The Child and the State in India

by Myron Weiner

India has the largest number of non-schoolgoing working children in the world. Why has the government not removed them from the labor force and required that they attend school, as have the governments of all developed and many developing countries? To answer this question, this major comparative study first looks at why and when other states have intervened to protect children against parents and employers. By examining Europe of the nineteenth century, the United States, Japan, and a number of developing countries, Myron Weiner rejects the argument that children were removed from the labor force only when the incomes of the poor rose and employers needed a more skilled labor force. Turning to India, the author shows that its policies arise from fundamental beliefs, embedded in the culture, rather than from economic conditions. Identifying the specific values that elsewhere led educators, social activists, religious leaders, trade unionists, military officers, and government bureaucrats to make education compulsory and to end child labor, he explains why similar groups in India do not play the same role.

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 1990

About the author

Myron Weiner was an American political scientist and renowned scholar on India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.

Weiner was born in New York City in 1931. He received a BSS degree from the City College of New York in 1951 and MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University in 1953 and 1955. He taught at Princeton and the University of Chicago before coming to MIT as an associate professor in 1961, where he worked for 38 years before retiring in April 1999.

Professor Weiner served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, the US State Department, and the U.S. National Security Council. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Council on Foreign Relations, and a past president of the New England Association of Asian Studies. He held visiting appointments at Oxford University's Balliol College, Harvard University, Delhi University, Hebrew University and the University of Paris. Dr. Weiner was chair of the External Research and Advisory Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1996 until his death.

He was the author or editor of 32 scholarly books and numerous peer-reviewed articles. His most recent research involved three projects: child labor and education policy in India and other developing countries; comparing immigration, refugees and citizenship policies in Japan, Germany, South Africa and the USA; and analyzing the causes and effects of migration and refugee flows.

Prof. Weiner died of brain cancer on June 3, 1999, at his home in Moretown, VT, at age 68. He was married to Sheila Leiman Weiner. They had two children, Saul Weiner of Chicago and a daughter, Beth Weiner Datskovsky, of Bala Cynwyd, PA.

Reviews

[Montse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good book! Argues that society-wide beliefs about hierarchy and social class differentiation are the real reason India lags behind in primary compulsory education, not resource contraints, poverty levels, national level of development, per capita income, or international competition. Indeed, through historical and comparative analysis, the author demonstrates that literacy and compulsory education actually pre-date industrialization and modernization-- contrary to many arguments against compulsory primary education.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several reasons are typically offered for a nation to set aside just not enough for its children's education and not making education compulsory. Somehow for reasons of intuition, we suspect the same for India but Weiner in this short political economic study from the 90s makes a compelling case that South Asia is a unique scene altogether. No poor state even in Subsaharan Africa, or the poorer nations with low state power in Asia have fared so poorly in primary education and tolled such high numbers in dropout rates; to Weiner social norms are to blame. Almost echoing Dumont, South Asians are apparently nearly Homo hierarchicus. Children's education is simply not considered to be of priority. Worse, even Marxists are to blame for, to them a resolution to capitalism can spell an end to mass illiteracy and even to social activists, cottage industries (without naming him is he alluding to Gandhi?) and their preservation meant the tacit approval of Child Labour. A deeply disturbing book.

[Shiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book published in 1990 gave me immense insights into why public education is gravely bad in 2023 India. Must read if you’re interested in Education reforms.