Abstract: Child Work in Agriculture in West Bengal, India: Assessment of Musculoskeletal Disorders and Occupational Health Problems: Banibrata

With more than 350 million economically active children between the ages of 5 and 17 years old, child labor exploitation is a worldwide problem, and almost half of these children are engaged in hazardous work. In India, especially in West Bengal, children are mainly associated with agricultural work (potato cultivation) in rural areas due to poor socioeconomic conditions. Children have to perform a fair amount of manual, rigorous tasks in the agricultural field. There are some activities that are mainly engaged in during potato cultivation. These are weeding, ridging, carrying seeds, planting seeds, spading, sprinkling water, picking crops and carrying crops. A large proportion of economically inactive children live in India. That is, 100 million child laborers live in India. Children under fourteen constitute around 3.6% of the total labor force in India. Of these children, nine out of every ten work in their own rural family settings. Nearly 85% are engaged in traditional agricultural activities. Less than 9% work the manufacturing, service and repair. Only about 0.8% of these children work in factories. Agricultural workers, especially children, suffer from musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in different parts of the body, especially low back pain, during different activities in potato cultivation. Gangopadhyay et al. stated that preadolescent agricultural workers are continuously exposed to bending posture in different environments, and as a result, they suffer from acute pain and discomfort in different parts of the body. Sekimpi stated that the hand hoe and other hand tools used by farmers in a stooped posture for a prolonged period in many developing countries are mainly responsible for MSDs, because the machinery used in developing countries is often Abstract: Child Work in Agriculture in West Bengal, India: Assessment of Musculoskeletal Disorders and Occupational Health Problems: Banibrata DAS, et al. Department of Physiology, South Calcutta Girls’ College University of Calcutta, India—Objective: Children are universally considered to be the most important asset for any nation. The main aims of the present study were 1) to investigate the causation of discomfort related to working postures 2) to assess the physiological strain among the child farmers and 3) to assess the thermal stress during work in an agricultural field. Methods: For this study, 120 child agricultural workers and 120 control subjects aged 10−16 years were selected randomly, and a detailed posture analysis was performed among them by REBA and OWAS methods. The Modified Nordic Questionnaire was applied to assess the discomfort felt among both groups of workers. Physiological assessment of workload was carried out by recording the heart rate and blood pressure of the workers prior to work and just after work in the field. Results: Child agricultural workers suffered from pain especially in the low back (98%), knees (88%), hands (82%), shoulder (77%) and neck (68%). Among the agricultural activities in potato cultivation, the child potato workers, felt discomfort during spading (99%), sprinkling water (90%) and picking crops (87%). The post-activity heart rate of the child agricultural workers was 170.1 beats/min, whereas the systolic and diastolic blood pressures were 129.0 and 67.0 mm/Hg respectively. Conclusions: Most of the agricultural activities in potato cultivation were strenuous ones that affect the children, who suffered from acute pain and discomfort for a long period of time, which mainly hampers and restricts their education. (J Occup Health 2013; 55: 244–258) Child Work in Agriculture in West Bengal, India: Assessment of Musculoskeletal Disorders and Occupational Health Problems