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2) Government / NGOs should take steps to strengthen the position (and thus, bargaining power) of women in the household, as various studies have shown that women are less inclined to send their children to work. The government should, therefore, educate the masses on gender issues and work towards empowerment of women in the country.

3) All the studies show that girls are more likely to work than boys. This implies that all the above-mentioned initiatives should have a special focus on girls. Besides these, social awareness also needs to be increased to change social perception towards educational needs of girl-child.

4) Policies comparable to Integrated Child Development Schemes (ICDS) for elder children should be formulated (especially for the under-privileged sections of the society). As we have seen the harmful effects of child labor on the overall child development, the role of ICDS as well as similar initiatives cannot be over-emphasized.

5) As we have seen that probability of work increases with number of younger children in the family (older children have to help with them), so government should also focus its efforts towards population control, and thus, decreasing the family size. It will also, in long run, help in reducing the poverty of the households, and thus, will help in reducing child labor.

Issues of Economic Constraints

As we have observed from the research above, poverty plays a major role in increasing child labor. Thus, it should be one of the prime focus areas of policy makers, and they can consider following suggestions to reduce poverty (and thus, child labor): -

1) As can be concluded from all the above-mentioned studies, poverty alleviation programs (i.e., reducing household poverty) can go a long way, however, only after making them more effective by removing corruption / losses from the delivery systems.

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Dr. Shreyas Goswami and Vineet Jain are the First Year MBA (BM) Students at XLRI, Jamshedpur. While Shreyas is a Doctor by profession, Vineet is a Civil Engineer from Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi University.