The Indian child labour behind our patio stones

Best known for its gemstones and jewellery trade, Rajasthan is also home to a far less glittering industry. The Indian state’s sandstone sector employs millions of people , thousands of whom are child workers, some as young as five. According to a report released today, 38% of the children surveyed in Rajasthan’s Kota and Bundi districts work in sandstone quarries. Uneducated for the most part and often trapped by debt, the region’s child workers earn as little as £1 per day and are exposed to constant dust, fumes and gas at work.

The study, which surveyed 100 households in the heart of India’s sandstone industry, reveals that most children are employed making cobblestones or chiselling stones. Sandstone quarries produce the raw material for products such as paving slabs and bricks, cobblestones and roofing materials.

“While the research focused on Kota and Bundi regions of Rajasthan, we believe that these findings are representative of problems across the sector,” says Kate Goldman, director of partnerships and philanthropy at children’s charity Unicef UK, which commissioned the report.

Describing child labour as a “huge problem” in India’s sandstone industry, Unicef is calling on the sector to urgently formalise its practices and procedures, and offer meaningful guarantees against dangerous child labour.

The report lays out an ambitious set of recommendations, including stronger children protection measures from all levels of the government as well as a voluntary sustainability standard within the sandstone industry.

Chris Harrop, group marketing director at Marshalls, a UK importer of Indian sandstone and funder of the research, insists that action should be taken immediately.

Top of his list is to establish an agreed set of management steps that buyers can put in place if and when instances of child labour are found. He also says importers should establish a due diligence process to determine which quarries their sandstone is coming from and to ascertain the risk of child labour. “While we can do lots in our supply chain ... the quarries next door have incidences of child labour going on. We can see it every time we visit,” he says.

In reality, however, the influence of foreign buyers and their consumers is limited. The vast bulk of Indian sandstone is destined for the domestic market, with only about 5-7% exported, according to Harrop. Of this only about one-fifth ends up in the UK.

“All the problems are in India and there’s where the solutions can be found,” he says, adding that a living wage for adult workers would help to avoid the poverty trap that pushes children into work.

The issue is persuading India’s sandstone operators to listen. Domestically, the usual levers for action are either weak or non-existent. Government pressure, for instance, is constrained by jurisdictional and capacity problems, the report finds. One priority concern is responsibility for child safety, which currently falls between the state’s department for child protection and the Ministry of Mines.

Indian consumers have so far shown little awareness and almost zero willingness to mobilise around the issue, while civil society groups are under-resourced.

The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a UK-based cross-sector group representing workers’ rights which has been working in the Indian sandstone sector for a number of years, insists that key players in the industry are now “stepping forward” to work with local NGOs and others to improve working conditions.

“ETI and our members will continue to support this locally-led work and other initiatives that are addressing child labour,” says Peter McAllister, director of the ETI, which counts Marshalls among its corporate participants.

Bimal Arora, chairperson of the Centre for Responsible Business, the New Delhi-based non-profit that carried out the on the ground research for the report, hopes that the findings will accelerate the pace of such initiatives. “The clear hope is that having documented [this issue] and brought it to light, there will be a need for a refocus in this particular sector,” he says.

A key imperative in his view is greater coordination between state agencies at a local, state and national level, led ideally by the Ministry of Mines. Stronger child protection measures at the state level are also required, as is capacity building for labour inspectors and education officers, he adds. As for the sandstone industry, Arora echoes ETI’s preference for a collaborative approach with civil society and government. He points to the success that dialogue processes have had in pushing forward increased standardisation in sectors such as electronics manufacturing and food processing in India.

Other recommendations in the report include the possibility of buyers helping jointly invest in better technologies for quarrying and ensuring that quarry owners provide adequate housing and healthcare facilities for their workers.

Welcome though such steps are, they won’t change the lot of children working in India’s sandstone quarries overnight. Any realistic chance of that happening will require quarry owners to start paying a living wage and government to start cracking down on those operators blatantly flouting the law.

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/oct/16/indian-child-labour-behind-patio-stones-sandstone-rajasthan