The struggle to abolish child labour, is viewed as a good fight. But what if the work done by children is not considered labour?. What if children work, while also going to school? Can labour and school-going education co-exist, and if they do, what does it mean for the life experience of a child? 

These questions have no easy answers.   Prof G K Lieten has studied the phenomenon of children, doing the work of adults, extensively had explained, the distinction, between child labour (unacceptable) and child work, (acceptable in many if not most scenarios) as “(all) kaam (work) is not shram (labour)”. argues that the concept of work should be used as the generic term, and would refer to ”any type of work being done in any mode of employment relationship and for any purpose; it should serve as a description of the physical (or mental) involvement in a job”, while the concept of (child) labour should be ”restricted to the production of goods and services, including work in the household, that interfere with the normative development of children as defined in 1989 the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”. 

Most  professionals, who work with children, disagree.  The understanding of how children should spend their childhood years, what experiences they should be introduced to, encouraged towards, through policy interventions, is at the heart of the two books faultline.  

For those interested, here's the study, during the course of which, I observed, that children were complementing schooling with labour http://www.negfire.org/images/reports/Maharajganj_Report_FinalDraft.pdf