These policy instruments being aspirations of the Government are expressed in
exhortatory terms; they are not worded as binding obligations. They contain what the
Government expects to do with regard to the protection of the child workers, not what
citizens can ask from the Government. Therefore, the officials vested with various
responsibilities can at best be called into question by the Government for any failure to
achieve the goals expressed in them. The intended beneficiaries of these instruments, that
is, neither the children nor their parents or other relatives have any legal footing to seek
enforcement of these policies. Hence, the objectives pursued in the instruments can be
meaningful only if the Parliament enacts a law incorporating the essence of the rights
contained in the policy instruments.
It is quite difficult to be optimistic about the efficacy of the monitoring cells as
envisaged in the Domestic Worker Protection and Welfare Policy, 2010 (Draft). The
monitoring cell consisting of bureaucrats, local leaders, and members of the trade union
etc. are busy individuals and they would perform their cell related functions on a
voluntary basis. Therefore, it is uncertain as to what extent they would be able or willing
to commit their time for performing their functions as mandated by the Draft Policy. This
could be different if a professional body could be created for the sole purpose of acting as
the monitoring cell.
The policies also do not contain any public reporting procedure on the attainment
of the lofty goals mentioned in them which can be monitored by interested individuals
and organizations. The reporting procedure is limited to a requirement of submission of
reports to bureaucrats. Such internal reporting procedure is not congenial to fostering a
culture of public accountability of Government agencies. In order to be meaningful, the
reporting of the public agencies working on the protection of child domestic workers
should be made available to the public.
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