Bonded labour: The truth is out there

The UPA's claim that its flagship rural employment scheme has eradicated an age-old scourge is hard to believe

In preparation for the general elections next year, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government recently launched a massive advertising campaign to prove how much it has done for the poor and the downtrodden and made good the promises set out in its last two election manifestos. Around Rs 16 crore has been spent on producing the advertisements. And over Rs 200 crore will be spent on running the advertisements on television and in the newspapers. The Union information and broadcasting minister unveiled the multimedia campaign in mid-May, propagating the so-called claim of the government to have achieved everything that the general public could think of. The first advertisement states, "Thanks to MGNREGA. No bonded labour anymore."
 

Had the advertisement said something to the effect that "Government introduces MGNREGA to tackle labour issues", the UPA would have been on safer ground. A publicity campaign, after all, is just that. But by choosing to headline a propaganda claim, the government has lost much credibility.

A casual glance at recent media reporting will show why. On the same day that this advertisement ran in the newspapers, 17 bonded labourers were released by the district administration in Puri, Odisha. They had been forced to work as barbers for a meagre dole of 15 kg of paddy per year for their families. Additionally, on May 15, all state-level media channels relayed the bondage stories of a dozen labourers from the Sahariya community in the state capital of Rajasthan, Jaipur.

Then again, at the beginning of this year, 149 victims of bonded labour were freed from a brick kiln in Andhra Pradesh. A couple of weeks ago, on a recent bonded labour rescue mission four hours outside Chennai, a 70-year-old man sobbed as he recounted what his life had been like for 25 years: harvesting catfish and baiting them with maggot-infested chicken carcasses in a foetid, man-made cesspool.

This is just a brief glimpse into the reality of the many millions who continue to toil in bondage in brick kilns, rice mills, rock quarries, agriculture and various other industries across the country.

The advertisement raises an additional puzzle. It seems to imply that the bonded labour system flourished until the advent of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). So what about the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1976? Are we to assume it did not have any impact?

According to a senior government official in the ministry of labour, over 300,000 bonded labourers have been rehabilitated in the 37 years since the Act was passed. These data are based on the number of bonded labourers who have been able to avail of government benefits after procuring release certificates. The data do not include the actual number of people rescued from bondage since many are unable to produce the necessary documents, so this may be an underestimate. But this uncertainty only underlines the fact that accurate estimates of bonded labour are hard to establish, so the current government's claims to having abolished it are decidedly weak on this score.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch put the number of bonded labourers in India at a steep 40 million. Is it possible to assume that all of them have been delivered from their predicament thanks to a rural employment guarantee programme?

Even if the Human Rights Watch number were to be considered an overestimate, take the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates of 2013. According to the ILO, over 21 million people across the world are trapped as forced labour. Of this 11.7 million (or 56 per cent) are in the Asia-Pacific region. Is it possible that none of them exists in India, the second-most populous country in the region?

So, on what basis does the government make this claim? The advertisement does not specify; nor does it provide any statistics to back the headline claim. The text talks of an MGNREGA project in Jharkhand that has brought about social and economic transformation in a district. A blurb says, "The landless SC, ST and BPL population which earlier worked as bonded labour on farms of rich land lords has become free from their clutches owing to MGNREGA projects."

The argument appears to be as linear as the assumption that everyone was liberated when India gained independence in 1947 thanks to the freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. The fact is that the feudal system of bonded labour may have abated after independence thanks to land reforms, but modern forms of bondage have emerged.

To be sure, this is not to detract from the worth of the MGNREGA. Where it is well implemented, it plays an important role in securing the stability of rural workers, with the guarantee of 100 days of paid labour in a year - indeed, if we take the example quoted in the advertisement at face value, it shows how this can work well. But to say bonded labour has been eradicated through a government scheme is to misunderstand the basic concept.

By definition, bonded labourers are denied freedom to leave their place of work and are not allowed to work elsewhere by employers for a variety of reasons (past debts being a key one). As a result, they are cut off from access to state or central government benefits and schemes, such as the MGNREGA, to which they are entitled. They simply do not have the freedom to engage in such schemes.

The first step in any plan to effectively address the issue of bonded labour must be a concerted effort to ensure their freedom through a robust identification system and official release. This will require formulating a comprehensive national bonded labour strategy that complements state-level plans. It will require the strict and effective implementation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act throughout the country. It is only once bonded labourers are free that schemes such as the MGNREGA and other government welfare programmes can be converged and made easily accessible to promote the intended benefits to the vulnerable community.

History shows that some people learn the hard way. The National Democratic Alliance government learnt this after losing the 2004 polls because of its "India Shining" campaign. The UPA government has launched a similar campaign, "Bharat Nirman", investing crores to woo the middle class and poor agrarian voters before the upcoming elections. The problem is the political parties in government might have changed but the bureaucrats running it are the same. The Bharat Nirman authorities still believe that the general public can be persuaded through a campaign like this.

The author is media specialist, International Justice Mission