Child Labour in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s

This paper sifts certain important sources of secondary data, in its efforts to present certain broad descriptive features of the phenomenon of child labour in Tamil Nadu and its distribution across well-defined socio-economic groups classified by gender, sector-of-origin and caste, and its dispersal across space. As NSS data for 1987-88 suggest, the magnitude of child labour in Tamil Nadu appears disturbingly large, with nearly 11 children out of every 100 in the workforce. Tragically, this very large presence of orderly, systematic child labour and child illiteracy, together with their thorough dispersal across space, has rendered the phenomenon of child labour an unremarkable, everyday occurrence. The concerns of society and the state remain limited to certain specific occupations in certain specific locations, to the neglect of other occupations and locations which merit at least equal attention.