The State of Karnataka in 2000 woke up to news about a certain medieval-era brutality being committed on bonded labourers, when the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha unearthed the case of five labourers being made to work throughout the day, enchained in shackles, in a quarry in Hangarahalli, near the historic town of Srirangapatna. It was the owner’s way of extracting repayment of loans, varying between Rs.500 and Rs.2,500. Four people were convicted in the case after nine long years.
While the State has since been in a denial mode on the existence of bonded labour, >a report submitted last week by a State-level investigation committee serves as a sobering reminder that feudal servitude lives and thrives here. The committee, headed by senior journalist Sivaji Ganesan, found that debt bondage, banned by law in 1976, has reinvented itself to adapt to modern agriculture and the burgeoning informal sector in the new economy.
Comprehensive data needed
It is hard to accurately ascertain the extent of this scourge in the absence of a comprehensive and up-to-date Statewide survey. However, data compiled by non-governmental organisations and cited in the study provide some indicators.
Jeevika, an NGO working with bonded labourers who work in farms, assisted 7,646 bonded labourers to apply to the district authorities, for their release and rehabilitation, in 2012-13. In 2014, the organisation detected 3,003 more cases. Raids in and around Bengaluru in recent times have exposed the urban face of bonded labour. In 2015 alone, the State official machinery, with International Justice Mission (IJM), an NGO, rescued 405 trafficked bonded workers and their families in Bengaluru and its suburbs from brick kilns and factories. Many of them had been trafficked, through labour contractors, from the impoverished pockets of the country, particularly from the Bolangir district in Odisha.
Though the more traditional form of bondage — where the debt is passed on from one generation to the next with the worker being confined perpetually to the landlord’s home with no wages — has declined substantially, new forms of bondage have emerged. In the agrarian sector, the labourer is not necessarily confined physically but is bound by a high-interest debt bond to the landlord. Significantly, as the Ganeshan-committee report highlights, it has spread beyond agriculture and is prevalent in small eateries, brick kilns, agarbatti units, stone quarries, mines, the construction industry, looms and in homes as domestic labour right in the heart of cities.
Often, labourers are brought from distant places after paying an “advance” or promising a lump sum at the end of a certain period of work. Once they enter the workplace, they are often physically confined, forced to work for up to 18 hours a day and even subjected to physical abuse, as indicated by the stories narrated by rescued labourers.
As Esther Daniel of IJM says, there are no signs that bonded labour is on its way out. “In fact the crime itself is morphing and often takes the form of bonded labour trafficking, particularly for migrant labourers. Without local support systems, these migrant labourers remain vulnerable to perpetrators of this crime,” she says.
On the other hand, in rural areas, entrenched caste hierarchies and political clout conspire to keep the system going. “In villages, the only source of credit is often the landlord, who is seen as ‘generous’, for he lends readily, even though it is only in return for assured labour at very low wages,” says Kiran Kamal Prasad of Jeevika. The lender-borrower relationship is viewed as symbiotic rather than exploitative even by officials at the village, he says. “In our work we have found northern Karnataka more difficult to penetrate because the feudal powers are stronger there,” he adds.
Indeed, the urban and rural contexts, with their mix of an archaic social structure and new economic compulsions, seem to feed on each other. While agrarian crisis, lack of livelihood options and an oppressive structure act as push factors in villages, the informal sector in and around cities with lax or no labour norms absorb them readily. Brick kilns around cities like Bengaluru, for instance, are essential for the city, with its endless real estate development, and are ever-ready to absorb workers. Ironically, workers who arrive here from villages end up in situations worse than the ones they were in back home.
For instance, Rajesh Thathi from Assam, whom this correspondent had met after he was rescued from an agarbatti factory near Bengaluru earlier this year, said he had worked in a tea plantation for Rs.120 a day. He was promised Rs.7,500 per month along with provision for stay and food. “I thought I can save and send money back home,” he said. But he was not been paid any money till his rescue and was physically abused every time he demanded it and asked to be relieved from the oppressive arrangement.
Old and new compulsions
Analysing the socio-economic factors that provide ground for debt bondage, the Ganeshan committee says that borrowing often happens for a wedding or a serious illness in the family that requires hospitalisation. This again points to a mix of old and new economic compulsions: on the one hand, the system of dowry refuses to fade away. On the other, medical care is increasingly inaccessible to the poor.
While this is the reality, the state seems to maintain an Ostrich-like attitude. The Ganeshan committee is critical of the failure of the district administrations to do periodic surveys and take up rehabilitation work with seriousness, though it is mandatory. “The district officials show complete indifference to our request for information on the prevalence of bonded labour,” says Mr. Ganeshan. It is “unpardonable”, says the report, that the northern district of Bidar, which recorded the highest number of bonded labour cases as per Jeevika’s compilation of data, sent back money sanctioned by the Centre for a survey. Its claim was that there was no need for a survey since the practice simply didn’t exist in the district!
If one needs more proof for the indifference of the state and the failure of the rehabilitation programmes for bonded labourers, the Hangarahalli case provides it. British author Patrick French, in one of the chapters of his book, India: A Portrait, recounts how he went looking for the victims of this much-publicised case and found them begging near a village temple!
