3071-The political economy of new slavery

Krishna Upadhyaya 121
labour, also, has links with the hierarchy of social identity in South Asia.
In addition to the labour relationship between daniyama (‘the master’ in
Gujarati) and halis (workers), hierarchical caste relations maintained the
caste behaviour of ‘high caste’ and ‘low caste’ – in most cases, this was
exemplified in the practice of untouchability.
For many, the process of being trapped into indebtedness started with
marriage. Male members of the hali class would take a loan to pay for
their marriage, and so bondage would start. While the system starts
with hiring men, due to the increasing debt, eventually their wives and
children, too, work for the masters. The whole family, therefore, falls
into bondage.
The debt increased if labourers were absent from work, or unable to
work. Although the debt made them work like slaves, the masters usually
would not admit that they were slaves. They maintained that the
workers were like their children. Certainly, at times, they took care of
them in many ways. If, however, the masters thought that labourers had
acted against their interest, they could be very harsh. Seldom, however,
did they show their cruelty in public. They tried to appear benevolent,
by lending to the bonded labour families, on the grounds that it was a
social system, rather than economic, being related more to prestige than
profit. The system, therefore, sustained a patron–client relationship.
With greater commercialization in agriculture, less was invested in
the labour force. Benevolence was replaced by the search for profit. The
masters wanted a better return from the workers in whom they had
invested, by making loans. This led to increased cruelty and brutality,
with the masters being less concerned about their labourers’ problems.
The social aspect of the system of bondage also changed with time.
Changes in the rural economy contributed to altered lifestyles. Elite
members of villages began to eat better food than their labourers,
instead of everyone eating the same. Their lives had become much better
than those of their labourers living in the same villages. As transport
became more readily available, voluntary movement of labour became
a reality. Villagers could travel elsewhere to obtain casual work, securing
additional income and providing themselves with more bargaining
power.
The mechanization in agriculture and the 1976 law against the
bonded labour system resulted in at least some landlords refusing to
provide loans in return for work from bonded labourers. Nevertheless,
the old system of bonded labour is still very much in existence in
most of the rural and interior parts of India. This includes most of the
northern states, such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madya Pradesh and Punjab.