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[KOLKATA, 16 August 2006] - Subhankar Baidya can't bring himself to discuss his ordeal as an abused domestic servant. Instead, the five-year-old boy draws pictures to show the beatings and humiliations he endured until his rescue. "I don't want to get beaten up again and wipe floors," said the traumatised boy, rescued by social workers from a suburban Kolkata house in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal a few weeks ago following complaints from neighbours of mistreatment. "I want to play," he said. Baidya's fate is typical of millions of Indian children under 14 who are employed to clean homes and run errands, or slog away in restaurants, tea stalls and at holiday resorts for a pittance. The Indian government says it is determined to put a stop to these tales of misery. Earlier this month, the Labour Ministry said it would toughen and extend child labour laws -- first passed in 1986 to outlaw the use of children under 14 in dangerous factories -- to punish those caught employing kids in jobs like Subhanker's. Under the new rules, which come into effect in October, children under the age of 14 will be banned from working as domestic servants or at hotels, tea shops, restaurants and resorts. Offenders face a jail term of up to two years and a maximum fine of 20,000 rupees ($430). While welcoming the move, sociologists and officials fear the ban will have little effect without a concrete plan to provide for children often forced into the workforce by extreme poverty. "Children still risk their lives in dangerous jobs and unless you implement any rule it looks great only on paper," said Swapan Pramanik, sociologist and vice-chancellor of the Vidyasagar University in Kolkata. The government says there are more than 11 million child labourers in India. Rights groups put the figure closer to 60 million, with many still working in hazardous industries such as fireworks and glass factories, despite the 1986 government ban and Supreme Court orders demanding better enforcement. Child labourers also work on farms, at carpet weaving factories or in textile plants -- where their supple hands and nimble fingers are better suited to the often intricate work. TWO WORLDS IN ONE In Mumbai, India's bustling capital of films and finance, more than 50,000 children work in gold-polishing and leather-stitching factories, in stark contrast to kids from rich families who pack amusement parks on weekends. But much of the country's demand for child labour is met by the eastern states of West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand where grinding rural poverty give parents little choice but to send their children out to work. Under a 1996 court order, state governments are supposed to pay compensation of 10,000 rupees when they remove a child from a job. But activists say this rule has not provided a long-term solution. "Monetary assistance of a few thousand rupees is no use as parents send their children back to work," said Jogesh Chattopadhyay, a top police official. To avoid police action, activists say, those employing children produce fake birth certificates claiming the children are older than their real ages. "During a recent study on the West Bengal jute industry we found 2,000 underage children were slogging in the mills but on paper they were all adults," said Swapan Mukherjee, secretary of Free the Children-India, an international children's rights group operating in 34 countries. State governments are often lax about investigating abuses, activists say. KITE FLYING? Qutubuddin Ali, aged 11, says he loves to fly kites but has to spend more than 12 hours a day working at an unlicensed shoe factory in a house in Bamungachi, 35 km (20 miles), north of Kolkata, West Bengal's capital. "I am the sole bread winner in the family," Ali, clad in torn shorts, said as he wiped eyes teary from poisonous fumes. He earns about 200 rupees or around $4 per month. Mohammed Illyas, a year older than Ali, cycles for an hour each morning to a factory where his job is to stitch leather. "My father beats me and sends me back when I say no," he said as he munched on a biscuit, his lunch for the day. Others ruin their eyesight working long hours in poorly lit carpet factories. "Most children are irrevocably sick or deformed by the time they reach adulthood," said Mansoor Qadri of Mumbai-based children's rights group, Saathi, or Friend. Organisations like Free the Children's Mukherjee welcome the government's latest move to end this modern-day slavery but say real change will only come when India attempts to tackle massive income disparities and social injustice. "It is a positive move but first we should take care of extreme poverty by replacing children with unemployed men on higher wages," he said. There is a lot of work to do -- 35 percent of India's more than one billion people still live on less than a dollar a day despite annual economic growth rates of about eight percent. (Additional reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee in MUMBAI)