labor25

THE SMALL HANDS OF SLAVERY
With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of
working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries,
working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as
domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and
are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their
families as well. They do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest
skills of literacy. Many of them have been working since the age of four or five, and by the
time they reach adulthood they may be irrevocably sick or deformed-they will certainly be
exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead by fifty. Most or all of
these children are working under some form of compulsion, whether from their parents,
from the expectations attached to their caste, or from simple economic necessity. At least
fifteen million of them, however, are workingas virtual slaves.3 These are the bonded child
laborers of India. This report is about them. "Bonded child labor" refers to the phenomenon
of children working in conditions of servitude in order to pay off a debt.4 The debt that
binds them to their employer is incurred not by the children themselves, but by their
relatives or guardians-usually by a parent. In India, these debts tend to be relatively
modest, ranging on average from 500 rupees to 7,500 rupees,5 depending on the industry
and the age and skill of the child. The creditors-cum-employers offer these "loans" to
destitute parents in an effort to secure the labor of a child, which is always cheap, but even
cheaper under a situation of bondage. The parents, for their part, accept the loans.
Bondage is a traditional worker-employer relationship in India, and the parents need the
money-perhaps to pay for the costs of an illness, perhaps to provide a dowry to a marrying
child, or perhaps-as is often the case-to help put food on the table. The children who are
sold to these bond masters work long hours over many years in an attempt to pay off these
debts. Due to the astronomically high rates of interest charged and the abysmally low
wages paid, they are usually unsuccessful. As they reach maturity, some of them may be
released by the employer in favor of a newly-indebted and younger child. Many others will
pass the debt on, intact or even higher, to a younger sibling, back to a parent, or on to
their own children. The past few years have seen increasing public awareness-in India
itself, but particularly in the international arena-of the high incidence of child servitude in
the carpet industry of South Asia. As a consequence, the international public has come to
associate "child servitude" with the image of small children chained to carpet looms, slaving
away over the thousands of tiny wool knots that will eventually become expensive carpets
in the homes of the wealthy. International concern for the carpet weavers reached a peak
in April 1995, when children's rights activist Iqbal Masih, a twelve-year-old ex-carpet weaver
in Pakistan, was murdered.6 This attention and the outrage it has provoked are entirely
warranted-the use of bonded child labor in the production of carpets for export is extensive,
and conditions in that industry are horrendous.7 But it is vital that the public's concern for
children in servitude not begin and end with carpets. More than 300,000 children are
estimated to be working in the carpet industry,8 the majority of them in bondage. This is a
large number, but it represents only about 2 percent of the bonded child laborers of India.
The great majority of the carpet weavers' bonded brothers and sisters are working in the
agricultural sector, tending cattle and goats, picking tea leaves on vast plantations, and
working fields of sugar cane and basic crops all across thecountry. Apart from agriculture,
which accounts for 64 percent9 of all labor in India, bonded child laborers form a significant
part of the work force in a multitude of domestic and export industries. These include, but
are not limited to, the production of silk and silk saris, beedi (hand-rolled cigarettes), silver
jewelry, synthetic gemstones, leather products (including footwear and sporting goods),
handwoven wool carpets, and precious gemstones and diamonds. Services where bonded
child labor is prevalent include prostitution, small restaurants, truck stops and tea shop
services, and domestic servitude. The practice of child debt servitude has been illegal in
India since 1933, when the Children (Pledging of Labour) Act was enacted under British
rule. Since independence, a plethora of additional protective legislation has been put in
place. There are distinct laws governing child labor in factories, in commercial
establishments, on plantations, and in apprenticeships. There are laws governing the use
of migrant labor and contract labor. A relatively recent law-the Child Labour (Prohibition
and Regulation) Act of 1986-designates a child as "a person who has not completed their
fourteenth year of age."10 It purports to regulate the hours and conditions of some child
workers and to prohibit the use of child labor in certain enumerated hazardous industries.
(There is no blanket prohibition on the use of child labor, nor any universal minimum age
set for child workers.)11 Most important of all, for children in servitude, is the Bonded
Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 which strictly outlaws all forms of debt bondage and
forced labor. These extensive legal safeguards mean little, however, without the political will
to implement them. In India, this will is sorely lacking. All of the labor laws areroutinely
flouted, and with virtually no risk of punishment to the offender. Whether due to corruption
or indifference-and both are much in evidence-these laws are simply not enforced. In those
rare cases where offenders are prosecuted, sentences are limited to negligible fines. Why
does India-the Indian government, the ruling elite, the business interests, the populace as
a whole-tolerate this slavery in its midst? According to a vast and deeply entrenched set of
myths, bonded labor and child labor in India are inevitable. They are caused by poverty.
They represent the natural order of things, and it is not possible to change them by force;
they must evolve slowly toward eradication.12 In truth, the Indian government has failed to
protect its most vulnerable children. When others have stepped in to try to fill the vacuum
and advocate on behalf of those children, India's leaders and much of its media have
attributed nearly all "outside" attempts at action to an ulterior commercial motive. The
developed world is not concerned with Indian children, this view holds, but rather with
maintaining a competitive lead in the global marketplace. Holding to this defensive stance,
some officials have threatened to end all foreign funding of child labor-related projects.
This nationalist rhetoric has been largely a diversionary tactic. What the government has
hoped to hide is the news that, no matter how the data are analyzed, official efforts to end
the exploitation of child laborers are woefully deficient. Former Prime Minister P. V.
Narasimha Rao, for example, made much of his initiative, announced in 1994, to bring two
million children out of hazardous employment by the year 2000. Two million represents only
1.7 to 3.3 percent of the nation's child laborers; the fate of the other 58 to 113 million
children was not addressed. In a welcome move, the United Front government, elected in
May 1996, has promised to eradicate child labor in all occupations and industries, and has
stated that the right to free compulsory elementary education should be made
afundamental right and enforced through suitable statutory measures.13 It remains to be
seen what measures the government will take to fulfill these promises. By focusing primarily
on child labor in export industries and the threat of sanctions on exports, the international
community has sent the unfortunate message that only child labor in export industries must
be addressed. In response, the Indian government has accused its international critics of
protectionism and has adopted superficial remedies designed to assuage their concerns
while continuing to ignore its legal obligation to identify, release and rehabilitate bonded
laborers. Multilateral lending institutions have failed in their obligations as well. By
neglecting to ensure that the projects they fund do not involve the use of bonded child
labor, they have exacerbated the problem of bonded child labor. These institutions, and
their funders should take every measure to ensure that aid does not result in child slavery.
This report, based on two months of field investigations, reveals only a glimpse of the vast
suffering caused by the bonded labor system. This glimpse alone, however, is proof
enough that it is time for India's new government to accept responsibility for the slavery in
its midst, to admit that it is not inevitable, and to end it. India is the world's largest
democracy, a nuclear power, the world's second most populous country, and, although a
poor nation, one of the six largest economies of the world. It is possible to end child
servitude. The only thing lacking is will.