Centre for National Resource Centre on Child Labour

Child Labour occupies a very high place in the agenda of Research, Training and related activities of the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute. Towards contributing to the on-going efforts of prevention and elimination of child labour in the country, ever since its inception, the NRCCL has been focusing in the areas of Research, Training, Evaluation, Technical Support, Advocacy, Documentation, Publication and Dissemination.

Research activities have endeavoured to bridge the existing and the Centre’s knowledge gaps on various aspects of child labour. The focus of research has been to explore the unexplored issues and to assess the magnitude, enforcement of legislation, impact of state and nonstate interventions, living and working conditions, occupational health hazards, etc. The methodology adopted in these studies includes quantitative survey methods, participatory research methods and case studies using a range of research tools.

Imparting training is one of the activities of NRCCL with the objective to develop capabilities of various target groups towards progressive elimination of child labour in India. NRCCL has been conducting a number of Sensitisation programmes, Capacity Building programmes, Orientation programmes, Training of Trainers programmes and Awareness Generation Programmes. The training programmes form a part of the Centre’s endeavour to create a large group of trainees from different geographical regions. The uniqueness of these programmes is that every programme is meticulously designed to meet the training needs of each target group. A common feature of all these programmes is that a special emphasis is placed on the sensitization of trainees on the issue of child labour so as to induce in them attitudinal changes, thus enabling them to become change agents. Participants for these programmes are drawn from different Government Departments and Organizations including Central Board of Workers’ Education, Labour, Social Welfare, Social Justice and Empowerment, Health, Rural Development, Women Development and Child Welfare, Factories, Education, Cooperatives, Home, Revenue. The other target groups are the Research Scholars, representatives of Media, Employers’ Organisations, Trade Unions, Non-Governmental Organizations, Rural Workers’ Organisations, parents of Child Labour, Employers, Panchayati Raj Institutions (Local Governing Bodies), Academic and Training Institutions, Students of Social Work, Teachers’ Associations.

NRCCL makes special efforts to hold various in-house, state-level and national seminars on various themes with the objective of sharing knowledge and information and to decide on the modalities and course of action for dealing with specific issues relating to child labour. The outcomes of these seminars have resulted in evolving innovative strategies, programmes and actions in different parts of the country.

Besides, the Seminars and Workshops and the publication activity of the NRCCL is used as a tool of dissemination of information on different aspects of child labour especially in the context of information on the issue of child labour growing exponentially. The various components of this activity include Systematic Collection of Relevant Literature, Classification of Collated Information, Periodical Dissemination, Collection & Documentation of AudioVisuals and Developing Audio-Visuals.

In order to multiply its efforts towards prevention and elimination of child labour, technical support has been provided to various organisations and Institutions and Individual Scholars to conduct research projects, action programmes, evaluation, to carry out advocacy and campaign against child labour practice, to conduct child labour survey, in designing curriculum, in developing child labour monitoring systems and in conducting seminars and workshops.

Besides collaborating with different social partners, the Centre has also established networking with NGOs, Academicians, Individual Activists, Employers’ Organisations, Lawyers, Association, Association of Pediatricians, State Labour Institutions, Administrative Training Institutes, State Institutes of Rural Development, University Departments, UN and other International Agencies towards acceleration of the process of progressive Elimination of Child Labour.

Research Advisory Group Members

The Centre is having the following distinguished persons as its RAG members for seeking guidance, orientation and direction for carrying out its various activities: