Marked for life: the Rugmark scheme aims to put a smiling face symbol on each child-labour-free carpet - but is is working?

New Internationalist, July, 1997 by Mukul Sharma

TEN-YEAR-OLD Vinod, from Dariyen village, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, is a new person now. He worked with a carpet weaver for two years. After his father's premature death, Vinod had been taken to work on a loom by his mother.

Vinod (pictured below) remembers those horrifying days with deep pain. `I used to work for 12 to 14 hours in a day on the loom. I was not paid a single penny for a year. A week after joining, I was hung upside down for a minor fault. Whenever I sustained injuries while using a sharp knife to turn the carpet knots, I was denied medical care. Instead my employer used to fill the wound with match-stick powder and burn. My flesh and skin used to burn.'

He was freed from the loom-owner's clutches only when Rugmark inspectors located him during a spot-check and told the carpet manufacturer either to release Vinod and other child weavers or to disengage the loom.

`I want to forget those days,' he continues. `Balashraya [Rugmark's rehabilitation shelter for children] has altered my life. During Diwali vacation, when I went to my village this time, my mother was happy to see me. She remarked that I had a changed look and was bubbling with energy. Mother tells me to concentrate on my studies and treat it as a mission.'

In the traditional carpet-manufacturing areas of Uttar Pradesh, one encounters similar experiences time and again. `We have at least ten students like Vinod enrolled in this rehabilitation centre,' says Ramdhani Yadav, a teacher at Balashraya. `Most of them have now developed reading and writing skills. They have an urge to become economically independent. When they go back to their villages, some of them try to enlighten their brethren to unite and struggle for their rights and not fall in the trap of carpet magnates or their touts... Who knows better than them about slavery and its impact and who else can fight against subjugation with such tenacity and transparent honesty?'

Rugmark was the need of the hour. But it was also the product of a movement. During the economic crisis of the 1980s when the Indian Government was desperate for foreign exchange, the carpet industry proved to be a godsend. Export earnings from carpets boomed - but so did the number of children working on looms, from 100,000 in 1975 to 420,000 in 1989. The first response was the launch in 1989 of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), consisting of 60 non-governmental organizations and campaign groups, which aimed to build a national and international campaign on child labour, especially in the carpet industry.

Eventually in 1994 the Rugmark Foundation followed as a joint initiative supported by campaigners, consumer groups, carpet manufacturers and international organizations like UNICEF. During the first two-and-a-half years of its operation, Rugmark issued licences to 144 exporters, operating 17,859 looms, while 466,317 carpets were certified, labelled and put on the market. Most of these are exported to Germany, the world's largest importer of Oriental carpets - and approximately a third of the total carpets exported to Germany now bear the Rugmark label. A growing number of importers in other countries, including Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US, are asking for Rugmark-labelled carpets.

Rugmark's success depends upon the honesty and efficiency of its inspectors. There are 12 of these at work in the carpet belt and since they started 942 children have been found working illegally at 555 looms - at which point the loom-owners either removed their child workers or were themselves removed from the Rugmark scheme. Of the 18,000-odd looms, ten per cent are inspected every month - and the inspectors themselves do not know until the morning which looms are to be visited that day. Rugmark-labelled carpets have their own numbers, identifying the loom and the exporter. The network of controls is so efficient that so far not one falsely labelled carpet has been identified by those opposing Rugmark.

The inspection system is paid for by the exporters, who contribute a fee of 0.25 per cent of the carpet's export value. Meanwhile importers of Rugmark carpets agree to contribute one per cent of the export value to a fund administered by UNICEF. This is exclusively used to run two special centres in the Bhadohi region: Rugmark primary school, which opened in August 1996 in Jagpur village, which takes 300 children of carpet weavers, and the Balashraya shelter in Gopiganj mentioned by Vinod, which was launched in October 1996 and is a rehabilitation centre for 75 to 100 freed bonded children and child weavers.

When I visited Balashraya there were 30 children living there, of whom 17 had been working on family looms and the other 13 had been held in effective slavery. The children are taught basic reading, writing and arithmetic but also participate in awareness-raising discussions on health, social issues and the law. They are also encouraged to develop qualities of leadership, discipline and concern for the exploited.