***We witness with disbelief the recent activities by interest groups in the USA to impose a trade embargo on imports of garments from Bangladesh on the plea that garments' factories in Bangladesh employ child labour.***

EVER Mure frssdrvekv ped countries have become recipient* of foreign aid, term* wch as "aid conditionality and "tied aid" have become a familiar vocabulary in the development literature It came to be recog iii-wri that aid or concessional finance was not a bounty, but had various strings attached to ■ I. For instance tied aid com |wls a recipient country to purchase the necessary equipment and hardware for an aid-financed project from a particular source, usually the donor country, and frequently at higher costs, reducing I he real value of the aid.

Conditionalities on the other hand are imposed by donor countries to ensure, from the donor perspetiive, effective utilisation of the loan, but In fact, gives these countries considerable leverage in shaping various policies in recipient countries The most familiar examples in recent times are measures such as privatisation, trade liberallza tion or retrenchment of work ers In the public sector, attached as conditions on World Bank loans Theoretically, receiving countries can negotiate the terms and conditions Of these loans: but given the unequal bargaining power between donors and recipients, it Is not difficult to Imagine in whose favour the bargain Is usually struck.

Be that as It may. developing countries have by now reluctantly accepted all these extra burden and baggage that aid brings. After all. beggars cannot be choosers." But it

seems now thal sellers cannot be choosers either, when the seller Is a poor developing country like Bangladesh Thus we witness with disbelief the recent activities by interest groups tn the USA to Impose a trade embargo on Imports of garments from Bangladesh on the plea that garments facto rles in Bangladesh employ child labour H Is even more incredible thal UNICEF has also decided not to purchase items Irom South Asian countries if children have been employed in the manufacture of such Items.

This Incredulity stems from various considerations. First of all free trade like free markets. is ,i nun li lieloved dictum In the West Until recently therefore, specific conditions imposed on trading partners were relatively uncommon, though there may have been barriers to trade In the form of tariffs or quotas. Perhaps because of their novelty, "trade conditionalities ' must be Just! fled on purely moral grounds, whether it Is on the pretext of child labour In Bangladesh or goods manufactured In prisons of China. One can therefore legitimately ask: Whose Interest will be served by the trade restrictions? Certainly not that of the child.

I know of no comprehensive study or analysis of the socio-economic context for employment of children In Bangladesh or elsewhere as a Justification for such a crippling restriction on imports, but simply a casual and cursory visit by a US Senator The de cision to send children to work at a relatively young age is a parental decision, made mostly by pdor families often female-headed households The child s income supplements the earnings of these families and meets the suste .nance needs of even younger siblings left at home. Studies of garments industries classify these young workers as "helpers In other sectors too. especially in Informal manufac turing, helpers are commonly employed, and learn the trade from a young age This training enables them to gain upward mobility as semi-skilled to' skilled labour status, and in the case of Informal manufacturing units, finally leading to the setting up of new enterprises by skilled workers, who have also accumulated some capital with time.

This is thus a form of apprenticeship training very common in the informal sectors of the economy of Bangladesh and other develop-

Ing countries. I would refer the reader to various studies bv the ILO on this. Strict and uninformed labour regulation can only shut the doors to training for a large segment of the pop ulation who under conditions of poverty cannot enter the formal education system Even if these workers were to be formally educated, what would be their Job prospects on completion of their education? Has this question been posed at all? If helpers are observed to receive a lower wage Neoclassical economic theory taught in the best Universities in the West tells us that this is due to the fact that the low wages reflect the cost of training which Is borne by the worker, when the training is not specific to the firm, but is general In nature l.e the worker can be bid away by competing firms, under completion of training

A proper analysis needs to take all this Into account. The expected outcome of this hue and cry over ch|M labour is that the retrenched workers are not specially provided for. forcing them to become vagrants or subject to worse forms of exploitation.

Besides economics, there Is the question of sovereignty Ensuring freedom from ex-

ploilation should be the business of the people of a country, not that of the trading partner There l» the Factories Act 1965 the Maternity Benefits Act 1939 and the Children (Pledgling of Labour) Act 1933, to protect the interests of workers Including young workers Trade unions, labour associations and the entire legislative machinery of a country can suffice to ensure compliance w«h labour laws Foreign activists and interest groups cannot bypass these. It is also interesting that the views of the workers themselves and their families have not been taken into account before advocating these retrenchment measures What is the Justifies tion for such paternalism"’ If poverty forces families to send their members to work at art early age the problem should be solved by general poverty alleviation measures Maybe

the government should put greater effort at taxing the profits of employers to finance expansion of education or other schemes

Lastly, why confine the issue to exploitation of children? Many good scholars in the West have for decades argued about the exploitative nature of the capitalist system and the poor conditions of employment in Western countries. Exploitation In the US and other countries also extend to low-paid Immigrant labour Are these products being shunned by Western consumers? These questions need to be raised. There is no need to presume that citizens of developing countries are less aware or less moral than interest groups in the Wesi but they are forced to take Into account their socio-economic context. Senator Harkins does not seem to be aware of all these ramifications. My personal fear is that we may be slowly forced to accept trade conditionalities. Just as we have done with aid conditionalities. Unfortunately, the latter may turn out to be the lesser of the two evils

The author is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics. University of Dhaka