Breaking down the question

The question — Do you think that law has been able to abolish child labour in India? — invites a judgement, and the honest sociological verdict is a qualified no. Law has curtailed and reshaped child labour but has not abolished it. The command word comment asks the candidate to take a position and defend it with reasons and evidence.

The analytical heart of the question is the gap between legislation and social reality — why a robust legal framework, backed by constitutional provisions and successive statutes, has failed to eliminate a practice rooted in poverty and the informal economy. A strong answer treats law not as a self-executing force but as one factor among the economic and social determinants of child labour.

At ten marks the answer must state the verdict early, marshal the reasons for the law's limited success, and end with the conditions under which abolition might be approached.

How to approach it

  • State the verdict plainly: law has reduced but not abolished child labour.
  • Outline the legal framework briefly — constitutional articles, the 1986 Act and its 2016 amendment, the right to education.
  • Explain why enforcement falls short: informality, poverty, weak inspection, the household and family enterprise exemption.
  • Cite Myron Weiner's argument that the deeper failure is educational, not merely legal.
  • Conclude that law is necessary but insufficient without schooling and poverty reduction.

Ground the discussion in the informal sector and child labour note.

Model answer

India possesses one of the more elaborate legal architectures against child labour, yet the practice persists — which suggests at once that law has achieved something and that it has not achieved abolition. A balanced comment must register both truths.

The legal framework is genuinely substantial. The Constitution prohibits the employment of children in hazardous work and directs the state towards free and compulsory education. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986, amended in 2016 to ban the employment of children below fourteen, together with the Right to Education Act, has driven official child-labour numbers steadily downward across successive censuses. To this extent law has worked: it has delegitimised child labour, removed children from the most visible hazardous industries, and lowered the aggregate incidence.

Yet abolition has not been reached, for several sociological reasons. First, most child labour is hidden in the informal sector — home-based work, agriculture, roadside eateries, small workshops — beyond the reach of factory inspection. Jan Breman's portrait of India's informal economy shows precisely how casual, unregistered work evades regulation. Second, the root cause is poverty: poor households depend on children's earnings, so prohibition without economic support merely pushes labour further underground. Third, enforcement is weak — inspectors are few, penalties light, and prosecution rare. Fourth, the 2016 amendment's exemption for children helping in family enterprises reopened a loophole that legitimises much rural and household labour.

Myron Weiner argued that India's real failure was not legislative but educational — that child labour endures where the state does not compel and enable universal schooling, as more successful countries did. On this view, law that bans work without guaranteeing an attractive alternative in the classroom cannot abolish the practice.

The verdict, then, is that law has reduced and reshaped child labour but not abolished it. Legislation is a necessary condition of abolition but not a sufficient one; only when combined with effective schooling, enforcement, and the relief of household poverty can the law's promise be realised.

Examiner's perspective

The examiner expects a clear verdict, taken early and sustained — an answer that dithers or simply recites statutes without judging their effect scores poorly on the comment instruction. The pivot of a good script is the gap between law and social reality, and the reasons it identifies for that gap.

Crediting Weiner for the educational argument and Breman for the informality argument demonstrates conceptual command, as does distinguishing the law's real achievements from its limits rather than treating it as wholly effective or wholly useless. The strongest answers close constructively, naming schooling and poverty reduction as the conditions under which law could finally abolish child labour, rather than ending on mere pessimism.