D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 4, July/August 2002, p. 18-19)

Ethical trading is being pushed by NGOs to enforce better social and environmental standards in the industries of the South. One example is the Rugmark campaign which labels carpets which are produced without child labour in North India’s factories. Rugmark is seeking to break the vicious circle of poverty and forced labour by enlightenment and education.

"Education is good. But many of our children also have to support their families. They can easily work a few hours a day. Children should go to school and work with the family, weave carpets and support the family. Play is not the most important thing. There’s mostly no time for it. If the children don’t help out, how can we feed the family and live our daily lives? Education is certainly good, but without income?"

Medar is 53 and the father of five. He earns a living by weaving carpets and doing small-scale farming at an isolated village in Varanasi Province, in North India. He is not alone in his opinion on school and work for children. In the sub-continent’s ‘carpet belt’, where even the smallest huts have looms on which the finely-woven, beautiful products are made for affluent customers in Europe, many children must help with hand-knotting carpets from an early age. Poverty forces their parents to rob the boys and girls of their childhood. In this mostly barren area, knotting carpets is almost the only source of income. What little farming is done is a sideline. There is no industry and no trade worth mentioning. But even with their weaving some families earn at most only a few hundred rupees per month, equivalent to 5-10 euros. Sometimes, but seldom, they make 15-20 euros.

Many of them therefore borrow small sums of money - mostly from unscrupulous loan sharks and loom owners who demand huge interest, sometimes at an annual rate of up to 200 per cent. Because the families cannot pay off their debts they send their children to the money lenders as loan workers - a modern form of debt bondage. The children are never able to work off the loans. None of them receives the state minimum wage of 65 rupees (about 1.5 euros) per day. Some, like 12 year-old Bobalu, whose father loaned him to a carpet weaver, get no money at all but blows instead. The children must work on the looms for up to 10 or 12 hours a day in cramped, stuffy huts without enough to eat or drink. They have no bed. They sleep on the floor next to their looms.

Child labour in India

Forced or bonded labour is nothing out of the ordinary in Indian society, in which 7 per cent of the population lives in debt bondage and slave-like conditions. True, Article 23 of the Indian Constitution bans forced labour, and there is also a law against child labour. Violations are subject to heavy punishment ranging from a fine of 20,000 rupees (almost 500 euros) to up to six months in prison. But there are few systematic checks in the isolated villages of North India. And officials who find child workers at a manufacturer’s premises often turn a blind eye to them in return for a bribe. That, too, is not unusual in a country where corruption is widespread.

Despite that, the Rugmark organisation is taking up the fight against illegal child labour in the Indian carpet belt. The global non-profit body was founded jointly by carpet exporters and NGOs in Europe and the USA in 1994 in response to declining orders for carpets from industrialised nations and growing criticism by potential customers of the conditions in the North Indian carpet-making region. In Germany, the NGOs and aid agencies Bread for the World, Misereror, terre des hommes and Christian Aid support the campaign. UNICEF was also substantially involved in the founding of Rugmark. The organisation’s principle is simple: a Rugmark licensee must not illegally employ child workers younger than 14. For customers in the North, the Rugmark label provides the best possible assurance that a carpet was made free of child labour. It guarantees random and stringent monitoring of carpet looms by Rugmark inspectors. The label also verifies that a portion of the price of a carpet is contributed to the rehabilitation and education of former child weavers. Rugmark has developed in recent years into a successful example of ethical trade in India. No less than 25 per cent of all looms in the country now work under the organisation’s conditions. In Nepal, where Rugmark has been especially active, the figure is 60 per cent. A total of 2.4 million carpets with the Rugmark label, made in India, Pakistan and Nepal, was sold in Germany last year. Major German department store chains, such as Karstadt, have included Rugmark label carpets in their range.The Rugmark organisation is well aware of the link between poverty and child labour. To break this vicious circle it implements social and educational programmes and establishes schools for former child weavers and for carpet-making families and their children in general. The programmes are financed by sponsors and a 1 per cent levy on importers of carpets with the Rugmark label. Despite the pressing need in the affected Indian regions, the system can show successes. Mirzapur, about 12 miles from Gopiganj, the seat of the local Rugmark office on the opposite side of the River Ganges, is a good example. Rugmark opened a primary school here in Vijaypur, which now has 172 pupils - 39 boys and, astoundingly, 83 girls. They are all very keen to attend the school, although they have to get used to discipline and regular lessons in a very short time.

Most the parents therefore were happy about the new offer. "It’s incredible how the people have made an effort for the school," says D. K. Singh, Rugmark coordinator for social affairs and rehabilitation. "Many of them helped in renovating the building - totally without pay. To finally have a school was really very important for them." Support also came from Rajah Anil Pratapsingh, the former king of the province, who is still a big landowner. Singh said he made the building available for a "really small rent" of 2,000 rupees per month (almost 50 euros) including extras such as water and taxes. Many parents in Mirzapur are now convinced that it is better to send their children to school than to work. The fact that in Rugmark schools everything from uniforms, books and learning aids to fruit and biscuits in the lunch break is provided free of charge makes this decision easier.

Illegal child labour declining

Rugmark also puts its faith in carpet manufacturers listening to reason. When the inspectors who make daily random checks of Rugmark licensees in the isolated villages find under-age children making carpets they try to convince the manufacturer that it is better to release the boys and send them to the Rugmark rehabilitation and training centre in Balashrya. "Some owners resist," says Sanjeev Mishra, the centre’s manager, "but others are clever and cooperate with us. They know that if they continue to employ the children and one day some conscientious government inspectors come by they will face tough punishment." In addition, exporters of Rugmark label carpets who condone child labour among them lose their licences immediately. But the organisation continues to cooperate with manufacturers who show understanding and send children for training in Balashrya. At the same time, the inspectors differentiate between bonded labour, which they do not tolerate, and so-called family labour, meaning the children of carpet-making families helping out occasionally. Rugmark accepts this kind of help so long as the children are also sent to school regularly. The organisation knows only too well how greatly poor families depend upon the support of their children. From January to April this year its inspectors’ random checks found only five cases of illegal child labour in the region. "The number of cases is certainly declining," says Manish. "Most of the manufacturers who work for Rugmark now know that we don’t allow that."

Moreover, Rugmark seeks to convey to all who live from hand-weaving carpets that only a good education for their children will enable a better future for the whole family. A total of 70 boys, all former child workers, is now living at the Balashrya rehabilitation centre. Besides normal school lessons they are also given vocational training. Whatever the children want to learn to be - a carpenter, a painter and decorator or a tailor - they can choose for themselves. For instance, 14 year-old Wimal Kumar is working on a wooden bulletin board for a Rugmark primary school in neighbouring Bhadohi. At some time, the boy says, he will return to his home village and open a joiner’s workshop. "I want to make really beautiful furniture."

Even carpet knotting is taught at the Balashrya centre. "But that’s a normal subject here, like all others," says Mishra. While others tailor, do carpentry or paint, the boys who wish to can practice the art of weaving for 30 minutes every day. The looms are set up in the fresh air in a bright and open shelter. There are no stuffy and cramped conditions here. The instructors pay strict attention to quality and craft skills. Mishra says: "We are not against the carpet industry, because that is what the people in this area live from. And, of course, we shall also need good weavers in the future. The boys who want to be a carpet knotter later on should get proper training with us."

But Raj Kumar, 17, a former child weaver, decided years ago to become a tailor and is now the leading model for the boys of Balashrya. Equipped with a sewing machine, given to him when he left the rehabilitation centre, he set up a tailor’s shop near his home village. After brief start-up difficulties the shop is now flourishing. Raj hired an assistant and bought a second sewing machine. The young man who always has a friendly smile has orders enough. After all, he offers for example well-fitting shirts for the equivalent of only one euro. That is bespoke tailoring which even the villagers can afford.

Raj can also support his family with the income from his business. Looking back, that appears to be a minor sensation. For the boy came from a very poor family. His father is mentally handicapped and could hardly provide for Raj and his four brothers and sisters. That is why Raj, too, was once forced to work for an outside carpet manufacturer. "I don’t know what I would have become if I had not gone to Balashrya," he says now.

Slow change

Despite such successes, combating illegal child labour in the Indian carpet belt still faces a great number of obstacles. "Awareness of injustice is building up only slowly in Indian society," says B. L. Chandra, Managing Director of Rugmark Foundation India, based in Delhi. A retired manager of the State Bank of India, he has worked with Rugmark for two years. He is not alone in seeing the brown-beige Rugmark label being restricted to carpets for export as a shortcoming. "It would be desirable, of course, to sell them in India as well, such as in big cities like Delhi," he says. Consciousness of the problem of child labour is still not so marked in India as it is in Europe. Chandra also knows why. "The people in Europe do not have such immense socio-economic problems as we in India. The preconditions for more humane working conditions and the abolition of bonded labour and child labour are development and better economic conditions for all."

Chandra adds that only if several social groups, including trade unions and the media, come out together against the child labour in the carpet belt will combating it be generally successful. For Rugmark’s engagement has its limits. The organisation’s inspectors can monitor and take action against child labour only among their own ranks of licensed manufacturers. They have no competence over outside exporters. They remain powerless against child labour in non-Rugmark weaving businesses. That is why Chandra has a vision. "We cannot expect every carpet producer to join the Rugmark label programme, but we wish that the same strict rules applied everywhere." Ensuring that is also up to the consumers in Europe - in that when they buy a carpet they look at least as keenly at the ethic involved as they do at its price.