Child Labour and Informal Employment in India: The Political Economy of Exploitation, Social Protection and State Policy
Javed Iqbal Tramboo
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Govt. Degree College, Doda, Jammu and Kashmir, India
India is home to the largest number of working children and informal workers of any country in the world, and the two phenomena are deeply intertwined. This paper examines the condition of ‘invisible workers’ children and informally employed adults whose labour sustains large parts of the Indian economy while remaining largely outside the reach of labour law, social protection, and public accounting. Drawing on Census of India data, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), reports of the International Labour Organization (ILO), UNICEF, and the U.S. Department of Labor, together with peer-reviewed literature published up to 2024, the study maps the magnitude, sectoral concentration, and state-wise distribution of child labour and informal employment in India. It further analyses the structural drivers of economic exploitation poverty, caste and gender disadvantage, seasonal migration, debt bondage, and the fragmentation of production into small, unregulated units and evaluates the legal and policy architecture built to address them, including the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 (amended 2016), the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, and the Code on Social Security, 2020. The paper presents original tables and charts summarising national and state-level data, and concludes with a set of policy recommendations centred on universal social security registration, stronger enforcement at the last mile, and the formalisation of informal enterprises without displacing the livelihoods that depend on them.
Keywords: Child labour, informal employment, unorganised sector, economic exploitation, India, Periodic Labour Force Survey, bonded labour, social protection.
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