India - Child labour widespread (2011)

NGOs estimate that 70,000 children from Nepal, Bangladesh, Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand are working in the private mines of Meghalaya. There is no official survey, but the government does not contradict the figures. As Indian officials struggled to deal with mounting international criticism over the safety and security of Commonwealth Game athletes, on 24 September new evidence emerged that showed children as young as seven were being used in the construction of game venues. In an interview with CNN, Harvard fellow and trafficking expert Siddharth Kara said that child labour was a widespread and well-known issue in New Delhi. Kara documented children aged seven, eight, nine and ten years old working alongside their families to get the construction completed, describing the conditions these children were forced to work in as “sub-human”. Kara said that in just a few days she reliably documented 32 cases of forced labour and 14 cases of child labour all for construction related to the Commonwealth Games.