From Rescue to Justice
Rajeev Bhardwaj
(rajeevbhardwaj10@gmail.com)
Every year, June 12 rolls around with familiar slogans-Say No to Child Labour, Childhood is for Learning, Not Earning, Protect Our Future. There are school poster competitions, awareness marches, tweets from people across all streams and walks of life. And yet, at the same time, children are sweeping floors in dhabas, stitching sequins in dark corners of factories, washing dishes in middle-class homes, or just sitting alone on railway platforms, waiting for their trafficker to return.
The contrast is painful. It's also telling. Because child labour in India has never just been a question of poverty or ignorance. It is a question of justice, or more accurately, of the failure of justice.
It's important to say it plainly: child labour is a crime. The law doesn't ask us to feel bad for child workers. It asks us to act. The Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act makes it illegal for children under 14 to be employed in any occupation and prohibits adolescents between 14 and 18 from being employed in hazardous work. The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act, and various provisions of the IPC all apply in many cases of child labour. But we don't see credible legal actions on the ground by the law enforcement agencies. The truth is, most children are rescued with no justice following behind. They've just moved from one form of abandonment to another-rescued but not rehabilitated, freed but still forgotten.
This is where our collective conversation must shift. It's not enough to rescue children. They must be restored-with dignity, with compensation, with education, and with justice. Because every child who is not brought back to school is at risk of being pulled into child labour, child marriage, or trafficking. And every trafficker or employer who is let off with a warning learns the same lesson: that children can be bought, sold, and used-and nothing will really happen.
But something powerful begins to change when the law is made to work as it should.
In recent years, we've seen glimpses of this through organisations working not just for child protection but for legal accountability. One striking example is the Association for Voluntary Action (AVA), a partner of Just Rights for Children (JRC), which works closely with the Railway Protection Force (RPF). Together, they've been able to rescue thousands of children from traffickers in trains-children who might otherwise have vanished into informal labour markets across the country. But these rescues are not standalone acts-they're followed by FIRs, legal action, coordination with Child Welfare Committees, and crucially, linking children to rehabilitation schemes and compensation.
Between April 2023 and March 2025, the network of Just Rights for Children, comprising over 250 NGO partners, has alone rescued 85,465 children from trafficking and registered 54,437 cases against child traffickers. From a time when missing children were treated as just that - missing - this is a huge shift that is bound to weaken the trafficking rings. And this is what an effective model looks like-one where rescue is just the first step, and justice is the goal.
But this kind of follow-through isn't yet the norm. In most places, rehabilitation remains patchy. Children are sent back home with no support. Families that depended on their income fell deeper into debt. Many children return to the same networks that first exploited them. It is in this gap-between rescue and restoration-that the system often collapses.
We must fix this. Rehabilitation is not a favour-it's a right. Compensation under schemes like the Child Labour Rehabilitation Scheme must be delivered swiftly. Psychosocial support must be standard, not optional. And perhaps most urgently, every rescued child must be brought back into school-not as an afterthought, but as a central piece of their recovery.
Let's also speak about where this crisis hits hardest. Child labour isn't equally distributed. It disproportionately affects children from communities whose marginalisation makes them easy targets. In cities, they work in garment units and homes, invisible behind closed doors. In villages, they're found in fields, brick kilns, or trafficked to far-off places. Their vulnerability is not random-it is structural.
But the law, when used with intent, can change this script. Organisations like JRC have shown how. By pursuing FIRs, ensuring legal follow-up, and demanding accountability from district administrations, they've made it harder for exploiters to hide behind impunity. In several cases, convictions have been secured under the Bonded Labour Act and IPC. In others, compensation has been released to families who had long given up hope. And each time this happens, a signal is sent: the system is watching, and the law still matters.
What we need now is scale. We need state systems to function with the same urgency and clarity. Labour departments, police, education officers, and CWCs must work as a unit-not just to rescue, but to restore, rebuild, and legally protect. Every case of child labour must be treated not as a social evil but as a cognisable offence on which the police can (and must) take action. Every district should be tracking dropouts with as much seriousness as missing children. Because they are, in many ways, the same.
Ending child labour isn't just about saving children from work-it's about restoring their stolen futures. It's about ensuring that a 10-year-old doesn't spend her days washing dishes while others her age are in school plays. It's about stopping the quiet horror of children whose childhoods are traded for profit. And it's about demanding that the law do what it was made to do: protect the vulnerable, punish the exploiters, and ensure that justice isn't just an idea-it's a lived reality.
On this World Day Against Child Labour, let's stop asking what more 'they' can do. Let's ask what the state and every law-abiding citizen of this country are obligated to do-by law, by constitution, and by every moral compass we claim to follow.