Many of India’s informal workers are getting pushed into bonded labour during coronavirus crisis | Read the full report in Scroll.in >>
Loan sharks are exploiting workers’ inability to repay loans. Many families will instead resort to taking out loans at high interest rates in order to survive, while others will fall deeper into debt and end up trapped in bonded labour – India’s most prevalent form of modern slavery – according to activists. […]
In Odisha, charities are using short videos inspired by the animated film “Madagascar” to inform villagers about coronavirus and warn them against taking out loans from local money lenders at high interest rates – a practice known to fuel slave labour. […]
“The relationship between labourer and lender is timeless,” Das said, referring to his son working for the local loan shark. “It stretches for many lives.”
Source: CORONAVIRUS CRISIS, Scroll.in 16 April 2020
URL: https://scroll.in/article/959268/many-of-indias-informal-workers-are-getting-pushed-into-bonded-labour-during-coronavirus-crisis
Date visited: 21 June 2020
“Many brick workers in India are trapped in a cycle of debt-bondage, forced to toil in harsh conditions with little recourse to the law. Anti-Slavery has recently concluded a successful project on this issue. Working with our partners, we supported improvements in working conditions at 31 brick factories and secured the release of 2,251 workers from debt bondage.” | Learn more >>
Human trafficking is a crime. To report in India, call Shakti Vahini
+91-11-42244224, +91-9582909025 or the national helpline Childline on 1098.
“As per a study on human trafficking, the state of Jharkhand has emerged as India’s trafficking hub with thousands of tribal women and girls being trafficked out of the state each year to Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and beyond [while] human traffickers are also involved in many cases of missing children.” – The Wire | Shakti Vahini | Tourism locations | Adivasi tribal bondage slavery trafficking (Safe search) >>
Video | Dungri Latar (At the foothills): In quest of “a life beyond the world of quarry” >>
Many brick workers in India are trapped in a cycle of debt-bondage, forced to toil in harsh conditions with little recourse to the law.
Anti-Slavery has recently concluded a successful project on this issue.Working with our partners, we supported improvements in working conditions at 31 brick factories and secured the release of 2,251 workers from debt bondage.
Source: India in 2019: Addressing debt bondage- Anti-Slavery International
URL: https://www.antislavery.org/impact/impact-our-impact-2019/india-2019/
Date visited: 21 June 2020
There is no memorial at the banyan tree around which the Warli Adivasi Revolt of 1945 began in Talasari taluka’s Zari village. Nearly 5,000 indentured tribals who gathered here from Thane, Vikramgad, Dahanu and Palghar had refused to work on landlords’ fields until they received 12 annas a day in wages, their resistance sowing the first seeds of rights-based movements among the region’s indigenous communities.
Today, the younger generation in Zari, 150 km from Mumbai, has no more than a faint acquaintanceship with their ancestors’ historic struggle but a blend of that history and contemporary circumstances keeps Talasari’s adivasis loyal to those who led that revolt, the Communist Party and the All India Kisan Sabha. […]
“For over a hundred years, practically every tribal in Talasari and nearby worked as bonded labourers, almost owned by upper caste Maharashtrians or Parsi landlords — this was then Umbergaon taluka, in present day Gujarat. It was Godavari Parulekar’s call for rebellion in May 1945 that changed their lives. The oral history of that oppression and the Warsi Adivasi Revolt is told in every tribal household,” says 81-year-old L S Kom, former Lok Sabha member and former Member of the Legislative Assembly from Dahanu
Source: “Home of Warli Adivasi revolt, Talasari’s loyalty to the Left deepens” by Kavitha Iyer, Indian Express, 9 March 2020
URL: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/home-of-warli-adivasi-revolt-talasaris-loyalty-to-the-left-deepens-6305986/
Date visited: 21 June 2020
Our vision is freedom from slavery for everyone, everywhere, always.
We are small and powerful changemakers delivering freedom now and ensuring it for the future. We free children and adults from slavery, we equip them to claim their rights and we change systems to end slavery now and for tomorrow.
Source: Who we are – Anti-Slavery International
URL: https://www.antislavery.org/about-us/who-we-are/
Date visited: 21 June 2020
People subjected to forced labour are frequently from minority or marginalised groups. For example, slavery in Sudan affects different ethnic or religious groups. Bonded labour in India, Nepal and Pakistan disproportionately affects dalits and those who are considered to be of “low” caste, adivasis (indigenous people) and those from other minority groups (including religious minorities). […]
Source: 1807 – 2007: Over 200 years of campaigning against slavery
Address : www.antislavery.org/includes/documents/cm_docs/…/18072007.pdf
Date Visited: Sun Jun 03 2012 18:26:08 GMT+0200 (CEST)
Over 642 children were rescued last year and 92 so far this year [2012]. Most were rescued from jewelry and garment embroidery sweatshops. The remainder were rescued from other industries, such as the plastics industry.
Most were from Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Nepal. […]
The Society receives no government funding. It relies totally on donations raised from members of the public and on the work of unpaid volunteers.
Source: Rescue a slave today
Address : https://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/rescue.htm
Date Visited: Sun Jun 03 2012 18:34:46 GMT+0200 (CEST)
[Bold typeface added above for emphasis]
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[*] Some clarifications on caste-related issues by reputed scholars
Understanding “caste” in the context of Indian democracy: The “Poona Pact of 1932”
“Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar differed over how to address caste inequities through the electoral system. Their exchanges led to the Poona Pact of 1932, which shaped the reservation system in India’s electoral politics. […]
Two prominent figures who have significantly contributed to this discourse are Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Father of the Constitution. The two stalwarts of Indian politics, while revered equally by the public, had contrasting views on the caste system. Their subsequent debates have shaped the course of Indian society and politics. While Gandhi denounced untouchability, he did not condemn the varna system, a social hierarchy based on occupation, for most of his life. He believed in reforming the caste system through the abolition of untouchability and by giving equal status to each occupation. On the other hand, BR Ambedkar, a Dalit himself, argued that the caste system disorganised and ‘demoralised Hindu society, reducing it to a collection of castes’. […]
And yet, despite their differences, they developed an understanding to work for the betterment of the marginalised.” – Rishabh Sharma in “How Ambedkar and Gandhi’s contrasting views paved way for caste reservation” (India Today, 6 October 2023)
URL: https://www.indiatoday.in/history-of-it/story/ambedkar-gandhi-caste-system-poona-pact-1932-reservation-2445208-2023-10-06
~ ~ ~
“That upper caste groups should declare themselves to be OBCs [Other Backward Castes] and want to avail of the reservation policy is a pandering to caste politics of course, as also are caste vote-banks. It is partially a reflection of the insecurity that the neo-liberal market economy has created among the middle-class. Opportunities are limited, jobs are scarce and so far ‘development’ remains a slogan. There’s a lot that is being done to keep caste going in spite of saying that we are trying to erode caste. We are, of course, dodging the real issue. It’s true that there has been a great deal of exploitation of Dalit groups and OBC’s in past history; making amends or even just claiming that we are a democracy based on social justice demands far more than just reservations. The solution lies in changing the quality of life of half the Indian population by giving them their right to food, water, education, health care, employment, and social justice. This, no government so far has been willing to do, because it means a radical change in governance and its priorities.” – Romila Thapar (Emeritus Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University) interviewed by Nikhil Pandhi (Caravan Magazine, 7 October 2015)
URL: https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/discipline-notion-particular-government-interview-romila-thapar
~ ~ ~
“Casteism is the investment in keeping the hierarchy as it is in order to maintain your own ranking, advantage, privilege, or to elevate yourself above others or keep others beneath you …. For this reason, many people—including those we might see as good and kind people—could be casteist, meaning invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it, but not racist in the classical sense, not active and openly hateful of this or that group.” – Book review by Dilip Mandal for Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (The Print, 23 August 2020)
URL: https://theprint.in/opinion/oprah-winfrey-wilkerson-caste-100-us-ceos-indians-wont-talk-about-it/487143/
~ ~ ~
“The theoretical debate on caste among social scientists has receded into the background in recent years. [However] caste is in no sense disappearing: indeed, the present wave of neo-liberal policies in India, with privatisation of enterprises and education, has strengthened the importance of caste ties, as selection to posts and educational institutions is less based on merit through examinations, and increasingly on social contact as also on corruption. There is a tendency to assume that caste is as old as Indian civilization itself, but this assumption does not fit our historical knowledge. To be precise, however, we must distinguish between social stratification in general and caste as a specific form. […]
From the early modern period till today, then, caste has been an intrinsic feature of Indian society. It has been common to refer to this as the ‘caste system’. But it is debatable whether the term ‘system’ is appropriate here, unless we simply take for granted that any society is a ‘social system’. First, and this is quite clear when we look at the history of distinct castes, the ‘system’ and the place various groups occupy within it have been constantly changing. Second, no hierarchical order of castes has ever been universally accepted […] but what is certain is that there is no consensus on a single hierarchical order.” – Harald Tambs-Lyche (Professor Emeritus, Université de Picardie, Amiens) in “Caste: History and the Present” (Academia Letters, Article 1311, 2021), pp. 1-2
URL: https://www.academia.edu/49963457
~ ~ ~
“There is a need for intercultural education. We all need to work together to bridge these divides not only between religions and castes but also regions. It is not correct to think that one part is better than the other. Some of the limitations of India as a whole are due to our common heritage, say the one that has restricted women from having a flourishing life for themselves.” – Prof. V. Santhakumar (Azim Premji University) in “On the so called North-South Divide in India” (personal blog post in Economics in Action, 13 April 2024)
URL: https://vsanthakumar.wordpress.com/2024/04/13/on-the-so-called-north-south-divide-in-india/