Child labor and the Indian carpet industry
In the late 1970s and the early 1980’s, for a variety of reasons, India witnessed a huge jump in the demand for hand-knotted carpets. Because carpet weaving is highly labor-intensive, there was a corresponding large increase in the need for and employment of weavers. This surge in demand also led to an unfortunate increase in the use of children, working for wages outside the family environment.
The use of child labor is, as you are aware, a long-standing practice in a range of industries in developing countries. However, the number of children employed in carpet weaving was miniscule compared to the total number of adult workers in the industry. The industry as well as the Indian Government have conscientiously addressed the problem of child labor. Nevertheless,carpet manufacturers, particularly in India and its neighbouring countries,have been singled out by a number of NGOs for the use of exploitative child labor, and this has badly affected the image of the Indian hand-made carpet industry. It is noteworthy that the NGOs focussed only on the export industries and ignored the much bigger problem that existed in industries such as bricks, glass and fireworks. But that is not the subject of our deliberations today.
In 1986, the Indian Parliament passed The “Child Labor (Prohibition & Regulation) Act,” which prohibited the use of children under the age 14 in carpet weaving except on the looms of their parents or brothers or sisters. The enactment of this legislation, combined with the increase in the number of child workers in the carpet industry and severe negative publicity, forced Obeetee to focus on the child labor problem. As a result, we as a company decided to ensure that no illegal child labor would be used in the production of our carpets.
Obeetee actions to ensure child labor free production
Our decision was not easy to implement because carpets in India – and, for that matter, in most countries -- are not, as some might think, produced in factories. The carpet industry in India is, in fact, a cottage industry. Independent loom-owners in thousands of villages weave in or near their homes. Obeetee carpets are woven on more than 4000 looms in about 1000 villages. Continuous monitoring of looms to ensure childfree weaving of carpets is simply not possible. Combating child labor is further complicated by the fact that in rural India child labor is often not considered an evil but instead a socio-economic reality.
To implement Obeetee’s policy to eliminate the use of child labor in the production of its carpets, we adopted the following measures:
· We launched a major campaign to create awareness about child labor in villages where our carpets are woven. Our managers went from village to village informing the loom-owners of the main provisions of the new Child Labor Act, emphasizing its severe penalties and our determination not to buy carpets made on looms on which child labor was illegally employed.
· We sought and obtained written assurances from loom-owners that they would not employ children. For each production order we issued,loom-owners were required to sign a printed form that explained the provisions of the law and committed them not employ children below the age of 15 years. Although the Indian law prohibits employment of children below the age of 14, birth certificate and other records are usually not available in rural India and age is often judged from physical appearance. To avoid doubts and disputes with the loom owner about the age of a weaver, Obeetee decided that only weavers above the age of 15 could be employed on looms producing its carpets.
· We informed all loom-owners in writing that, following a grace period of six months, any loom-owner found engaging children below the age of 15 in the weaving of our carpets would be blacklisted by our company.
· We increased wages significantly as an incentive to loom-owners to weave Obeetee carpets without employing child labor.
· Perhaps most importantly, we instituted a detailed and comprehensive system for monitoring looms. The main elements of this system are as follows:
1. Obeetee manages its carpet weaving through a network of 21 production depots spread over the entire weaving area. Loom-owners interact directly with Obeetee executives stationed at the depots in rural areas. Also the company employs two to four loom inspectors at each of these 21 depots.
2. The loom inspectors inspect each loom under a depot’s jurisdiction at least once in 15 days and report their findings to the Obeetee manager in charge of the depot. In addition, these depot executives conduct their own surprise checks of the looms to verify the reports of the loom inspectors.
3. The depot Managers are required to provide a monthly certificate to the management that no children are illegally employed on the weaving of the company’s carpets.
4. We created a large database to help in the monitoring of all looms. The names, ages and addresses of the weavers were recorded and loom owners were required to inform the management if they employ any new weavers. The names, ages, and photographs of loom owner’s children were also recorded so that hired child labor could not be passed off by a deceitful loom-owner as his children. All inspections carried out by Obeetee use the information from this database to check for any new employment of weavers by a loom owner.
5. We created a Child Labor Cell, consisting of other Obeetee executives, to make further surprise inspections of the looms. They worked full time on this job and were provided vehicles to reach far-flung areas.These Executives are based at the headquarters of the Company and report to the Vice President for Production.
6. Each and every loom on which Obeeetee carpets are woven is surprise checked once in 60 days by the Child Labor cell. The area and the looms to be inspected by each executive are determined by a computer programme in the morning on each working day so loom inspectors at a deport are not aware of which looms will be checked on a particular day.
7. All loom-owners were required to register with the Carpet Export Promotion Council, an organisation sponsored by the Government of India, in order for Obeetee to provide its customers with the Registration Number of the loom for each carpet purchased by a customer. In this way, a customer could trace the loom where any given carpet is woven and, if the customer so wanted, to launch an independent inspection concerning the loom-owners use of child labor.
Because of the very huge weaving area in which Obeetee carpets are woven – roughly 100,000 square miles -- it is not practically possible for Obeetee either to ensure the welfare of each child worker removed from our looms or to ensure that he does not go to another carpet loom -- or to worse forms of employment. Given this reality, Obeetee began making substantial contributions to the child welfare fund of the Carpet Export Promotion Council of India (CEPC) and to the Children Emancipation Society, a leading NGO. Both these organisations run significant child welfare programmes,including schools that provide free education, monthly stipends, mid-day meals,vocational training, and health care to children.
Adopting these measures and achieving our objective proved extremely difficult. Loom-owners in particular refused to believe that such a vast area could actually be monitored successfully. To begin with even the Company employees thought that we were trying to achieve the impossible. In addition, the often prevailing sentiment that providing any employment for children was good, and not bad, was hard to overcome.
During the initial period after instituting our policies, loom owners using child labor were still very reluctant to remove children. It was only after we started physically removing partially woven carpets from the looms of adamant loom-owners that we started to achieve the desired results.
Over the months and years that followed, Obeetee developed a reputation for effectively combating child labor. Our loom inspectors, Managers in-charge of our depots, and executives from our Child Labor Cell have rigorously continued their inspections. As a result, we have not found a single case of illegal child labor working on our looms for several years.
Labelling and certification initiatives
Because of negative publicity about the Indian carpet industry’s employing illegal child labor, a demand was created in some importing countries for labelling that could certify “child labor-free” carpets. Some NGOs contended that a private labelling initiative was necessary because industry couldn’t and wouldn’t police itself and government officials were either inefficient or incapable. While the objectives of these NGOs were honorable, their initiatives have lacked the requisite monitoring infrastructure to certify with any degree of certainty that carpets are not made with child labor. “Rugmark” is the most well known example of these initiatives..
Although the Rugmark Foundation has recently backtracked on its earlier claim that use of the Rugmark label “guarantees” that child labor is not employed in the production of a carpet, the label continues for all practical purposes to be publicised in the United States and Europe as just such a guarantee. This is disingenuous – and, more importantly, potentially disastrous -- for the already damaged credibility of the Indian carpet industry, because an aggressive and observant media will continue to uncover instances in which child labor has been used to produce carpets carrying the Rugmark label.
As an alternative to Rugmark, the CEPC launched the more realistic “Kaleen” labelling programme. The “Kaleen” initiative does not claim to guarantee a childfree carpet. Instead, it represents the commitment of the Indian carpet industry to eradicate child labor and to promote welfare measures for the education and rehabilitation of children taken out of carpet weaving.
The major feature of the Kaleen scheme is a loom monitoring system based on random inspections by an independent agency. Other aspects of its programme include registration of all carpets looms and the promulgation of a Code of Conduct requiring that no illegal child labor be used in the manufacturing of carpets. There are severe penal provisions for breach of the Code of Conduct.
In addition, any CEPC member who uses the Kaleen labels is required to make a contribution of a quarter percent of the sales value of its carpets. This contribution is made to the CEPC’s Child Welfare Fund, which funds the operation of schools I mentioned previously.
In Obeetee’s view, labelling is not the answer to child labor in the carpet industry – and neither is a boycott or ban on the import of carpets that do not carry Rugmark or other labels that “guarantee” child labor-free carpets. Such a ban or boycott would serve only to reduce production of carpets in countries of origin and, in effect, throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the experience in the Bangladesh garment industry has shown, boycotts can have the unintended effect of channelling children to other, much worse forms of employment. Viable alternatives and incentives must be created for children to be taken off the looms and other activities where the use of child labor is prevalent. And labelling requirements such as the “Rugmark” should never be allowed to become the only passport for entry of carpets to the United States and other western countries.
I would like to reiterate the process that Obeetee used to achieve the objective of child labor-free production of carpets:
1. Courageous, Determined, Strong and foresighted leadership from the top management of Obeetee that there must be no illegal employment of children within the Company.
2. Convincing and motivating all our associates, within Obeetee and in the villages that our policy was correct.
3. Establishing our own systems of independent control and regular inspection to ensure compliance.
4. Disassociating Obeetee from instant, but questionable and expedient solutions such as Rugmark.
5. Our not giving way, by accepting orders from some of the big buying houses, particularly in Germany who subscribed to phoney solutions, which could later on be discredited.
6. Being aware that there are never any short cuts, or instant solutions to solving such a massive problem such as existed with child labor in the Carpet Industry.
V. R. Sharma
Vice Chairman
Obeetee Private Limited