Brass industry

According to the researcher Burra Neera, about 40,000-45,000 children are employed in the brass industry in India. Children in the brass industry are employed in different sectors. Moulding is one of the activities, which is very hazardous and dangerous both to adults and children. More than 15000 children are employed in this sector. If the child is a new recruit, he is given the work of rotating the wheel that fans the underground furnace. Other children in the moulding section must heat the oblong ingot on top of the furnace, break it into small pieces with a hammer and then melt the required amount of brass. When the molten brass is ready, they have to pass the graphite crucible with the raw material to an adult worker holding it with long tongs. Sometimes they themselves have to pour the brass into the moulds and replace the crucible into the furnace. At times, children have to rotate the fan, remove the crucible and replace it in the furnace. They also may be asked to grind a hot black mixture into a fine powder with their hands and help the adult worker to remove the hot moulded metal from the moulds. These activities have to be done continuously and children in the moulding section would always be engaged in one or other of these activities. They may not receive any breaks in a ten-hour working day, even though a slight distraction or lapse of concentration may cause the child life-long injuries. The temperature in the furnace is about 1100 centigrade. If a drop of molten metal falls on the child’s foot, it will create an immediate hole.

Neera observes in her study that the life span of children employed in the brass industry is quite brief. During her fieldwork she visited about 600 box furnace workshops, and noticed that all moulders were less than 30 years of age. She was told that children who work in such workshops either do not survive as adults or become too ill to work. Tuberculosis seems to be an unavoidable consequence for child labourers in the brass industry.

Even though these children work sacrificing their own lives for the brass industrialists, what they get in return is very little. In her research Burra Neera noticed that no child under 14 was paid more than 200 rupees per month, irrespective of the type and duration of the work