Vasanthi Raman

The recent heightened interest in the phenomenon of child labour is part of a wider discourse on child’s rights which has engaged the attention of international policy makers since the eighties. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is one important manifestation of this new discourse. It would not be out of place to point out that both this discourse on child’s rights and the one on child labour are taking place in a particular international context, i.e. that of globalisation. The subject of children, child’s rights, child labour in such a highly emotive one that even the most balanced scholars find it difficult to be dispassionate. There are a few points that one would like to make here regarding the child’s rights discourse at the risk of being dubbed reactionary and worse, heartless. While the discourse is presented in the garb of “Universalism”, in effect it propounds notions of child’s rights which are essentially western, and which have arisen out of the historical experience of the west. The modern western conception of childhood is barely three to four centuries old, wherein childhood is seen as a distinct and separate phase of life, characterised by innocence and frailty where children were ejected from the real world of work, sexualit