How caste encourages bonded labor
Traditionally, the Dalits did not have an independent existence and even today depend on the higher castes for their daily survival.
“Dalits traditionally toiled and lived on the farms owned by the rich upper castes. They believe their life is meant for serving their masters. They never had an identity of their own,” said Sundeep Pouranik, a senior journalist based in Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh state.
Pouranik told UCA News that many among the Dalits and other oppressed communities continue to perform traditionally assigned duties “like robots, without asking any questions.”
The men are employed in the fields and women are usually engaged in household work. “There is no payment, but they are given food, accommodation and clothes to cover their bodies,” he said.
Entire families perform their assigned tasks until death. The children take over after their parents. They are unaware of the progress happening in the world outside.
“When it comes to marriage, a Dalit boy will have to marry on the directions of his master to a girl who probably is already working as a bonded laborer. After the marriage, the couple will continue to be exploited,” Pouranik said.
Though there has been a remarkable improvement in the status of Dalits, older forms of exploitation haven’t been completely abolished. Men and women who are illiterate and financially weak are still forced to continue with old traditions but in different forms.
“They may wear better clothes, live in their own houses, but they continue to labor in the farms and houses of rich upper-caste people for paltry pay or no wages as they have no other means of survival,” Pouranik explained.
Modern forms of bonded labor
Broadly, child labor, agricultural debt bondage and bonded migrant labor are under the legal framework as forms of bonded labor, but it has many manifestations in modern India.
“Yes, it is true. Legally, bonded labor no longer exists in India. But in practice, it is thriving,” said Father Caesar Henry, who is working to protect the land of indigenous people from the clutches of money lenders in Assam state in northeast India.
“Our people are poor and have no savings. They, mostly indigenous people, borrow from money lenders when they get sick, don’t have food or for celebrations such as marriages,” Father Henry told UCA News
“The money lenders charge at least 150 percent interest and when they fail to return it, they are forced to work on their own land and produce crops for the money lender.
“In this process, there is no clash of interests or conflict. The debtor works happily on his land for the money lender and his family assists the family of the money lender in exchange for food and sometimes little money. This is a new form of bonded labor being practiced in Assam.”
When the poor man is unable to clear the debt even after working for years, he is forced to migrate to urban centers. Then the money lender takes over his land and the poor man ends up losing everything.
“The poor accept this as their inability [to pay] rather than questioning the illegal practice. Unfortunately, they cannot claim their land back as they do not have proper documents to assert their legal rights,” Father Henry lamented.
They migrate to cities and are paid less than the minimum wages as unemployment is rampant in the country
The priest and his team encourage indigenous people to legally register their land in their family name so that no one can exploit their situation.
The increased depletion of farmland and constant crop failures due to natural calamities are forcing many small and medium-level farmers to become laborers in the cities and towns of India.
“They migrate to cities and are paid less than the minimum wages as unemployment is rampant in the country. Such practices are indeed modern methods of bonded labor,” Carole Geeta of Mission Sisters of Ajmer, an activist lawyer based in Rajasthan state in eastern India, told UCA News.
Many cities have designated labor addas or hangouts around street corners where migrant workers gather early each morning to seek work. Labor contractors and sundry middlemen frequent them and bargain hard to fix the lowest wage rate.
“The case of domestic workers is the same. They too are denied a dignified wage. On the contrary, they are exploited, often taking advantage of individual vulnerabilities and the high unemployment situation,” the nun said.
Migrant workers are highly exploited, especially those working in unorganized sectors such as construction.
“Workers are promised fair wages and good working facilities when they are hired, but in reality they don’t get even the minimum wages. Their health care and social security are not addressed,” she explained.
ILO combating forced labor
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), in one of its reports on special action programs to combat forced labor published in 2005, noted: “In India, with its great diversity of labour arrangements, it can never be easy to present an overall picture of bonded labour incidence and characteristics. This was despite India being the first country in South Asia to abolish bonded labor in 1976.”
The ILO admits that India had taken many important measures since then to seek the eradication of forced and bonded labor, including Supreme Court judgments of the early 1980s.
“The picture that emerges from the review provides compelling evidence of the persistence of bonded labour in a wide range of economic sectors and many different states,” said the report.
“Although it appears that the more traditional forms of agrarian labour attachment in India have declined substantially, it seems also that new forms of bondage have emerged in more modern agricultural as well as in many different sectors of the informal economy.”
According to the ILO, migrant laborers appear particularly vulnerable to bonded labor exploitation today through recruitment systems where labor contractors and intermediaries lure ill-informed workers from their home communities with advance payments and false promises of well-paid, decent work.
The report also said that “deceptive arrangements are increasingly a feature of forced labour in all parts of the world, whether affecting internal or international migrants.”
Labor rights activists are concerned the federal government has not so far framed a National Employment Policy, even though India has ratified the ILO’s Employment Policy Convention of 1964.
In the absence of a clear policy and enough data on contract and casual or temporary workers employed in the government and private sectors, inhuman practices continue to thrive, they say.
“Bonded labor will continue to exist in the country until and unless government puts an end to red-tapism and encourages prosecution of those who violate the norms,” said A.T. Padmanabhan, a national working committee member of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.
“We see everywhere employers taking advantage of the vulnerability of the poor and the inaction of law-enforcing agencies to act against the violations,” Padmanabhan told UCA News.
“Fear of law is a must to end illegal practices like bonded labor. The federal government has now turned the labor-friendly laws as corporate friendly, leaving little chance for the working class to assert their rights.”
Top court asserts rights of migrant workers
The Supreme Court recently issued directions to the Modi government on registering the country’s vast unorganized workforce and its huge numbers of inter-state laborers on a national database and ensuring that none of them went hungry.
The government has been given a deadline of July 31 to make available a portal for its National Database for Unorganised Workers project so that it may be used for registering unorganized workers across India.
The country’s top court, while disposing of suo motu proceedings on the miseries of migrant laborers, has now fixed a deadline of Dec. 31 for all states and union territories to complete the process.
The court’s intervention and verdict open up the possibility for inter-state and unorganized workers to at last be able to reap the benefits of welfare laws enacted for them.
If that system becomes operational, migrant workers like Atala may not be stranded at petrol stations. They will have a system to get state help.
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