An Exploratory Study on Success and Failure of Policies and Programmes to Eradicate Rural Child Labour in Bangalore District- India

Undoubtedly child labour is embedded in the fabric of our society and this is one of the serious problems facing the country as a whole. Child labour exists in India since time immemorial in different forms. Hence, the Government also has brought a lot of social policies and programmes to curb this problem. Even after the independence the Government was very interested in dealing with this problem seriously. Hence, the Government brought many acts and laws to control the problem. The Child Labour Prohibition Act was an important and more over a turning point in dealing with the problem. Since then, until now the Government and many NGOs have implemented a lot of programmes across the country to minimise the issue. Each and every programme will have its own limitations. The basic reason why most of all policies and programmes of both Government and NGOs have got only mere success or failed to create much of an impact on the child labour situation is that policies are simply not designed focusing the poor people. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the status of various child labour eradication programmes. This paper is based on the study done in Bangalore district using a focus group study and it concludes that programmes and act implemented by the Government has no strong comprehensive impact on curbing the child labour. However, some of the Government policies have got some good results while some of them have got meagre success or ended with the negative impacts.