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Why Vidarbha’s Children Are Leaving School for Fields and Kilns

Why Vidarbha’s Children Are Leaving School for Fields and Kilns
Why Vidarbha’s Children Are Leaving School for Fields and Kilns

Every harvest season across the districts of Vidarbha, a predictable transformation occurs. Children who should be sitting in classrooms instead find themselves in cotton fields, brick kilns and construction sites.


This pattern reflects a larger national crisis that has gripped India, where over 65.7 lakh children have been abandoned schools in the past five years. Within this grim statistic lies Vidarbha's specific tragedy, where tribal and agrarian households face such acute economic desperation that their children's labour has become not an exception but a survival strategy.


The regions of Yavatmal, Gadchiroli, Amravati and Chandrapur in Vidarbha present a landscape where generational poverty intersects with climate vulnerability, land scarcity and systemic institutional failure. Over 40 per cent of Maharashtra's Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups inhabit these eleven districts, living in conditions of acute deprivation.


For these communities, the decision to withdraw a child from school or allow them to combine education with labour is not made lightly. It reflects the collapse of alternatives and the weight of immediate survival needs.


The national trend of children leaving school to support family income is most visible and devastating in Vidarbha's agrarian economy. The region's small farming households typically own less than two hectares of land, generating marginal and unstable incomes.


When crop failures occur consecutively over multiple years, or when unexpected medical expenses or social obligations demand immediate cash, families view their children's earning capacity as an essential safety net.


Contractors and middlemen arrive in villages during these moments of acute distress, offering advance payments ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1.55 lakh. These payments appear substantial to families living month-to-month but initiate cycles of debt from which escape becomes nearly impossible.


Poverty and Migration: The Architecture of Child Labour in Vidarbha


The economic foundation underlying child labour in Vidarbha operates with mechanical precision.


Agricultural households dependent on cotton cultivation, sugarcane harvesting or daily wage labour structure their entire survival around seasonal work patterns.

Cotton dominates Vidarbha's agricultural landscape, but the region has gained national attention for high farmer suicide rates linked to crop losses and mounting debts. Within this context of agricultural failure and debt accumulation, children become active economic contributors.


A mother in Wardha articulated the calculation that millions of families in Vidarbha make regularly: "When work is there, we all must go. If the children do not go with us, we cannot work, because nobody will take care of them, and our earnings will fall short." This statement captures the mechanics that transform child labour from an isolated occurrence into a normalised family strategy.


The income from children's work is seldom substantial individually, but collectively it often determines whether a family crosses the threshold from hunger into basic sufficiency during lean periods.


Migration patterns compound this dynamic dramatically. Seasonal migration to sugarcane fields in western Maharashtra, brick kilns in neighbouring regions and construction sites across Vidarbha acts as a primary livelihood pathway for hundreds of thousands of rural families. Approximately 200,000 children migrate with their families annually to Maharashtra's sugarcane harvesting regions alone.


This migration typically begins in October or November and continues through the post-monsoon agricultural slack period, extending six to eight months. During this entire span, children's access to formal education collapses.

Families face a structured dilemma: remain in their village where immediate income disappears during the off-season, or migrate together and sacrifice months of schooling.


Many choose migration. Children who accompany their parents to work sites live in temporary structures lacking access to schools, sanitation facilities or medical care. They participate in labour suited only for adults, working eight to fourteen hours daily, depending on the season and sector.


The temporary hostels and bridge schools, theoretically designed to accommodate migrant workers' children, remain chronically underfunded, irregularly attended and inadequately staffed.


For children who remain in villages as their parents migrate, a different form of educational disruption unfolds. Left in the care of older siblings or extended family members, these children frequently abandon school due to household responsibilities, care work for younger siblings and the economic need to engage in local daily wage work.


Researchers studying enrolment patterns in Wardha district observed consistent drops in school attendance during sugarcane harvest months, with only approximately fifty per cent of registered students attending class during peak migration periods between November and March.


The geographic specifics of Vidarbha deepen these patterns. Districts such as Gadchiroli, containing over 1.34 lakh Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group members across 560 habitations, face additional destabilisation from mining projects and forest department restrictions.

Madia Gond communities, historically dependent on forest resources, now encounter systematic barriers to their traditional livelihoods.


Kolam women documented working as salgadi, tending sheep and goats for agricultural families, earn approximately Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 annually, while being permitted only two-day visits annually to see their children left in village care.


This combination of economic desperation and family separation creates conditions where generational patterns of child labour become embedded within tribal communities' survival strategies.



Daily Wage Work and Bonded Labour: Economic Entrenchment in Vidarbha


The informal labour markets into which Vidarbha's children enter operate through mechanisms that obscure exploitation beneath legitimising language.


Daily wage labour for children in road construction near Hinganghat offers wages as low as Rs 50 daily, often consuming months of schooling.

Cotton picking work compensates differently by geography and task. Artificial pollination work, which requires children's height and dexterity, pays approximately Rs 200 per person daily in Gujarat's fields, with Rs 50 deducted for transportation, leaving Rs 150 as actual earnings that may or may not reach the child.


The bonded labour system represents a more structured and intentional form of economic entrapment. Contractors deliberately target villages experiencing acute hardship.


They identify households struggling with agricultural failures, medical emergencies or social obligations like marriages. The advance payment offered initiates a calculated trap. Additional deductions accumulate for food, shelter, penalties for illness and charges imposed through contractors' manipulation of accounts kept entirely by the employer.


Interest rates on the initial advance frequently exceed 100 per cent annually, rendering the principal sum nearly impossible to repay through labour alone. This mechanism transforms individual family debt into intergenerational bondage.


Children enter this system explicitly or through their parents' arrangements. The mechanism perpetuates through several reinforcing factors. First, the isolation of work sites from monitoring systems means few reports reach authorities.


Second, families already in debt have reduced bargaining power to protest when children are asked to contribute labour. Third, the cultural normalisation of child work within agricultural and tribal communities means community members themselves do not perceive the practice as objectionable, further limiting willingness to report abuses.


Within Vidarbha itself, court records from Akola district spanning 2019 to 2023 reveal that despite numerous complaints regarding child labour, barely a handful resulted in convictions or significant penalties for employers.

A local activist involved in rescue drives in Chandrapur district explained the cyclical trap: "There is a lack of rehabilitation options for rescued children. Most are returned to families, where the cycle starts again. Without economic alternatives, families revert to sending them into labour." The rescued children, if documented at all, typically returned to the same conditions within months.


Infrastructure Collapse and Institutional Failure in Vidarbha


The educational system in Vidarbha offers insufficient counterweight to the economic forces pulling children into labour. Rural schools across the region lack basic infrastructure that would retain students and enable regular attendance.


Surveys by the National Sample Survey Office reveal that a high proportion of government schools in Chandrapur and Nagpur divisions lack separate toilets, especially for girls.

The shortages extend to teachers themselves. Individual teachers manage up to five different classes across multiple age groups. High student-to-teacher ratios at the secondary level, where ratios exceed 47 to 1, impede sustained learning and individual attention.


Dwindling state budgets for midday meals, scholarships and materials force families to absorb additional costs for school participation. When children are formally enrolled, sporadic attendance persists, and learning outcomes remain poor. These infrastructural and pedagogical deficiencies undermine the educational system's capacity to compete with the immediate economic necessity that labour provides.


Several parents in Vidarbha cited limited faith in educational quality or utility as reasons for prioritising work. One cotton farm worker in Amravati stated plainly: "Children sit in class, but there are no teachers, or they are teaching something that will not help us. It is better they learn some real skills by working." This parental calculation, while reflecting genuine infrastructure gaps, simultaneously legitimises the withdrawal of children from school.

The enforcement of child labour prohibitions fails systematically across Vidarbha.


Responsibility for monitoring child labour remains distributed among multiple government agencies, including the Labour Department, Social Welfare Department and village panchayat bodies. This fragmentation creates surveillance gaps. Labour inspection staff is chronically limited, with each inspector responsible for hundreds of establishments, rendering sustained enforcement impossible. Raids and rescue operations occur sporadically, typically only after complaints from non-governmental organisations rather than through systematic inspections.

Birth registration, an initial administrative step in proving underage employment, remains frequently incomplete in rural Vidarbha, complicating efforts to confirm children's ages during raids and subsequent prosecutions. Employer penalties, when imposed, typically remain low and are paid without admission of guilt.


The absence of meaningful consequences reduces deterrence. Interviewed officials from Nagpur's Labour Department expressed frustration over insufficient staffing, logistical barriers and limited follow-up with rescued children as structural constraints that prevent effective enforcement.


The Work Reality: Hazardous Conditions and Normalised Exploitation


The actual conditions in which Vidarbha's children labour range across multiple sectors, each presenting specific hazards. In brick kilns, children comprise 65 to 80 per cent of the workforce for those aged five to fourteen, working nine hours daily during the summer months and seven hours during the winter.


Children over fourteen work 12 hours in summer and 10 hours in winter. The work environment involves exposure to silicate, lead and carbon monoxide.

Children suffer burns from proximity to furnaces, respiratory problems from brick dust and ash, heat exhaustion from working beneath intense solar radiation, and injuries from carrying excessive loads across uneven terrain.


In cotton fields, children perform pollination work requiring them to transfer pollen manually from male to female flower plants repeatedly throughout the day.


The height of cotton plants, averaging four feet, makes children physically optimal for this task, as it eliminates the need for adults to bend. As they reach adolescence and grow taller, their utility for this specific task diminishes, after which their labour is redirected to other agricultural activities, or they age out of work entirely. The psychological and developmental implications of bodies being selected and discarded based on labour efficiency remain largely undocumented in field studies.


In construction sites, children live in temporary structures called jhuggis made of corrugated tin or brick mortar. During fieldwork observations, entire housing areas were destroyed and relocated due to expanding construction, forcing families to spend their rest days rebuilding shelters. Children worked carrying bricks, mixing sand and assisting with water provision for twelve to fourteen hours daily.


Educational access disappeared completely. One rescued child recounted to outreach workers: "I went with my mother and father to the construction site near Nagpur. We stayed in a hut near the area. I carried bricks, mixed sand and helped with water. I could not go to school for ten months."


Domestic work, particularly for girls, represents an invisible form of child labour within Vidarbha's households and neighbouring urban centres. Girls assume primary responsibility for household chores, including cooking, cleaning, laundry and childcare. When parents work away from home, older girls remain behind to manage the household, sacrificing schooling. Teacher reports from rural Wardha and Buldhana document a marked preference for keeping older girls out of school to attend domestic responsibilities.


This unpaid labour, occurring within private household settings, remains largely unmonitored and unacknowledged in official statistics, yet it represents a substantial proportion of child labour within the region.


The seasonal rhythm of Vidarbha's agricultural economy structures child labour through predictable cycles. Post-monsoon periods from October through November bring sugarcane harvest labour demands. Cotton cultivation requires intensive labour during two distinct periods: September through October for artificial pollination work and December through February for harvest activities. These labour-intensive periods directly conflict with school calendars, creating a structural mismatch that research has shown increases dropout rates by 5.3 to 6.6 percentage points in India specifically.


Teachers in the rural Wardha district observed that attendance rates collapsed during peak migration and harvest periods. Only half of the registered students appeared for class during November through March. When examining learning outcomes, researchers found that children who partially engaged in both schooling and labour typically fell behind in academic performance. The cumulative effect of interrupted education means that children who survive the years of combined work and school emerge with truncated educational achievement, limiting their future employment prospects to the same informal labour sectors their parents occupied.


Gender disparities intensify during seasonal labour periods. Girls face dual pressures: they participate in agricultural work and wage labour while simultaneously managing household responsibilities.


The preference for male labour in some sectors means girls receive lower wages for equivalent work, creating household calculations that girls' labour provides lower financial returns, thus making schooling investment for girls appear less essential.

This gendered economic logic perpetuates across generations, with daughters of labourers systematically withdrawn from school at higher rates than sons.


Normalisation and Generational Entrenchment


Cultural attitudes within Vidarbha's agrarian and tribal communities regarding child labour shape how exploitation persists.


In traditional and tribal households, communal work involves all able members, with children introduced to farming or family crafts at a young age.

This introduction to productive labour is conceptualised within family narratives as training and cultural transmission rather than exploitation. Conversations with residents in tribal pockets of Melghat and Gadchiroli revealed remarks such as: "My son began helping us in the fields much before he turned ten. This is how we have always managed our land. School is good, but work comes first when food is short."


Employers deliberately exploit these cultural frameworks. Interviews with brick kiln owners in Amravati's outskirts revealed consistent rationales: "We don't force anyone. These families send their children, and it helps them earn more. In our view, this is not abuse." This reframing of child labour asa voluntary mutual arrangement obscures the structural economic coercion operating beneath parental consent.


Caste hierarchies embedded within Vidarbha's social structure further perpetuate exploitation. Historical patterns show bonded labour systems originating from feudal structures where debt obligation passed from fathers to sons across generations.


Contemporary bonded labour, despite legal abolition in 1976, operates through these same social pathways. Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, including Kolam, Katkari and Madia Gond communities, face layered marginalisation. First, they lack productive assets. Second, they encounter discrimination in access to credit and formal employment.


Third, historical debt relationships embedded within social structures constrain their negotiating position. Children born into these families inherit not only poverty but also predetermined labour roles.


The transformation of child labour into a normalised family coping mechanism operates most effectively when communities cease perceiving it as exceptional. Intergenerational normalisation means that parents who laboured as children themselves frequently exhibit reduced resistance to their own children's labour.


A social worker based in Akola described this pattern: "We have found the same children doing similar work year after year. Some have been rescued more than once. Until something deeply changes in their daily lives, these children return to the same jobs."


The persistence of child labour in Vidarbha emerges not from individual family failures or parental indifference but from the collision of structural economic desperation with institutional inadequacy and systemic social hierarchies.

Rural poverty in Vidarbha remains severe, compounded by frequent droughts, fluctuating agricultural yields and chronic rural indebtedness. The region's small farmers, owning marginal landholdings insufficient for viable income, encounter crop failures that accumulate into insurmountable debt within one to three years.


Into this vulnerability, labour contractors and middlemen insert themselves strategically, offering advance payments that initiate bonded arrangements. Simultaneously, the educational infrastructure that might provide alternative pathways remains starved of investment.


Schools operate with insufficient teachers, inadequate facilities and learning outcomes that fail to convince impoverished families that schooling offers value comparable to immediate labour income. The enforcement apparatus designed to protect children remains fragmented, under-resourced and reactive rather than systematic.


Children in Vidarbha's tribal and agrarian households continue their daily journeys not to classrooms but to fields, kilns, construction sites and domestic work settings. This represents not an anomaly within India's broader education crisis but rather a concentrated manifestation of patterns visible across the country where 30 lakh adolescent girls have abandoned school in recent years.


The specific Vidarbha angle reflects both the region's agrarian dependence and the concentrated presence of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups whose marginalisation predates and exceeds the contemporary child labour crisis.


The cycle perpetuates because the conditions producing it remain fundamentally unaltered. Unless the economic desperation of rural households changes, unless the debt traps initiated by labour contractors are dismantled, unless schools transform into institutions offering genuine value and accessibility, and unless enforcement mechanisms acquire the resources and coordination necessary for systematic oversight, children in Vidarbha will continue to exchange their futures for their families' immediate survival.



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The NewsDirt is a trusted source for authentic, ground-level journalism, highlighting the daily struggles, public issues, history, and local stories from Vidarbha’s cities, towns, and villages. Committed to amplifying voices often ignored by mainstream media, we bring you reliable, factual, and impactful reporting from Vidarbha’s grassroots.

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