Tourism industry bristling with child labour opening vistas and emerging challenges

Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in India and has received much importance from the government as a major contributor to the economy. But it has a story too. Recent researches reveal that it has various social, economical, cultural, and environmental impacts on society. According to the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Global Report 2006, Tourism affects the lives of 218 million children. It is said that approx. 60–100 million children of India are engaged as child labour. Most of them are involved in Tourism Industry. Throughout India there have been numerous studies which have shown the existence of child exploitation due to tourism. In the year 2006 the tourism and hospitality sector was added to the list of hazardous occupation under the Child Labour Act 1986. As the benefits from tourism industry is increasing day by day and attracting millions of foreign investment, the risk of child labour is increasing exponentially and along with greater demand for human trafficking. The main objective of this paper is to find out the reason why children work in tourism industry, to know the risk involved if they work with tourism sector, and to know the role of government and tourism industry in eradication of this serious problem. This paper also helps in measuring the effectiveness of actions taken by the International Labour Organization, World Tourism Organization to mitigate this problem..To evaluate the actual situation of child labour in tourism industry, in this paper information has been gathered through secondary sources like books, magazines (yojna), WTO report, report of Tourism Ministry, News paper etc. For this purpose two research questions were prepared (a) increasing economic benefit of tourism industry is attracting as well as exploiting the future of india. (b) efforts made to eradicate the problem of child labour has reduced the number of child labourers in papers only not in actual.After analyzing the facts and figures it can be conclude that the problem of child labour and commercial sexual exploitation of children can't be solved easily unless collective efforts have been made by Government officials, NGO's, Civil Society workers and Tourism Industry employers to eradicate it. Policies and legislations should not only formulate but implemented in right spirit. Government and all other institutions must join their hands together to stop all forms of exploitation of children otherwise we will fail to secure the rights of our children who are the future of our India.