Education as a pretext: Hidden faces of child labour in Nagaland

• KOHIMA — In Nagaland, traditional factory child labour might not be common due to a lack of large industries, but a different, more insidious form of child exploitation has emerged: the commercialisation of children as domestic helpers under the guise of providing education.
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• “We are employing a child as a domestic helper on the pretext of education,” the administrator of Child Helpline-Women and Child Development Control Room Nagaland, Neingutuonuo Kulnu, shared with Eastern Mirror on the eve of World Day against Child Labour.
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• At Child Helpline 1098 in Nagaland, out of the 1398 cases intervened since September 1, 2023, most of them have had to do with lost and found and missing children. The second is of abused children, including rape, sexual abuse, and physical abuse.

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• In the past, taking in a child as a domestic helper was a “good deed” providing care and meeting the needs of the child, but of late, “it has become a business”, she noted.
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• Citing a recent ‘background check’, Kulnu flagged an overwhelming number of instances of emotional abuse issues originating from domestic-helper situations.
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• While she expressed belief that everybody has been doing their part to prevent the issue of domestic helpers, Kulnu asserted that calls for a deeper understanding of the situation.
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• She pointed out that employing children below 14 years is prohibited by law. One deeply disturbing case involved a nine-year-old boy who died by suicide while staying with a guardian in Kohima.
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• Though he had been sent there for schooling, it emerged that he was the only son in his family and had attended school for only a few months. Despite receiving basic necessities like food and clothing, he lacked emotional support—a factor Kulnu identified as critical.
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• “The child doesn’t know how to articulate emotional needs or cope in such situations,” she said, underlining the need to view the issue beyond material provisions.
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• Many children flee these arrangements and are later found under "lost and found" cases. They often try to return to their homes after being overwhelmed by discomforts like unfamiliar food, language, and environment.
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• Adding to the complexity is the lack of awareness among parents. Families from rural areas are often drawn by idealised visions of cities like Kohima and Dimapur, believing their children will receive better opportunities. However, this often turns into a form of economic exploitation, with guardians paying monthly amounts to the child’s family while benefiting from unpaid labour.
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• Aside from domestic help, children in Nagaland are also found working in brick kilns, farms, hotels, auto workshops, shops, stone quarries, and rat-hole coal mines.
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• Per the 2011 Census, 11,062 children between the ages of five and 14 were engaged in labour in Nagaland. A survey conducted in Dimapur reported 264 domestic child workers in a single colony.
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• To address this issue, the Nagaland Legislative Assembly recently adopted the Nagaland Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Rules, 2024.
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• Globally, UNICEF reports that 160 million children were subjected to child labour as of early 2020, nearly half of whom are involved in hazardous work that threatens their health and development.
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• As Kulnu aptly put it, “When we talk about children, we are talking about building the future. We must understand that emotional needs are at risk, and that’s where we need to intervene.”