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One of the major yet rarely discussed issues in the informal sector of the economy has been the problem of bonded labour. A large proportion of India’s labour force is employed in the informal sector of the economy where they are paid low wages, do not have job security of tenure and are not covered under labour protection laws. Bonded labourers are exploited in terms of long working hours, coercion, irregular or no wages on account of a loan or social obligation and restrictions of movement from one employer to another employer. In India, the issue of bonded labour is not just an economic problem but is also a reflection of its social system, which is characterized by grading of occupations due to the age old caste stratification. Among the total rehabilitated bonded labour, 83 percent come from Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities. Further, women and children constitute a large chunk of bonded labourers.

Union government data shows that high incidence of bonded labour has been reported from States such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh. These five States account for around 84 per cent of the released bonded labourers in the country. States such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan also have a sizable number of bonded labourers. Generally, there has been a lack of recognition of the existence of bonded labour by the Union and state governments. The major push factors for a worker to go into bondage have reportedly been the skewed distribution of public resources, landlessness, lack of housing facilities, illiteracy and lack of access to credit market. Further, there are many other factors which lead to the bondage of labourers such as, unlicensed and exploitative recruitment practices relating to migrant workers, role of intermediaries, use of coercion, lack of collective action by employees, caste based occupational practices and indifference of the state machinery towards bonded labourers.

Forced labour has been recognized globally as a serious crime. The Government of India ratified the International labour organisation (ILO) Convention C029 on 30 November 1954. In India, the Constitution gave emphasis to the Magna Carta of Civil Liberties as per Article 23. It has a specific provision declaring “trafficking in human beings, begar and similar forms of forced labour to be punishable and unconstitutional offences”. The Government of India ratified the International labour organization (ILO) Convention C029 on 30 November 1954. Despite ratifying the ILO Convention, the Government of India took a long time to frame the laws on abolition of bonded labour system in the country. After the enactment of Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, the prevalence of bonded labour was made illegal and it was intended to be abolished throughout the country with effect from October 10, 1975.

Union government initiated the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labour in 1978 and revised it in May 2000. Between 1978-79 and 2015-16, Rs. 164 crore was provided by the Union government to states for rehabilitation of 2.8 lakh labourers. The budget allocation at national level accounts to Rs.4.8 crore per annum for rehabilitation of bonded labourers. In 2016, the Union government restructured and revamped the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) and termed it the Central Sector Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourers. In the Central Sector (CS) Scheme, the State Governments are not obliged to pay the matching contribution in terms of cash assistance for rehabilitation of bonded labourers. There has been no change in the nature and number of interventions with this change from CSS to CS scheme.

All the major components of CSS like cash assistance, survey, awareness and evaluation studies have been retained in the guidelines of central sector scheme. However, two major changes that have been made in the Central Sector Scheme include, fund flow processes and increase in the unit cost of services in the components like cash assistance and survey. Financial assistance for rehabilitation of Rs. 20,000/- per beneficiary has been increased to Rs 1 lakh per adult male beneficiary, 2 lakh for children, orphans, forced child labour and 3 lakh for woman or children rescued from ostensible sexual exploitation in CS. Likewise, the cost for Survey of Bonded Labour has been increased from 2 lakh to 4.5 lakh per district. In CS, the full cash rehabilitation assistance is released to bonded labour after conviction of the accused which was not there in CSS. In result, due to poor conviction of accused only Rs. 20000 is being transferred as immediate assistance to bonded labour not the full financial assistance. Bonded Labour Rehabilitation Fund as corpus has been created at District level by each State as a permanent corpus of at least Rs. 10 lakh; earlier NCLP account was used for receiving fund.

There is a lack of recognition of existence of bonded laborers. The prevalence of bonded labour is not because of inadequate legislative and constitutional safeguards or programme for rehabilitation; actually it is due to poor implementation of laws and programmes. The implementation of the scheme remained restricted to only 18 states. Further, funds were also not released to States on time by the central government. There are inadequate or delayed proposals from the States under the various components of scheme. The budget allocated for rehabilitation under the scheme has also not been utilized. The survey, awareness generation and evaluation studies in scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labour has not been conducted regularly. There is a lack of convergence between different government departments and regular monitoring of the scheme. The proceedings of court cases and the process of convictions have been very slow on account of various reasons.

In 2016, Ministry of Labour and Employment made a commitment to rehabilitating 1.84 crore bonded labour by 2030; and accordingly developed a 15 year plan called, Vision 2030, seven years Strategy and three years Action Agenda. However, for effective implementation of the Vision, the Strategy and the Action Agenda, it is recommended that the clause related to conviction of offenders linked with payment of cash assistance to released bonded labour should be done away with from the Central Sector guidelines. Full cash payment including other rehabilitation support from other schemes must be provided to bonded labourers after preparing the release certificate and First Information Report against the offenders.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Jawed Alam Khan at jawed@cbgaindia.org.