Inspiration from abroad

INDIAN INSPIRATION

Sociální pedagogika | Social Education 103

volume 7, issue 2, pp. 103–105, November 2019

ISSN 1805-8825

Inspiration from abroad

Czech version/Česká verze

Migrant child labour in India’s brick kilns

Jon Ellis

In India today, the largest single group of children engaged in labour and out of school are those migrants

who leave their homes every year to spend 6–8 months in brick kilns. The number of these children is

probably around 1 million.

Several states of eastern/central India contain the country’s main hunger belts: Bihar, Jharkhand,

Chattisgarh and Orissa, with parts of neighbouring states. These are places where many of the poor cannot

survive for 12 months a year without migration. Rainfall is erratic and often inadequate, giving at best one

crop a year and little work to labourers. Most of the poor are landless, or have too little land for

subsistence. Caste relations in the countryside are still semi-feudal in many places. The government

administration in these regions typically functions badly, denying the poor access to schemes and benefits

they should enjoy. Government schools often function so poorly that school attendance may be of

marginal benefit to children of the poor.

The kilns close during the monsoon season when making, drying and firing bricks in the open air becomes

impossible. Most kilns run from November–May/June. Migrant workers are usually supplied to the kilns

by labour contractors who recruit large groups comprising many families from the same village or locality.

An advance is paid to heads of families, so an element of bonded labour is built into the system. Families

get a weekly allowance from the kiln owner, and the balance of their wages is held on account in the

owner’s books until the end of the season, when workers receive the balance, minus the advance and

deductions for food and fuel, if they are lucky. Few adult workers are literate and fully numerate. Owners

always are.

Typically, a family group travelling several hundred miles to a kiln comprises 2 parents, several children

(babies to teenagers), possibly grandparents, and maybe other branches of the same family. In an average

brick kiln there may be 150 adult workers and 40-50 children under 14 years. The family’s accommodation

at the kiln is usually a single room about 3 x 2.5m square in a terrace of low, roughly built dwellings. A

person has to stoop to enter the door. There is no furniture and no window. Everyone sleeps on mats on

the earth floor. Cooking is done on a clay stove on the ground outside each door. The fuel is wood, cow

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dung, straw, twigs. Water comes from a hand-pumped tube well on the site. Bathing is at the pump or in

a nearby pond or river. Normally, each room now has an electric light; it may have a socket. If a toilet was

provided, it is possibly never cleaned and therefore not in use.

Brick kiln owners prefer migrant workers to locals. Locals may form unions, engage in politics, and are

better organized because they are in their own place with local support networks. Migrants come to

maximize their income and then leave, seldom returning to the same kiln next year. They lack local support

networks, are rarely unionized and are very much under the control of the owner.

Child labour is illegal in India. School attendance up to 14 years is compulsory. These are laws that India

chooses not to enforce – neither the state nor society – in its brick kilns. Note that society, politicians and

the administration in the vicinity of the kilns typically have no interest in the fate of the migrant workers

because they have no votes in this locality, and are therefore not an interest group whose needs must be

considered.

Are children forced to work? The circumstances lead all able-bodied family members to contribute to the

family’s earnings. Most children work to support the family output of bricks from the age of about 8 years.

Children expect to contribute their labour, for self-respect and for economic benefit. Some work is

relatively light – bringing sand to the adults so the clay does not stick in the mould, causing bricks to dry

on the ground. Other children, particularly girls from about 10 years upward, are employed directly by the

owners for carrying headloads of bricks from stacks into the kiln and out again after firing, etc. These

headloads range up to 30kgs. The load is carried hundreds of times a day. Damage is undoubtedly caused

to the bodies of these girls.

A brick kiln owner will say that if he prevents children from working, labourers will not remain long at his

kiln. They will go to another kiln where children’s labour is permitted. Owners, on an individual basis, are

partly correct in their assertion. But owners belong to associations and have contact with the local

government machinery, which is supposed to regulate the kilns. There is a loose coincidence of self-

interest, neglect, bribe-taking to ignore infringements, and the wish of migrant workers to maximize their

income.

At the vast majority of kilns there is no provision of education for the children. The language of the children

is usually different from that of the local primary school, if there is one, and if the master would enrol

short-term migrant children. Unlikely! There is therefore nothing to take children away from work by

offering an alternative, for at least part of the day. In a few places, NGOs with funds run open-air schools

or ‘centres’ for children for a few hours daily. For example, in the 4 districts surrounding Kolkata, NGOs

have such schools/centres at about 70 kilns (out of 500+). Their existence is precarious because of funding

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issues. Even where a school runs for 3 hours daily, most enrolled children over 10 years cheerfully agree

to work at other times.

This writer, along with his colleagues, believe that a sustained, flexible and creative campaign is needed to

advance the interests of migrant brick-kiln children. The campaign must not ignore the needs of adult

workers to be organized and secure better pay and conditions. Nor must it ignore the need of children at

brick kilns to receive some kind of education by whatever means possible, and ultimately the quality

education they need to transform their world. In seeking to end child labour in the brick industry of India,

we also seek gains in the material position of the migrating communities.

A successful ‘crowd funding’ appeal in September/ October 2018 (which continues) raised enough money

to employ a person in Kolkata, West Bengal as ‘Advocate for Migrant Children in Brick Kilns’. Rahul Das is

now in this post and working. For more details see an article within reports on conditions of Labour, particularly child labour, in the brick production industries of South Asia - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India,

Nepal and Pakistan. Rahul and any other staff employed by the campaign work with their phones and

laptops in virtual offices – their own homes, trains, tea stalls and brick kilns. Jon’s flat in central Kolkata

serves as a meeting point when necessary. We have a Brick Kiln News, web-page, which features news

items covering the brick industries of India and the rest of South Asia – Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and

Afghanistan.

We are in this work for as long as necessary. We are optimistic that useful gains can be won for the children

of the brick kilns in the next few years.

Jon Ellis

Founder and main organizer of ‘The brick field schools programme of Loreto’