Child labour is not when you have a newspaper round after school or when you work in the local supermarket tidying shelves for a few hours a week to earn a little pocket money. It is not when you mow the lawn or babysit for your neighbour every once in a while.
There are various official definitions of child labour. One is that child labour is when children under the age of 14 work full-time every day and with no time to go to school, to relax or to play. The range of work that they do is enormous. They might work as maids in rich people's houses, as soldiers in wars, or perhaps as prostitutes. They also work in the fields, care for cattle, tend younger children, work in restaurants or tea stalls, collect firewood, or beg in the streets. It is often very hard physical work.
Children are employed because they are cheaper to pay than grown-ups. Sometimes parents send their children away to work because they can no longer afford to feed them. Sometimes kids are kidnapped or stolen from their parents to work for other people.
India is the country in the world that has the most child workers. Depending on how one defines child labour – whether it is paid or not paid, and what the exact age limit is - India has between 20 and 50 million child workers. All of them work under conditions such as the ones described above.
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