The working hours of unpaid child workers in the handloom industry in India Jadab Kumar Pal, Sonali Chakraborty, Hare Ram Tewari and Vinod Chandra Introduction Child labour is rampant in various forms in most developing countries in spite of several pro- hibitory legislative measures enacted by national Corresponding author: Jadab Kumar Pal, Senior Administrative Officer, Indian Sta- tistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road, Kolkata – 700108. Email: jadabpal@yahoo.co.in. Sonali Chakraborty, Associate Scientist, SRU, ISI Kolkata Hare Ram Tewari, Professor, Department of HSS, IIT Kharagpur Vinod Chandra, Head, Department of Soci- ology, JNPG College, Lucknow. governments and by the United Nations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The rights of the child are important in protect- ing children from any eco- nomic exploitation and from doing work that hampers their education, or that is detrimen- tal to their mental, physical, moral, or social development (UNHR 1989). Yet there is no sign of decline in the use of child labour and it continues unabated. The economic circumstances of the households and the sluggish economic devel- opment of poor countries are held to be the primary factors that have impeded the success of govern- ments’ efforts in abolishing child labour. It is argued that in developing countries, without the support and contribution of the unpaid child labour, the survival of millions of households suffering from extreme poverty would be at stake. However, it is never realised that the use of child labour not only hampers the development and growth of the child, but also deprives the households and the nation of the probable potential benefits of the creative talents that would have accrued to them, had the chilren been properly socialised and brought up. The other striking feature of the popular use of child labour is the time allocation and their work schedule where the traditional cultural norm of gender bias is religiously followed and applied as a rule of thumb. Murshidabad district, in the state of West Bengal, India, is famous for producing gamchha (a popular traditional napkin used by the local people) by handlooms which are owned and operated by households themselves in their homes. The area is characterised by a mas- sive concentration of family- based handlooms where chil- dren routinely work without wages or incentives. They do work for the maintenance and wellbeing of their own households on which their identity and survival depend. Most of the house- holds including children and women in the area are weavers, weaving is their primary occupation and source of livelihood. With the introduction of mechanised looms, they have of late been con- fronted with new challenges of competition in respect to pricing and a wide variety of products available in the market. The control of the handloom industry lies with the master weavers who provide raw materials on a credit basis to households for weaving gamchha, with the condition that they must return the products to the master weavers, and in return, be paid a piece rate wage for the product. In cases where households fail to deliver the products to the master weavers, it is construed and treated as a breach of contract that necessitates and warrants the imposition of ghatthi (a kind of fine imposed) on defaulting households. The involvement of child ISSJ 0 C  UNESCO 2017.