Dear Editor,
The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is celebrated every year on December 2. The abolition of slavery is indeed a must for the survival of democracy. Though the practice of engaging bonded labour has been criminalised in India, but unfortunately it is yet to be totally wiped out. According to 2018 Global Slavery report as many as 351 out of 743 spinning mills in Tamil Nadu engage bonded labourers. The movements of those labo-urers have been restricted. Their mobile phones have been taken away. Even they do not get wages and payments. What they get is just an assurance of a lump – some at the end of a three year contract.
In Rajasthan for instance many workers have reportedly been trapped in a lifelong debt bondage for loans ranging from astronomical 24 to 36 per cent interest rate. They have to work as bonded labourers for little or no pay at all. There are instances of intergenerational transfer of debt as it is a common practice for immediate kin to replace an old and ailing worker.
Debt bondage has reportedly been used for sexual torture. The bridge between advance payment and slavery also exists in brick kilns in Odisha and Punjab. Even poor people are forced to use their kidneys as collateral for money lenders in some parts of our country.
In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court of India termed the denial of the principle of equal pay for equal work as “exploitative enslavement”. It is horrifying to see construction workers are doing life-threatening jobs without having minimum safety protection and insurance coverage.
Shop assistants in some malls are made to work more than eight hours a day. They are being forced to hand over their mobile phones during working hours. Being totally disconnected, they cannot be with their families in a sudden difficult situation. Sometimes, they are even denied to go to the toilet. On other hand, the NGO Safai Karmachari Andolan has estimated that one sanitation worker die every third day in our country.
More and more we are heading from formal employment system to contractual employment anarchy. And this has enhanced the scope of exploitation like withholding of wages, debt bondage, holiday hijacking and even physical and sexual torture. Informal workers are highly vulnerable to exploitative practices as no record of contract has properly been maintained giving ample opportunity to the employers to adopt use (and abuse the workers) and throw (the ailing ones) methodology. Moreover, two layered discriminations namely social stigmatization and economic marginalization are still prevalent in our country.
When will all of us be allowed to enjoy the ‘Fundamental Right against Exploitation’ as enshrined in Article 23 of the Constitution of India? Unfortunately, there are some people among us who give tacit support to slavery and child labour.
Our Government needs to conduct monthly labour inspections and medical check-up of the workers and upload the data of the contracts and the medical reports of the workers especially in high – risk industries like brick kilns, textiles and granite/ stone/ mineral industries. But we must also play a decisive role to wipe out the menace of slavery. We should all take the pledge of not visiting those houses and shops where the working class is getting inhuman and degrading treatment or a child labourer is employed. We need to upload such incidents on social media and help the administration take immediate action.
Sincerely,
Sujit De,
Kolkata