Toil and trouble

BONDAGE, says Harsh Mander, a prominent Indian social activist, “is endemic. It is an essential factor of labour relations across India.” On October 31st Mr Mander and a host of others launched a new campaign against the practice. The desperately poor, especially indebted villagers, are often forced to toil for no wages and denied a chance to work elsewhere. They are slaves in all but name.

Depending how you define it—workers are usually snared after an employer gives or promises a small loan—victims number possibly in the millions. One activist describes how, last year, his group helped to free 512 bonded workers trapped in a single brick kiln in Tamil Nadu. All were migrants ferried in by a middleman from distant Odisha. They spoke no Tamil and had no notion of their legal rights or of a means of escape. In another case some of the 30 bonded workers found in a rice mill said that they had inherited debts from their parents.