Kailash Satyarthi’s legal struggles: PILs facilitating the cause

Kailash Satyarthi, the joint winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, gleams with honesty when he says that “children are his religion”. Satyarthi considers this a victory of not just a man, but the entire cause, the cause that he has been fighting for, with his heart and soul for more than 3 decades.The electrical engineer started off with teaching at a college in Bhopal, after completing his studies in his hometown of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh. He decided to shift to New Delhi in 1977 and soon began working with a publisher of Arya Samaj literature. He also started a magazine, Sangharsh Jaari Rahega (the struggle will continue), where he doubled up as the owner and a photo-journalist.In 1980, he began working with Bandhua Mukti Morcha (BLLF), an organization headed by Swami Agnivesh. Satyarthi however wanted to work exclusively for on child labor and this gave birth to Bachpan Bachao Andolan in 1980.Child labour has been illegal in India since 1933 and the Constitution stipulates that no child below the age of 14 years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engage in any other hazardous employment. The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, strictly outlaws all forms of debt bondage and forced labour.India still has 65 million bonded child laborers, and 300 million adult laborers living in various forms of modern slavery, according to the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF).A 2014 report by the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, written by adjunct faculty member Siddharth Kara, documents over 3,200 cases across nine states in India and finds several hundred cases of forced, bonded labour, child labour, and trafficking in carpet factories run by exporters who ship these rugs to some of the biggest retail stores in the US.Satyarthi first became popular for his sustained raid and rescue operations targeting carpet loom units. In 1993, he began a campaign to inform consumers how carpets were made using child labour. The campaign was initiated by European and Asian rights groups such as the Indo-German Export Promotion Project, representatives of the carpet industry, 200 NGOs under the SACCS and UNICEF India.Within a few years of launching BBA, Satyarthi led the Global March against Child Labour, a worldwide coalition of civil society groups and trade unions from 125 countries. He was the chairperson of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), an active coalition of more than 200 NGOs working on child rights issues in various industries in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The organization claimed that by 1996, it had rescued more than 34,000 children by conducting raids at carpet-manufacturing units.A similar zeal to trace missing children led the BBA to file another PIL that resulted in Delhi High Court issuing a direction in 2010 that every time a missing child complaint comes to the police, it must register an FIR. In the same proceedings, HC further directed that in every such case a lawyer from legal aid would be assigned to the parent of the missing child.Affidavits by BBA highlighting how over one lakh children go missing in India every year left the Supreme Court aghast in 2013, and it directed all states in the country to compulsorily register FIR whenever a case of a missing child is reported to the police. It also brought Children Homes being run across the country under its scanner, directing that they should be registered and properly maintained.The police agencies have also installed a child tracking system to monitor the movement of minors hired by placement agencies.Bachpan Bachao Andolan published a book on Missing Children giving all the data on the Missing Children in India. This book was released by the then Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir.In 2012 Bachpan Bachao Andolan filed a PIL in Supreme Court stating that over one lakh children were missing in country every year. The Supreme Court vide order dated 17.01.2013 passed the directions making it mandatory to register FIR whenever a case of a missing child is reported to the police. These directions were applicable to all States throughout India.An executive order called the Delhi Private Placement Agencies (Regulation) Order, 2014 has been released in compliance with the order passed by the High Court of Delhi in December, 2010 and December, 2013 in the case of Bachpan Bachao Andolan v. Union of India and others. In the case, the Court had directed the Govt. of Delhi to issue executive directions for the regulation of Private Placement Agencies providing domestic workers in the National Capital Territory of Delhi and to prevent the exploitation of such domestic workers employed through such private placement agencies in Delhi. Read the judgment here.The order applied to all Private Placement Agencies, providing domestic workers in Delhi whether their office/ place of business is situated within Delhi or outside. The order lays down their conditions of work...

Kailash Satyarthi’s legal struggles: PILs facilitating the cause

Apoorva Mandhani

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