In recent years, India has strengthened its laws on child labour, but in the past six months — with COVID-19 taking a toll on the economy — that work has started to unravel.
“Children have never faced such crisis,” said 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, whose organization Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) works to protect vulnerable children. “This is not simply the health crisis or economic crisis. This is the crisis of justice, of humanity, of childhood, of the future of an entire generation.”