A blanket bar below fourteen, with a family-enterprise exception: how child labour is regulated

Background

The Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986 extends to the whole of India and bars the employment of a child in any occupation or process. A child is a person who has not completed his fourteenth year, or the age fixed by the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, whichever is higher. An adolescent has completed fourteen years but not eighteen, and no adolescent can be put to work in the hazardous occupations and processes listed in the Schedule. Two narrow exceptions remain: a child helping a family or family enterprise that is not hazardous, after school hours or in vacations, and a child artist in audio-visual entertainment other than the circus, and neither can affect the child's schooling. The Central Government can add to or drop items from the Schedule after three months of notice, advised by a Technical Advisory Committee of a Chairman and not more than ten other members. For an establishment run by the Centre, a railway administration, a major port, a mine or an oilfield the appropriate Government is the Central Government, and in every other case the State Government. Where an adolescent is lawfully at work, no spell of work can run beyond three hours without a rest break of at least one hour, work between 7 pm and 8 am and overtime are both barred, and one full day a week is a holiday. The Supreme Court has asked the Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development to set up a special cell to watch over how the law is enforced.