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Bhowmick, Nilanjana. "India Under Pressure to Do More about Child Labor." //TIME//. TIME, 19 June 2009. Web. 10 May 2011. <[]>.

 Nilanjana Bhowmick is an award-winning freelance journalist based in India who graduated from Birmingham City University. She is the founder and editor of Shetizenjournalist.com. She has written for TIME Magazine, CS Monitor, and Reu. In the past she has been an India Correspondent at All Headline News, Delhi Correspondent at CVC Radio, Senior Editor at Instablogs, and freelance correspondent at VOA News. This particular source is an informational report on the pressure India is feeling to stop child labor form occurring within their boundary lines. The intended audience of this piece are people of higher education levels who are concerned about the laws and regulations that restrict child labor from occurring.

 Throughout the source, the author takes the position that India’s deeply-rooted culture and past traditions are obstacles to present laws and regulations restricting child labor. She points out the hiring of young children to work as nannies and maids has been a common tradition in India. Although the country banned the hiring of children under the age of 14 in 2006, the practice still continues through agencies that lend families money in exchange for their children’s labor. Recently, India has come under fire for not preventing such actions. Bhowmick backs up this statement by citing that recently that the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report stated that India is a Tier 2 level country for the sixth consecutive year for violations of human trafficking and child labor. Most children working as child laborers are transported through human trafficking.

 Bhowmick also provides stories of present child laborers. She also states that India's existing laws on child labor haven't been effective for a mixture of legal and cultural reasons. For one, many present laws contradict past ones that allowed students of age 14 to work in India. In the past, it was traditional and common for children of 14 to work, so, these contradicting laws are not being followed by the people. In addition to this, A 2006 UNICEF report showed girls between the ages of 12 and 15 are the preferred choice of domestic help in 90 percent of Indian households. This shows a predisposed cultural connection of to the use of child laborers in India. Bhowmick backs up all of her facts through research, surveys, and information obtained ftom outside, reliable sources such as UNICEF. I believe that this source is logical, clear, and well-researched. Bhowmick provides various facts, surveys, and statistics to back up many of her claims. In addition to this, the fact that she threads stories of actual present child laborers in India into her articles just makes it more authentic. The topic has been adequately addressed in terms of the cultural ties to child labor in India today. The author is not biased in their article. This source provided me lots of information on the cultural ties to child labor in India and has helped me in developing my argument for this project.

 The Sun-Herald. "Cambodia's Culture of Child Labour." //The Sydney Morning Herald//. The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Dec. 2007. Web. 11 May 2011. <[] >.

There is no specific author of this particular article; however the source of this article is The Sun-Herald, another newspaper. This newspaper publishes news stories and breaking news headline on a daily basis. The particular article can be considered an informational and persuasive piece; although it does provide information about child labor in Cambodia, the author tries to convince people the culture plays a huge role in the acceptance of child labor in the area. This piece is intended to be read by people of any age who are interested in the child labor in Cambodia and its ties to their deeply-rooted culture.

The author’s main thesis in this article is that cultures view and interpret child labor in different ways and that the idea of all child labor being hazardous stems from the modern-day West view on the meaning of childhood. The author backs up many of his claims through the power of the written word and stories of children who are child laborers and of parents who allow it. Through these stories the author establishes that many families allow tier children to work because they are in desperate need of money and resources. In many cases, it is a necessity in order to put food on the table or pay for their house bills. However, in our culture we eat food three times a day in our homes so we do not encounter these same hardships. The author cites Oxford anthropologist Jo Boyden as being the first person to oppose a global definition of child hood and child labor because it means different things in different countries. Therefore, one culture cannot dismiss another’s practice because they do not know enough of it to judge it.

I thought that the source was logical, clear, and well-researched. The author obviously knew what he was saying because he recounted the stories of the families and children affected by child labor. The article was very touching and taught me a great deal about how much in the world is viewed through the Western culture’s eyes. I learned many more statistics and facts about child labor from this source that I did not know before. This source definitely provides me with different examples of child labor in other cultures that can be used to support my argument that culture does play a role in the acceptance of child labor in some countries. This source provides me with a lot of new information that I can use in my project to build my argument.