MADRAS, India -- There is Dickensian distress in India, where child labor persists despite a law and a court order. Fifteen million children below 14 continue to work in the most horrific of conditions in blatant violation of the Indian Supreme Court ruling, which had called for the enforcement of the Child Labor Act, passed a decade earlier.
Five years after the court decree comes a disturbing report from London-based Human Rights Watch. Zama Coursen-Neff, counsel to the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, said recently in the British capital: "The Indian government claims there are no bonded kids in the country. But, in fact, they are everywhere. They are so easy to find."
Human Rights Watch first investigated child labor in India in 1996, and the organization's report led to the Supreme Court ruling: Rehabilitate boys and girls bonded to backbreaking work. India's National Human Rights Commission pressured many local governments to adhere to this legal requirement, and in some cases the plight of the young worker improved.