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.

Despite a 1975 law banning debt bondage, almost nobody is ever prosecuted. In any case the stipulated fine—2,000 rupees ($37)—is laughable, and hardly anyone is jailed. The campaigners in Delhi introduced Gurwail Singh in order to make their point. A Punjabi, Mr Singh says that five years ago he borrowed 5,000 rupees from a farmer and agreed to work on the fields to pay his debt. But after the employer slapped him with arbitrary “fines”, plus high rates of interest, he was told he owed over 100,000 rupees. He complained and was beaten so badly he ended up in hospital.

In some states, notably Punjab, officials routinely insist the feudal practice no longer exists. But when Mr Singh tried to prosecute his old boss, the case was rejected. Indeed, his then employer is countersuing. Activists gather other examples. A recent survey of 120 villages in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh unearthed 286 people considered bonded labourers. Other exploitation verges on bonded labour: unpaid workers and girls sent to work in a relative’s textile mill who earn no wages but a lump sum to be used as a dowry.

Tougher punishments would help, plus inspections of farms and industries, like brickyards, that make intense use of cheap labour. More attention should be paid to tribal people and the lowest castes, who supply most bonded workers. But the most effective change would be economic. Encouragingly, rural incomes are rising fast: a national survey of consumption in July suggested villagers are gaining wealth faster than urbanites. A state guarantee of 100 days of paid work for every family is also helping. If poor villagers like Mr Singh could also get property deeds and access to banks and loans, then the power of informal moneylenders would fall, too.