Child labor should cause outrage in India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's middle class must refuse to be waited on by child servants and find a sense of "moral indignation" over child labor, the head of the government's new child rights body said on Tuesday.

Until then, almost every aspect of Indian society will continue to depend on the exploitation of child labor, Shantha Sinha, chairwoman of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, told reporters at its first press conference.

"We should recognize that every aspect of our lives is integral to a child's exploitation," she said at the commission's office in New Delhi, capital of the country which has the world's largest number of child laborers.

"We couldn't be sitting in this room if a child did not work in making the bricks. We couldn't now have a tea party after the meeting if a child did not work in making the wheat and making the rice and making the vegetables.

"The exploitation and vulnerability and drudgery of the child is so integral to our well-being."

There are more than 12 million children under the age of 14 working in India according to the last census, supplying cheap, pliant -- and illegal -- labor in restaurants, fields, factories and private homes. But middle class people employ more of India's child laborers than any other group, often as servants in their homes, said Sinha. They are deluding themselves into thinking they are doing good by giving jobs to children from destitute backgrounds.

"They really think giving leftover food, second-hand clothes and allowing them to see the TV, that you're taking care of children, but there is a double standard because you don't take care of your own children like that," she said.

One of the child rights commission's first missions will be to try and create a sense of moral outrage over child labor which it says is widely lacking in India.

"Don't attend functions when you see children are working there -- raise your voice, don't feel shy saying: 'It's wrong for a child to be working,"' she said.

"I think we need to have the courage of convictions to say, 'No'."