Events

The Centre for Policy Research invites you to a film screening and discussion on:

25 Years on, 0 Child Labour:  Unveiling Velpur

Wednesday, 24th June 2026, 3:00 PM IST

Speaker:

Mr G. Asok Kumar (IAS, Retd.), Senior Fellow, The Centre for Policy Research

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Kindly register below to attend.

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Please register below to attend.

Register to attend in person
Register to attend via Zoom

About the Talk
Till the early 2000s, children out of school  engaged in child labour was a familiar sight across Velpur mandal in Telangana’s Nizamabad district. Children could be seen working in agricultural fields under the scorching sun, serving tea at roadside stalls, repairing bicycles, moulding bricks in kilns–and a childhood disappearing in the invisible labour of rolling beedi leaves or doing chores at homes and construction sites. The practice was so deeply embedded in everyday life that questions about it were often met with indifference or resignation.

In 2001, under the leadership of the then District Collector and District Magistrate G. Asok Kumar, the Nizamabad district administration launched an ambitious campaign to eradicate child labour and bring children back into the classrooms. What followed was a painstaking administrative and social effort that combined legal enforcement with community mobilisation, public pressure, and institutional accountability. On 2nd October 2001 Velpur was declared child labour free.

“Maa OOrlo Balya Karmikalu Leru” (Elimination of Child Labor in Velpur Mandal), a documentary directed by Acharya Chakravartula, chronicles this extraordinary transformation. The film, which  won the Golden Nandi award for the best documentary from the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 2002, captures the harsh realities of child labour while tracing how collective action, determined leadership, and sustained community participation challenged and dismantled a deeply entrenched social practice.

As the Velpur mandal marks 25 years of remaining child labour free, join us for a screening that revisits the people, institutions, struggles, and acts of collective resolve that made this change possible. The initiative went on to receive national and international recognition, earning appreciation from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and praise from Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam during his tenure as the President of India. The Velpur model was subsequently incorporated into training programmes of the V. V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, Uttar Pradesh; leaving a lasting legacy in the fight against child labour.

The most remarkable part of the story is that, even after 25 years, Velpur has maintained a 100% enrollment and retention of all children between the ages of 5 and 14 in school.

About the Speaker
Mr G. Asok Kumar (IAS, Retd.) is a Senior Fellow at CPR. He retired as a Special Secretary to the Government of India and the Director General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG). His earlier work as the Mission Director of the National Water Mission (NWM), popularising the slogan of “Catch the rain, where it falls and when it falls”, acquired him an appellation of “Rain Man.”

Mr Kumar’s out-of-the-box interventions, during his long and rich career as a civil servant, are often discussed in public administration conversations. Trained as an engineer and later studied Public Policy at the International School of Business, Hyderabad, Mr Kumar was a Chevening Scholar of CRISP (Chevening Rolls Royce Innovation, Science and Leadership Programme) cohort of 2013 at the University of Oxford.