggestion was that the food credit scheme be linked with the real needs of the beneficiaries and that it should be managed, preferably, by self-help groups of women. Based on the foregoing discussions, the following guidelines for designing school feeding programmes can be suggested:
Food interventions must be designed with a specific objective in mind. A snack to offset short-term hunger, may not be a financially sufficient incentive to encourage enrolment and attendance. A better alternative in such cases may be take-home rations. A careful case by case assessment of needs should, therefore, precede the decision on objectives and possible interventions. In the Indian situation, food based interventions could be targeted at the child in school or at households prone to child labour, or both. In the case of such a household-based approach, food assistance must compensate for the opportunity cost of the child’s labour. It must also necessarily be linked with withdrawing the child from work and sending her to school. This would necessitate an effective monitoring system. On the other hand, the case for SFPs seems more conclusive as a single programme would achieve two objectives – one, bringing the child to school and out of the labour pool, and two, impacting positively on the child’s learning achievement. The choice of approach could vary from region to region. Recommendations for action-oriented research One of the expected outputs of the workshop was the presentation of a food-assisted pilot project against child work in a rural area to be discussed by the participants. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints of the workshop, this was not possible to achieve, as constructing this model-project would have required detailed data on the area and the targeted population that can be obtained only by specific case-studies. Indeed, it was unanimously agreed, that in order to fine tune the targeting of food assistance programmes against child work, a fair amount of research still remains to be done and a full-fledged database on that issue is still to be initiated:
Finally, several interesting suggestions were made concerning the channeling of food assistance through existing entities or institutions of the private and the public sector through: · Corporate Houses with a social agenda, · the ICDS which has the advantage of covering most parts of the country and focuses exclusively on the targeted vulnerable families, · micro-enterprises of women, existing or to be created.
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