Background:
Child labour in India is the practice where children are engaged in
Economic activities.

Objective:

To describe the job pattern of Child labourers in a rural Block
of West Bengal and to assess the socio-demographic characteristic of
child labourers under study.

Materials and Methods:

A Cross sectional Observational study was
conducted in Paharhati Block in the district of Burdwan, West Bengal
from December 2012 to February 2013 among children aged 5 to 14
years. Assuming 6.8% of the 5-14 years population engaged in child
labour (9), the estimated study population would be about 2080. About
5% of this estimated study population i.e. 104 would be involved in the
study. With design effect of 2, the number would be 208 and was
selected through 30 cluster sampling and about 7 child labourers per
cluster were gathered by ?Snowball? technique for data collection.
predesigned pretested questionnaire used as study tool. Data was
compiled and analyzed by SPSS 16.0 and presented in tables as
proportions.

Results:

The study done on 210 participants revealed that Mean age of
participants was 12 years. Male participants 72.4% and Female 27.6% . 47.6% had addictions to different tobacco substances and 17.6% were engaged in regular Gambling.

Conclusion:

A good number of child labourers are in the
hazardous and dangerous industries and they are addicted to tobacco substances. Proper legislation , imposition of penalties can not only solve problems. Government, NGO s and common people
should work jointly for permanent solution.