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Bonded labour
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Introduction
Bonded labour – or debt bondage – is probably the least known
form of slavery today, and yet it is the most widely used method of enslaving
people. A person becomes a bonded labourer when his or her labour is demanded
as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped
into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The
value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money
borrowed. Millions of people are held in bonded labour around the world.
Bonded labour has existed for thousands of years. In South Asia it took
root in the caste system and continues to flourish in feudal agricultural
relationships. Bonded labour was also used as a method of colonial labour
recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia.
Bonded labourers are routinely threatened with and subjected to physical
and sexual violence. They are kept under various forms of surveillance,
in some cases by armed guards. There are very few cases where chains are
actually used (although it does occur) but these constraints on the bonded
labourers are every bit as real and as restricting.
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Why does bonded labour continue to exist?
Poverty, and people prepared to exploit the desperation of others lies
at the heart of bonded labour. Often without land or education, the need
for cash just for daily survival forces people to sell their labour in
exchange for a lump sum of money or a loan.
Despite the fact that bonded labour is illegal in most countries where
it is found, governments are rarely willing to enforce the law, or to
ensure that those who profit from it are punished.
Today millions of people in the world are in bonded labour.
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"[Bonded labourers] are non-beings, exiles of civilization,
living a life worse than that of animals, for the animals are at least
free to roam about as they like… This system, under which one
person can be bonded to provide labour for another for years and years
until an alleged debt is supposed to be wiped out, which never seems
to happen during the lifetime of the bonded labourer, is totally incompatible
with the new egalitarian socio-economic order which we have promised
to build…” |
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--Justice PN Bhagwati, Indian Supreme Court, 1982
Who are bonded labourers?
Entire families kept like cattle on agricultural estates in South Asia;
children trafficked for profit in West Africa; and women exported for
domestic and sexual slavery in Europe.
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"I became bonded after I got married to my husband 20 years
ago – his family had been bonded for three generations to the
same landlord – they took loans for marriage, for illness, for
education and so it went on… I used to work from 6.00 am in the
landlord’s house – cleaning, fetching water…Then I
would go to work on the farm…cutting, threshing and so on until
7.00 pm or later. Sometimes I would have to go back to the landlord’s
house to clean and wash everything. Only after I had finished could
I go home to feed my family. My landlord never let me work with another
landlord, he would abuse us and threaten to beat us if we ever went
to work for someone else. If we were ill, the landlord would come
to our houses and tell us that we were very lazy and so on… As
women, we had to work more than men because women had to work in the
landlord’s house as well as the farm. Even after working on the
farm, we had sometimes to go back to the landlord’s house to
work…” |
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| --Leelu Bai, former bonded labourer adivasi
(indigenous) woman from Thane District, India, 1999 |
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