11 million people living in modern slavery in India, warn campaigners

A report by the Walk Free Foundation, a human rights group that campaigns to eradicate modern slavery, said six members of the G20 (Group of 20 nations) have the largest number of people in modern slavery – either in forced labour or forced marriage.

Photograph: iStock, credit Boonyachoat

India tops the list with 11 million, followed by China with 5.8 million, Russia with 1.9 million, Indonesia with 1.8 million, Turkey with 1.3 million and the United States with 1.1 million.

Although bonded labour – where employers give high-interest loans to workers who work at low wages to pay off the debt – is banned in India under the Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act, 1976 and Article 23 of the Constitution of India, the plague continues to exist. According to figures from the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment quoted by The Hindu Business news website, 13,512 bonded laborers were freed and rehabilitated in the four years up to 2019. Therefore, while bonded labour has been abolished on paper, the neglected state of affairs has allowed organised networks to take advantage of social hierarchies and employ or supply bonded labourers, says campaigners.

It is a vicious cycle of slavery that mostly affects marginalised groups such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in India.

For instance, the Musahars (who work as rat catchers) and other Dalit communities who work as labourers at brick kilns or on agricultural farms, are often defined by experts as being subject to a modern form of slavery or bonded labour.

There are an estimated one million Musahars in 14 districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and more than double the number in certain districts in neighbouring Bihar.  

Shruti Nagvanshi, the founder of the People’s Vigilance Committee for Human Rights (PVCHR), a non-governmental organisation which works to ensure basic rights for marginalised groups in Indian society, says almost all of the Musahars are landless, socially outcast, treated as untouchables and live in ghettos called Musahar Toli on the outskirts of villages. 

The community ekes out a hopeless existence working in brick kilns, as all of them owe money to the kiln owners. The community is Mahadalits, which is at the lowest rung of the Scheduled Castes. 

In a case study of Belwa village in Varanasi district published as an academic paper by the Springer publishing company, Professor Archana Kaushik from the Department of Social Work at Delhi University, aptly describes the conditions of the Musahar community in the villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.  

Pointing out that about 10 per cent or nearly 50 million of the population working in the informal sector in India are caught in the trap of indebtedness, she said: “It is this that leads them to labour bondage and then it becomes a vicious cycle.”

She added that Dalits, especially Musahars, do not have a regular source of income, and those working in brick kilns struggle hard to meet their survival needs because during the monsoon season, brick kilns are closed for about four months. As a result, several cases of deaths from hunger are reported, largely among children.

“In the absence of any foodgrain at home, many [Dalits working in brick kilns] are found searching harvested corn fields to collect the unnoticed fallen scraps or chasing rats to their burrows for scraping out stored grains. In harsher times, they even wash undigested grains from cow dung to curb their hunger,” wrote Professor Kaushik.  

She points out: “Despite the provisions of schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, most Dalits do not enjoy the ‘Right to Livelihood’ as upper-caste decision-makers do not let them avail of job cards.” This is because, she explains, the sarpanch (head of a village) usually fears that if Dalits start making use of the scheme’s benefits, he will no longer be able to find cheap and pliable labour to work in his brick kilns.

The Dalits are denied food security under the Targeted Public Distribution System as their names are not included in the Below Poverty Line list, which is a prerequisite to gain access to subsidised food grains under the scheme, warns Professor Kaushik.

The Global Slavery Index can be found here.