Could Lack of funding Justify Deprecating the Use of Policies and Strategies to Address Child Labour in Agricultural Pursuits?
In his second contribution to this discussion, Mr. Dick Tinsley maintains that the shortage of funds would make the use of appropriate policies and strategies ineffective in resolving the problem of child labour. However, we find this view untenable on several grounds. It is quite true that governments most concerned with child labour do not have sufficient financial resources to implement the policies required for the purpose.
However, in our previous contribution, we took ample account of this fact and suggested several ways of dealing with it:
- International military aid turned into defence aid against child labour; appropriate farming equipment, essential infra-structure, etc., which may be cheaper in monetary terms.
- Reductions in national defence budget.
- International assistance in appropriate resources listed therein.
- Moreover, we also recommended regional/local tactical implementation of the required policies, precisely to meet the budgetary problem Mr. Tinsley has noted. The advantages of such an approach are numerous as they will be described below. Here, let us point out that a tactical implementation of a policy represents a field implementation of it, in other words, a regional or a local project, where ‘regional remains a flexible term with reference to its demography/area.
Its advantages do not diminish even though one may not be able to apply it throughout a country. First, in the approach we have suggested, its principal aim is to ensure an adequate and wholesome public nutrition which also includes addressing child labour. This is justifiable and necessary, for hunger is an established motivator of child labour. It is impossible to ameliorate the latter without adequately dealing with the former.
Secondly, it is likely that the success of the proposed regional/local implementations would compel its wide-spread emulation. This would become easier as good result from a few areas could significantly ease the burden of implementing such tactics elsewhere in the country. It may even evoke public support for such action nationally and internationally.
It avoids two serious pitfalls into which many a development project has stumbled. First, unless such projects do not constitute the final step in the implementation of an appropriate policy, they will merely form disjointed actions that cannot fit into anything that resemble a cohesive and coherent food and agricultural policy. Unless a policy possesses those two attributes, it would be difficult to see what purpose it is intended to serve. We have already outlined that purpose in our previous contribution.
Thus, our proposed approach has the added advantage of policy cohesion and coherence. Such a policy clearly indicates where we intend to go and how. In short, it eliminates the need for ad hoc solutions of dubious benefit, which indeed entails a considerable saving. Stating the obvious, what we have proposed for pragmatic reasons, is a bottom-up implementation of an overall plan aimed at enabling the public to adequately satisfy its six fundamental needs so that it may enjoy a life of greater quality.
On the other hand, should we reject the present approach; our efforts will result in a collection of field implementations that cannot be subsumed by any cohesive and coherent food and agriculture policy. As such it will be full of intra-policy disharmonies that will pull it in different directions rather than a unified goal viz., ensuring sustainable, adequate and wholesome public nutrition and addresses the problem of child labour. Further, it underlines the necessity of harmonising the other national policies as an essential adjunctive measure without which the problem cannot be resolved.
We are fully aware of a real difficulty one would face in adopting this way forward. It is a question of competence and willingness to undertake the type of policy and strategy described here. World-wide environmental degradation and social inequities testify to this. Inadequate competence in holistic policy making is not surprising, for we have continued to solve our problems on a reductive basis for millennia. We may have an inkling of this inadequacy, hence the recent phrase ‘thinking in silos’, but we are yet to master how to act out of silos.
Unwillingness to undertake holistic action is not surprising either. Reasons for it include inter-institutional jealousies hidden behind the well-known ‘institutional autonomy’, other vested interests, institutional lethargy, desire to ‘pass the buck’ and guard one’s posterior, etc. Dealing with this difficulty is beyond any policy, and we can only appeal to what still remains of common decency and fairness in decision-makers and administrators.
Best wishes!
Lal Manavado.
Mr. Lal Manavado