It is believed that there are more children under the age of fourteen years in India than the entire population of the United States. Children under fourteen constitute around 3.6 per cent of the total labor force in India. Child labor is usually a natural consequence of a poor country afflicted by the sundry problems of underdevelopment. National Child Labor Project (NCLP) is one of the important Government interventions towards the realization of this goal. Thousands of child laborers have been rescued and rehabilitated through the special schools run under the Project. These children receive a monthly stipend of Rs 100 per month apart from getting regular nutritional and medical support. Run by NGOs or local self Government bodies, these schools have been doing reasonably well towards realization of the Project objectives.

There are many issues which need to be addressed in this regard. First are the age criteria, the criterion whereby we need to confine our identification of child labor till the age of 14 only, something which is accepted internationally 7. As per the extant norms, the stipend is supposed to be stopped once the child is main-streamed into a formal school. That being the case, there remains no incentive for main-streaming of the children as they or their parents don’t wish to lose the financial benefit, hence children’s academic performance gets negatively affected. So, one feels that the stipend should be continued even after the child is mainstreamed into the formal education system and the same should be continued till he or she reaches the age of 18.
After all, it is money that drives the poor parents to use their children as additional sources of income. So, some sort of pecuniary assistance should be provided and continued even after the child is withdrawn from the active employment and till he is completely mainstreamed. Even though envisaged in the overall rehabilitation package, still the parents of the child laborers are not compulsorily entitled to get preferential treatment in allocation of different Government benefits or goodies.

With projects like NCLP awareness is definitely generated and one is aware that employing a child below 14 is an offence. So, today when one goes about enforcing prohibition of employment of child labor, one is faced with the difficulty that the child himself/herself tells his/her age to be above 14 and the same is told by their employees/parents even though one knows for sure that the child is below 14. It is here that we need to strike and ensure that the enforcement of the legal provisions of the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act does take place so that the real objectives of the Act are realized.

There is not only a need for a renewed thrust towards tackling the problem of child labor, but there is also an imperative need towards making more financial' allocation for the Project. More clarification regarding identification of the child labor and revising certain aspects of the project design also need to be made. Only if more coordinated and synergized system is implemented, only then child labor will be eradicated from this country.