3071-The political economy of new slavery

Krishna Upadhyaya 131
In Pakistan brick kilns are the chief primary source industry where
bonded labour is widespread. The practice is particularly marked in
Punjab and North-west Frontier provinces. The workers generally are
illiterate and landless people who are attracted to the prospect of an
alternative livelihood instead of agriculture, and who are attracted by the
loan advances. Since half of the wages earned are deducted to repay the
loan advances, often additional loan advances have to be taken, which
cannot then be repaid. In this way, loans often pass from one generation
to another in a family. Sometimes, another brick kiln owner will
repay a worker’s loan, and take him on. In this way, the first employer,
virtually, is selling the worker to the second employer (APFL, 1989).
Labourers preparing katcha (unbaked) bricks only receive credit for
1,000 out of every 1,200 bricks that they make. The owners, therefore,
have 20,000 free bricks for every million produced (APFL, 1989).
Currently, in Pakistan, some 700,000 men, women and children are
thought to be in debt-bondage at nearly 4,000 brick kilns. Some labour
organizations, including Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and
Research (PILER) claim to have found bonded labourers at stone
quarries and tanneries in Pakistan, but there are few details.
The brick kilns in Kathmandu and the plains of Nepal mostly use
migrant workers (men and boys) from the Indian states of Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh. Usually, middlemen contract them. They are said to be
working against advances. Often, they are recruited in large numbers,
and are held in the kiln areas. Child rights organizations say that nearly
50 per cent of the workers are under the age of 18. More research is
needed.
The service sector
Throughout the Indian subcontinent, but especially in India, Pakistan
and Nepal, women and children are employed in domestic work. In
rural areas, they are part of the family labour employed by landlords
and the moneyed class. Migrant domestic workers are more vulnerable
than their rural counterparts, as they leave their homes and live in with
their employers with the risk of being physically or sexually abused.
While more research into bondage among domestic workers in India
is needed, it is clear that it exists. The Arunodaya Centre for working
children, an organization working on child labour in Chennai, says that
‘bondage among domestic workers remains invisible’, since the workers
are widely distributed within individual households. Nearly 80 per cent
of the domestic workers are women (ASI, 2002d). It says that, in
Tamilnadu, 29 per cent of the resident child domestic workers have