The shocking decision of the Union Cabinet to legalise child work after school hours in family enterprises must compel us to turn an unflinching spotlight on one of our gravest, and collectively forgotten, cruelties: the theft of the childhood and hopes of Indian children whose only crime is to be born into poverty and disadvantaged castes and religions. Even today, the majority of children in the world who are still trapped in labour are born and raised in India. Unconscionably, the law outlawed child work only in notified “hazardous” occupations, a list to which domestic help was added only a few years ago. Beyond 14 years, even this prohibition disappeared. Both the middle classes and governments did not find it problematic that children of disadvantage are being forced to squander their childhoods labouring on farms and in factories, in waste heaps and roadside eateries and in our homes, while we aspire for the best for our own children.

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