Child Labor and Its Correlates: A Case Study of Gujarat

By : Pragati Pandey , Vivek Kumar Shukla

Page No: 79-89

Abstract
Child labor has been regarded as one of the most serious issues faced by developing countries since time immemorial. The complexity involved with the problem demands for detailed research in order to cull out the most specific ways to eliminate it. The Census of India provides data on child labor since 1971, however, most of the researches have been either case studies or restricted to data provided on national and state scenario by the NSSO. The paper, therefore intends to study the data at the district level and explore the emerging patterns. The paper restricts the data analysis to the state of Gujarat and conducts an inter-district comparison, in order to explore the correlates and the determinants of child labor. It maps the districts of Gujarat with highest concentrations of child labor across categories of gender and rural/urban areas. The findings of the paper help in understanding the actual magnitude of the problem at the district level. The analysis reveals that the large presence of child laborers in rural areas with a predominance of male child laborers; child laborers in urban area have higher access to educational institutions. There is a large proportion of children who are neither attending school nor working, categorized as the “nowhere children” with a preponderance of females. The correlation exercise provides evidences of scheduled tribe’s children being more susceptible towards becoming child laborers and household industries and agricultural farms being the largest employer of child laborers. The regression results reveal that, the level of urbanization and the proportion of the ST population highly influence the proportion of child labor in a particular district.

Authors :
Pragati Pandey
PhD Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. 

Vivek Kumar Shukla
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Geography Department, Institute of Sciences, Banaras Hindu University.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/ATNAGI.2022.42.01.6