India is the world’s sixth largest economy by GDP. It is also the fastest growing economy in the world. This economic success, in part, emerges from and continues to grow from a horror story that haunts the nation – child slavery. Over 60 million children work in hazardous conditions as child slaves in the world’s fastest growing economy.
Fine silk production, often purchased by rich and affluent sections of the society, is a case in point. A 1996 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report exposed the reality of India’s finest silk. Children, employed for their small hands, were put to work pulling silk off the cocoons of silk worms. They did so by dipping their hands in boiling water, a part of the process to extract silk from the worms.
In the 1990s, Kanchipuram, a city in Tamil Nadu, used up to 50,000 child slaves in the silk industry. Consequently, it was bestowed with the sobriquet – the ‘city of child slaves’.
A 2003 follow-up report by HRW detailed the children’s condition:
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