Educate to Eradicate - Child Labour Laws explained by Nyaaya

Ideally, childhood should be a time of learning, bonding and exploring the world for all children. Sadly, we live in an unequal society, where a large number of children are deprived of their childhood by being forced to work due to their socio-economic conditions. As per the 2011 Census, India had 10.13 million child labourers working between the ages of 5-14. Child labour has many negative effects such has malnutrition, premature ageing, depression etc. It also affects the future well-being of the children by denying them education opportunities.

The law is strict in its provisions against child labour, but lack of awareness of the law and how it functions feeds into a lack of implementation. Employers who employ children may be unaware of the law, or they choose to ignore it because of the lack of implementation and awareness about the law. Children involved in child labour, and their parents may be unaware that they are being illegally exploited. Hence, it is really important to have information about legal provisions in a simple, accessible format, so that it can be shared and accessed widely.

Simple video explainers in Hindi on child labour and the law.

Nyaaya provides simple, actionable, recallable and yet authoritative legal information to citizens about laws that apply to their day to day lives. We wish to make the law an empowering tool for citizens. Donate an amount to help build simple video explainers in multiple languages on different aspects on the law on child labour like reporting child labour, punishment for those who employ children, role of schools in preventing child labour, govt. action etc. We plan to create two kinds of videos. The first would be short videos in a lecture format explaining different aspects of the law. The second would be longer videos, where we will interact with different stakeholders like employers, state officials, civil society members and the children themselves to add context and different perspectives on child labour. This would help us show how the law actually functions and different people interact with it.

Your contribution will help us create these videos at scale and in multiple languages. We will be distributing them on different social media channels, new media organizations and will share them with both state and non-state organizations and individuals working on this issue to ensure that these can be a resource for people working on the issue as well. We will also try and partner with new media organizations to share this content on their platforms to increase awareness about the law on child labour. 

With your contribution, we envisage creating 5 long videos and 10 short videos within one year. We hope that with increased awareness, people will be discouraged to employ children, citizens will recognize child labour and learn how to report it and victims will be aided in being informed about and demanding their rights and protections given by the law.