<P> Biggeri and Mehrotra have studied the macroeconomic factors that encourage child labour . They focus their study on five Asian nations including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines . They suggest that child labour is a serious problem in all five, but it is not a new problem . Macroeconomic causes encouraged widespread child labour across the world, over most of human history . They suggest that the causes for child labour include both the demand and the supply side . While poverty and unavailability of good schools explain the child labour supply side, they suggest that the growth of low paying informal economy rather than higher paying formal economy--called organised economy in India--is amongst the causes of the demand side . India has rigid labour laws and numerous regulations that prevent growth of organised sector where work protections are easier to monitor, and work more productive and higher paying . </P> <P> The unintended effect of Indian complex labour laws is the work has shifted to the unorganised, informal sector . As a result, after the unorganised agriculture sector which employs 60% of child labour, it is the unorganised trade, unorganised assembly and unorganised retail work that is the largest employer of child labour . If macroeconomic factors and laws prevent growth of formal sector, the family owned informal sector grows, deploying low cost, easy to hire, easy to dismiss labour in form of child labour . Even in situations where children are going to school, claim Biggeri and Mehrotra, children engage in routine after - school home - based manufacturing and economic activity . Other scholars too suggest that inflexibility and structure of India's labour market, size of informal economy, inability of industries to scale up and lack of modern manufacturing technologies are major macroeconomic factors affecting demand and acceptability of child labour . </P> <P> Cigno et al. suggest the government planned and implemented land redistribution programs in India, where poor families were given small plots of land with the idea of enabling economic independence, have had the unintended effect of increased child labour . They find that smallholder plots of land are labour - intensively farmed since small plots cannot productively afford expensive farming equipment . In these cases, a means to increase output from the small plot has been to apply more labour, including child labour . </P> <P> Bonded child labour is a system of forced, or partly forced, labour under which the child, or usually child's parent enter into an agreement, oral or written, with a creditor . The child performs work as in - kind repayment of credit . In this 2005 ILO report, debt - bondage in India emerged during the colonial period, as a means of obtaining reliable cheap labour, with loan and land - lease relationships implemented during that era of Indian history . These were regionally called Hali, or Halwaha, or Jeura systems; and was named by the colonial administration as the indentured labour system . These systems included bonded child labour . Over time, claims the ILO report, this traditional forms of long - duration relationships have declined . </P>

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