 Summary of this article
- India promised to end bonded labour by 2030 — yet thousands of families remain unpaid prisoners in brick kilns and farms in 2025.
- Rescued workers rarely receive rehabilitation money or justice; most fall back into the same cycle of debt and slavery.
- Officials deliberately refuse to register cases as “bonded labour” to avoid international scrutiny and protect powerful contractors.
Amar Kumari Bharti’s 15-year-old son was made to sleep beside a stranger, night after night. The reason? A thekedaar had to assure himself that neither Bharti nor her son would escape.
They worked for a thekedaar as bonded labourers, unpaid, forced to live in inhumane conditions; a fate shared by many other families working at the brick kilns at Maharajganj, Uttar Pradesh.
This is the story of AmarKumari Bharti (40) from Chhattisgarh, who says she realised very early in life that her only option for survival was to work at brick kilns, with no escape. “My whole life has gone into this.”
Bharti and her family lived in inhumane conditions–no rations, no money; not being allowed to seek medical attention except in the most dire circumstances.
“We were not allowed to seek medical help until the situation became life-threatening. Only then would he (the thekedaar) let us see a doctor, and even then, he would send a man to keep watch over us because he thought, ‘they will run away’”, she says.
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Bharti used to work continuously for more than 12 hours, till early morning and starting again by noon.
Bonded labour often starts with a small loan, but once people begin working, they’re never told how much they still owe or when the debt will end, so they end up trapped far longer than they expected.
Outlook RTI: With Rate Of Rescuing Bonded Labourers Down By 80%, Will Centre Be Able To Abolish It By 2030?
BY Abhik Bhattacharya
Bonded Labour Continues Long After the Deadlines
India's 2030 pledge is to end forced and bonded labour. But a new report has laid bare a chasm between promises and reality. Published in November, the 'Report on Migrant Bonded Labour in India' scrutinises the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976 (BLSAA) and the Central Sector Scheme for the Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourers 2016. The report draws from surveys of 950 rescued workers across 19 states, including discussions with nearly 1,000 more.
The report's roots trace back to 2016, when the Union Government set a 15-year timeline for total abolition of bonded and forced labour, echoing NITI Aayog's push under Sustainable Development Goal 8.7. The goal calls on all countries to take immediate and effective measures to end forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking, and the worst forms of child labour, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and to eliminate child labour in all its forms by 2025.
This year also saw revisions to the rehabilitation scheme, boosting cash aid to ₹ one lakh for adult men, ₹ two lakh for women and children, and ₹ three lakh for disability cases.
The National Campaign Committee for the Eradication of Bonded Labour (NCCEBL) launched the study in April 2024 to test the 1976 and 2016 enforcements. It asked the questions: Do district magistrates identify bonded labour promptly? Do the vigilance committees deliver rehabilitation?
The survey was carried out across multiple states and districts that are known for seasonal migration and for labour-intensive industries, such as brick kilns and stone quarries. These are the sites where migrant labourers are most likely to enter work through informal advances or labour contractors.
The researchers noted patterns of control: advances taken during the lean seasons, movement across state borders, withholding of wages, surveillance in the workplace, and threats that prevent workers from leaving. The study was therefore designed not only to trace where workers come from, but to follow what happens to them once the state intervenes.
Rescue, the report argues, is only the first step, and not necessarily a decisive one.
Rehana Begum (42), another rescued bonded labourer, had been forced to work since 2014. It took her four years to regain her freedom in 2017.
A resident of Bihar, Begum travelled to Delhi in search of a better life. Her husband owned a small roadside tea stall in Dwarka Sector 7. She had no way of knowing that taking an advance of Rs 5,000 would end up costing her four years of forced labour and exploitation.
One afternoon, when Begum’s husband was away for lunch, a man approached her, a thekedaar, and asked if she wanted a job. Begum naively responded that she, being an uneducated woman, couldn’t do a job. The man offered her work looking after the public washroom in a DDA park. The timings, 10 am to 6 pm, sounded manageable, a regular day’s work. It gave her a sense of hope, a possibility of a better life for her three children.
“After the job was finalised, the thekedaar suggested that I should also shift inside the park and that they would help me in moving and setting up a jhuggi (makeshift house). They (the thekedaar and DDA) paid me Rs 5,000 advance and helped me in shifting. They had said that my duty would start at 10 am, but I was then forced to wake up at 5 am and work until 11 pm.” |
