CHILD LABOUR Introducon Children are the greatest giſt to humanity and Childhood is an important and impressionable stage of human development as it holds the potenal to the future development of any society. Children who are brought up in an environment, which is conducive to their intellectual, physical and social health, grow up to be responsible and producve members of society. Every naon links its future with the present status of its children. By performing work when they are too young for the task, children unduly reduce their present welfare or their future income earning capabilies, either by shrinking their future external choice sets or by reducing their own future individual producve capabilies. Under extreme economic distress, children are forced to forego educaonal opportunies and take up jobs which are mostly exploitave as they are usually underpaid and engaged in hazardous condions. Parents decide to send their child for engaging in a job as a desperate measure due to poor economic condions. It is, therefore, no wonder that the poor households predominantly send their children to work in early ages of their life. There is a strong effect of child labour on school aendance rates and the length of a child’s work day is negavely associated with his or her capacity to aend school. Magnitude of Child Labour in India The magnitude of child labour in India has been witnessing enormous decline in the last two decades, both in terms of magnitude and workforce participation rates. Evidence drawn from the National Sample Survey data suggest that India’s child workforce during 2004-05 was estimated at little over nine million (9.07 million) as against twenty-one and half million (21.55 million) in 1983. During this period, the number of child employment has declined sharply by 12.48 million. There is considerable fall in child workforce is observed among boys than girls. The corresponding fall in boys and girls workforce during 1983 to 2004- 05 is observed to have decreased from 12.06 to 4.76 million, and 9.49 to 4.31 million, respectively. In effect, the gender difference that existed between boys and girls (adverse against boys) during the early 1980s has almost dissipated in recent years, the difference being slowed down from 2.57 million to roughly 0.45 million. However, in absolute numbers, the problem is large. As per the Census 2001, there are 1.26 crores economically active children in the age-group of 5-14 years. It was 1.13 crores in the 1991 Census. As per NSSO survey 2009-10, the working children are estimated at 49.84 lakh which shows a declining trend. As per the Global Report on Child Labour published by International Labour Organization last year, the activity rate of children in the age group of 5-14 years is 5.1 per cent in Latin America and Caribbean Region, which is the lowest in the