The merger of the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) marked a strategic shift in child labour prevention 2 in India. The merging of the NCLP into the SSA in 2022 caused a big change in how child labour is addressed, as it led to the closing of special schools for rescued child workers, with the new policy stating that all rescued children must now go to regular schools under the SSA system. The parliamentary standing committee on labour, textiles, and skill development has pointed out that the merger might not effectively handle the specific tasks of enforcing laws, rescuing, and rehabilitating child labourers, raising concerns about whether focusing on school enrolment alone can truly solve the problem of child labour. The parliamentary panel noted that child labour is a complicated issue that needs a clear plan and funding, along with a specific structure within the Ministry of Labour and Employment, which is responsible for enforcing the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. The ongoing rescue of many child workers nationwide, even after the major policy change, supports the Committee’s suggestion that the ministry should reconsider merging the NCLP Scheme with the SSA and look into the possibility of bringing back a specific programme to eliminate and rehabilitate child labour. The institutional recalibration recommended by the parliamentary committee warrants urgent government action. The committee has rightly observed that the effective elimination of child labour depends primarily on timely identification and rescue operations, which are vested in the mandate of the labour enforcement machinery. The apprehension that discontinuation of NCLP as a standalone project for strengthening identification, rescue and rehabilitation mechanisms can potentially weaken the capacity of the states built over the past years is justified. Child rights activists and educationists argue that regular schools cannot provide the specialised care that a rescued child labourer needs, which can only be provided by trained professionals in a specialised ecosystem. Once these children gradually become accustomed to the classroom environment, they become ready and gain the confidence to enter the regular school ecosystem. Because of the closure of the parallel schools, the Labour Ministry stopped maintaining the data of child labourers, and updated data can be available only after the conduct of the 2027 census. The available data on child labour dates back to the Census 2011 data, which does not provide a true picture. The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2024-25 report on school education released by the Ministry of Education highlighted that the country had seen a notable reduction in dropout rates across the Preparatory, Middle, and Secondary levels. The UDISE report shows that at the preparatory stage, the rate declined from 3.7% to 2.3%; at the middle stage, from 5.2% to 3.5%; and at the secondary stage, from 10.9% to 8.2% in 2024-25 in comparison with the previous years, 2022-23 and 2023-24. The government asserted that the decrease in dropout rates reflects the effectiveness of initiatives designed to keep children in schools, which is commendable. However, the figures also indicate that a large number of children continue to be out of school, and a sizeable section of them could be working at restaurants, brick kilns, factories, or household industrial units, which is a cause for grave concern. The lack of reliable data on child labour makes it difficult to properly evaluate and improve the policies and programs aimed at stopping it. Spreading awareness among parents to send their children to school alone cannot eliminate child labour unless the financial needs of households grappling with poverty, who see earnings by minors in the family as a significant contribution to daily survival, are addressed through income substitution schemes and projects. Interventions like cash transfer schemes, subsidised rations, midday meals, etc., play a crucial role in income substitution and reducing household burdens, which encourage downtrodden households to send their children to school and complete their education. Identifying genuine beneficiaries of such interventions is critical to achieving their desired goals, as the deprivation of needy households due to irregularities or anomalies in implementation can trap them in a vicious cycle of poverty and child labour. This calls for a strong monitoring and oversight mechanism for various social welfare schemes, including those aimed at curbing child labour. If one state is still experiencing a lot of child labour, there is no reason to be complacent about reducing it there. This is because child labour anywhere makes children in other areas more likely to be trafficked for cheap labour. Bridging administrative and data gaps is essential to ensure a coordinated response from various ministries and departments, such as education, labour, women and children, and social welfare. Eliminating child labour requires decisive action pursued with speed and determination.