HYDERABAD: With the cotton crop season coming to an end, experts on child labour said that at least 30 per cent of children who had dropped out of school from July to August to help their families in cotton farming, will be returning to study in their schools. However, they will not have any special assistance from teachers to help them catch up with their syllabus. 

Every year, specifically in the Jogulamba Gadwal district, children of marginal farmers drop out of school for three to four months to help their parents tend the delicate cotton crop. This was also mentioned by Beate Andrees, chief, Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (FPRW) of the International Labour Organisation on her visit to the district last week.

The cotton crop is usually sown at the onset of monsoon and once it grows, it has to be pollinated, which involves male plants to being brushed against the female plants by hand. For this job, generally, girl children are deployed as they have smaller hands, and are usually as tall as the cotton crop, so adults do not have to bend and do laborious work. 

“Post this, children are used in the process of plucking the cotton pods. When they eventually do come back to schools, there are very few teachers to teach them, leave alone help them catch up with the course work” added VV Rao, district coordinator for MV Foundation. It may be recalled that children from this district had sent 1,600 postcards to the High Court in 2015 to highlight their plight of not having enough teachers in schools. 

According to a recent survey by the labour department, there are at least 3,095 children forced into labour in just this one district of Jogulamba Gadwal, and this is the second highest number out of the 21 districts surveyed. 

“We are demanding a special allocation for this district because it has successively fared poorly in terms of both child labour and in education levels,” added R Venkat Reddy, national convener, MV Foundation.
Meanwhile, the Telangana State Resource Centre (SRC) for Elimination of Child Labour post the survey has sought 29 bridge schools from the Centre for educating these marginalised children.