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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Bonded Labour System still a reality -Urmi A Goswami

Bonded Labour System still a reality -Urmi A Goswami

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published Published on Aug 12, 2013   modified Modified on Aug 12, 2013
-The Economic Times

Bonded labour
NEW DELHI: After losing her husband to an illness, Jeyanthi (name changed) was forced to step in as the bread earner for her six young children. With no education, work was hard to come by for her, and existence was at bare subsistence levels. Jeyanthi got by, working as a casual labourer; and as her sons became older, they too pitched in. Life was to take a nastier turn for Jeyanthi when her eldest child was to get married. Even the most shoe-string wedding budget worked out to Rs 10,000, money that Jeyanthi didn't have. She also had no land or asset she could sell, anything of value she had was long gone.

Like many before her in her village, in Andhra Pradesh, Jeyanthi approached the owners of the Sri Lakshmi Modern Rice Mills for a loan and a job to help pay it off. Jeyanthi was made to work long hours under inhuman conditions, she couldn't go home, her wages were way below the minimum wage rate, and she had to put up with repeated sexual abuse by her employers. Jeyanthi, whose pitiful plight is narrated by the Bandhua 1947 campaign, run by 5 organisations working in this space, is bonded labour - forced or partly forced labour governed by a debtor-creditor agreement. But if you asked the government, there is no such person anymore. Since May, the current UPA government, celebrating its nine years in office, has been putting out a print ad that is headlined: "thanks to MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), no bonded labour anymore".

Yet, surveys by civil society organisations and researchers show that even 37 years after Parliament passed the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 - defining this practice, making it a criminal offence and freeing all bonded labours from their obligations - bonded labour exists in India. And the difference between government and non-government statistics goes back nearly as much.

The government did its one and only survey in 1978, counting 343,000 bonded labourers in 16 states. Earlier that year, in the first-ever survey of bonded labour carried out in India, the Gandhi Peace Foundation and National Labour Institute counted 2.6 million bonded labourers in 10 states. The government stopped counting after that, though it has said that it has rehabilitated 300,000 bonded labourers since the Act came into force. But earlier this year, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated 11.7 million bonded labourers in India.

Bonded labour has changed over the years. It is no longer limited to the traditional power equation in agriculture, in which the lower castes are expected to perform menial tasks in exchange for guaranteed subsistence. The prevalent system today is one of debt bondage. Poor and without resources, like Jeyanthi, these people take credit from the local landlord or factory owner or contractor.

The loan is akin to an advance on wages, to be paid off by working. Except it would seem the debt is never repaid - and only keeps growing. Piling interest, charges for delayed payments, meagre wages, and fresh loans for subsistence and emergencies means there is no escaping bondage.

Kara, who has spent the last 11 years researching modern slavery in South Asia, puts the weighted average annual profits at $920 per bonded labour, resulting in implied annual profits of $17.6 billion globally.

Kara estimates that when a factory owner acquires a bonded labour for a global weighted average of $200 in South Asia, it can expect a net profit of $2,585 - a compounded annual return on investment of 191% for an average bondage period of 6.3 years.

Against that supernormal return, the Indian bonded labour law levies a modest penalty of 2,000 for violations.

The Indian law also allows for imprisonment of up to three years. According to Dutta, since there is no minimum prison term prescribed, typically, the punishment given is "imprisonment till the rising of the court" - till 5-5.30 pm on the same day an order is passed.

Further, since these cases are taken up at local courts, and the employer is some sort of local potentate, more often than not, only minimum punishment is given.

According to Shantanu Dutta, director of national advocacy, International Justice Mission, the metamorphosis from a vestige of the traditional feudal agrarian system into a source for cheap labour in the age where profit maximisation is the driving force has meant that bonded labour can be found in virtually every sector that has a large unorganised component: construction, gems and jewellery, mining and quarrying, carpet weaving, rice mills and sericulture, among others.

The new bonded labour touches our lives in a myriad ways - from the rice we eat to the clothes we wear, from the granite countertop in our kitchens to the bricks in our house. "The single-minded focus on economic growth has created a situation where we turn a blind eye to the human rights aspect," says Dutta. "Bonded labour brings costs down and the economic benefits keep this system alive."

Kara says the cost of a slave is one of those few things that have become cheaper over the ages. In the American south, he adds, the weighted average acquisition cost of a slave in 1810, in terms of 2011 prices, was about $5,500; today, the global weighted average cost is about $440.

The employers are not invisible, yet putting an end to the system that is in violation of existing statutes has proved to be difficult. "We have a good law in place, the problem is in the implementation," says Dutta. "The district magistrate is overburdened, and priorities are politically determined. Bonded labours just fall through the cracks."

Activists and academics say that efforts like NREGA - which assures 100 days of employment a year to a rural household - or other welfare schemes are making some difference in stemming the tide into bondage. "The key is the district level," says Dutta. "We have seen the differences in some districts in Chhattisgarh and Odisha, where government programmes are implemented well, but much more needs to be done for those who are already in bondage."

Among the demands is increasing the penalty for violations, a dedicated district and state level vigilance officer looking into the issues, and automatic inclusion of released bonded labourers as beneficiaries in government welfare programmes. A lot remains to be done to liberate the likes of Jeyanthi.


The Economic Times, 12 August, 2013, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/bonded-labour-system-still-a-reality/articleshow/21768914.cms


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