Child Labour in India: Causes, Legal Prohibition, and the Effectiveness of Rehabilitation Schemes

Child labour in India has been the subject of intense scholarly, legislative, and policy attention for over three decades. Despite substantial legal reforms, including the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act as amended in 2016 (hereafter, CLPR Act 2016), the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE), and ancillary criminal and labour frameworks, millions of children remain engaged in economic activity, a portion under conditions that meet national or international thresholds for “child labour.” This paper synthesises the current evidence on (i) the structural and proximate causes of child labour in India; (ii) the legal architecture that prohibits it and interacts with education and social protection; and (iii) the design and effectiveness of rehabilitation and reintegration mechanisms, with particular focus on the National Child Labour Project (NCLP), its recent subsuming into Samagra Shiksha’s Special Training Centres (STCs), the PENCiL portal, Operation Muskaan/Smile, Childline 1098 (now undergoing integration with ERSS 112), and the Central Sector Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourer (revised 2016 and updated 2021/2022). While official data sources (Census 2011; administrative reporting; selective surveys) suggest a long term decline in child labour, recent analyses (PLFS 2018/19; UNICEF/ILO global estimates) indicate persistent risks concentrated among older children, rural households, migrants, scheduled castes/tribes, and informal sector supply chains. A key finding of this review is that India’s legal prohibition has sharpened, but programmatic rehabilitation has entered a transition phase after 2021, raising coordination, measurement, and delivery challenges. The paper proposes a set of evidence informed reforms: comprehensive data architecture beyond decadal census; targeted cash plus approaches that combine income support with school remediation; stronger subnational convergence between labour enforcement and education; supply chain due diligence; and outcome based financing for state STCs.