Siddharth Kara - Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia

BONDED LABOR

TACKLING THE SYSTEM OF SLAVERY IN SOUTH ASIA

Siddharth Kara

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2012 Siddharth Ashok Kara

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-52801-6

COVER IMAGE: Erik Messori / OnAsia.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kara, Siddharth.

Bonded labor : tackling the system of slavery in South Asia / Siddharth Kara.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-15848-0 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-52801-6 (e-book)

1. PeonageSouth Asia. 2. Forced laborSouth Asia. 3. Slave laborSouth Asia. I. Title.

HD48475.S567K37 2012

331.11730954dc23

2012008188

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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Therethey stand with bowed heads mute

Chronicling centuries of pain-drawn lines

on their haggard faces.

Their shoulders bent forever under weary loads

Slow they move

as long as they have life.

And after

leave the legacy to their sons

for generations and generations.

EBAR FIRAO MORE, RABINDRANATH TAGORE

After I finished writing my first book on the subject of contemporary forms of slavery, I was not sure that I would write another. I did have two other books in mind for which I had already conducted numerous research trips, but the process of writing the first book, which was focused on the bleak and disheartening subject of sex trafficking, proved a greater challenge than I anticipated. Reliving painful memories, narrating the immense suffering I had witnessed, and trying to do justice to the courage of the hundreds of slaves who had shared their stories with me took a heavy toll on my heart, mind, and health. However, as the months went by after Sex Trafficking was released, I began to feel compelled to write againto continue documenting the breadth of contemporary slavery I had researched around the world, in the hopes that doing so might result in more effective efforts to combat these unconscionable crimes.

in South Asia. The four main countries in which bonded labor in South Asia takes place are India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. There are small amounts of debt bondage in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, but India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal constitute roughly 97 percent of the debt bondage in the region. More narrowly, one could cover the preponderance of the nature and functioning of bonded labor across South Asia within India alone. The giant of the region has been dealing with bonded labor longer than any of its immediate neighbors (who, aside from Nepal, were all part of India up to 1947), and it also has produced by far the most extensive body of research and legal reasoning on the issue. Approximately seven out of ten of the roughly fifteen to eighteen million bonded laborers in South Asia at the end of 2011 toiled in India, and there is almost no single industry of bonded labor exploitation present in any other South Asian nation that is not also present in India. There are, of course, important regional differences in how debt bondage in one industry or another has evolved. There are also very different social responses and legal traditions on the issue in each of the four main countries in which bonded labor takes place. Most important, the faces and narratives from one country to another are distinctive in crucial ways. For these and other reasons, I endeavored to research bonded labor as extensively as possible across the four main countries in South Asia (as well as debt bondage more generally on several continents around the world), in order to provide the most comprehensive overview possible.

The field research for this book dates back to the year 2000 and was completed in 2011. My research was completely self-funded until 2010, when I received the gracious support of the human rights foundation Humanity United. Across eleven years of research, I spent more than ten months in the field throughout India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern portions of Pakistan. I made five trips to India, covering the states of Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. In three trips to Nepal I spanned the breadth of the country from Mahendranagar in the west to Biratnagar in the east. In one trip to Bangladesh I covered the southwestern reaches of the Sundarban region all the way to the far northeast near Sylhet, across the border from Assam. With Pakistan, I was limited to the Sindh and Punjab provinces along the border with India. I had planned a more comprehensive trip to Pakistan, one focused on gathering data and narratives deeper in the country, but I was prevented by the governments failure to grant me a visa.