According to a recent U.S. Department of Labor report, children make fireworks in Peru, Mexico, and the Philippines. In Mexico, children work in garment and footwear factories. In Nepal, India, and Pakistan, children hand-knot carpets. Their labor, then, supports sectors tied to the global economy and is not a remnant of some older, agrarian order. It is a modern business practice, especially within nations committed to fulfilling IMF terms to cutback government programs.
Child labor is formally illegal in some sectors in India while the practice is endemic.
Governments also have lost whatever independence they once had in regulating capital's thirst for profit. Both policies fueled an epidemic of child labor. Of course, the IMF did not create child labor, but its economic policies have exacerbated the use of children in economically strategic export industries. To finance their foreign debt, many Asian governments, including India, Bangladesh, and Thailand, have, at the behest of international finance and the IMF, bent their economies at all costs to export, earning foreign exchange for the repayment of debt to the richest countries. These export industries have a voracious appetite for cheap labor and in most cases, they rely upon the toil of children.