Child-and-adult-labour-in-the-export-oriented-garment-and-gem-polishing-industry-of-India

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Bonded child labour in the synthetic gem polishing industry of Trichy
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all other areas by the year 1995, with the aim to totally eliminate all bonded child labour by the
year 1998 and to obtain the achievement contemplated for 1988 in the year 2000.
The State Plan of Action of 1993 includes strategies 190 to eliminate (bonded) child labour, such as
ensuring the availability of credit for parents, mobilizing of youth groups, NGOs, teachers etc. to
dissuade parents from bonding their children. According to the Plan, NGOs, field functionaries
and teachers will be mobilized to give counselling and support to parents. In the Plan also it is
stated that immediate action of revenue officials and the police is required to charge cases against
employers and parents for bonding children. It means that the law has to be enforced
immediately. None of the above mentioned actions and strategies have been undertaken up to
date.
7.1.2 Review of a study 191 on bonded (child) labour in synthetic gem polishing
industry in Tamil Nadu
A study conducted in 1993-94 on bonded labour in the gem polishing industry in Trichy and
Pudukottai District revealed that the system of 'debt bondage' is widely prevalent among the
people, including children, who are involved in the synthetic gem polishing industry in these
areas. The researcher argues that bonded labour in the districts is not a pre-capitalist form of
production but, rather a part of a dynamic, capitalist small-scale industry that is rapidly expanding
into global markets. The owners of the synthetic gem polishing units make enormous profits by
making their employees unfree or bonded in their labour by encouraging them to take loans. The
loans with very high interests can never be paid back by the workers who are obliged to stay and
work for the employer to pay back the loan plus interest. In this way the employer, through the
debts, controls the labour and is entitled to pay lower wages to the workers because a section of
the wage is meant for debt solving. Thus, as the study revealed, the system of debt bondage
enabled employers to convert wages into debt with the consequence that workers were represented
as repaying their debts through their work, rather than earning wages. The study revealed
further that though the majority of the workers complained about the very low wages, most of the
workers appeared to feel that, because of their 'debt relation' - and often kinship relation - to the
workshop owner, they could hardly engage in worker unions or openly resist the demands of owners.
The workers had to work for long hours and lost job-mobility as soon as they had taken a
loan. Thus, the loans provided was the strategy that employers of the synthetic gem stone
190 During field visits in Trichy, an interview was held with the Bridge Foundation (BF), a NGO based in Bangalore, which is also active on a
small scale in the synthetic gem polishing industry in and around Trichy. BF gives financial support to individuals and also to cooperatives of
workers organized by the local people themselves. The director said that their project in the synthetic gem polishing industry in Trichy was a smallscale
one and they mainly focused on women. Three reasons for their strategy: Firstly, BF did not take the risk of letting their staff get caught by a
highly dangerous mafia operating in the villages. Secondly, BF mainly worked with women because they were not bought by the middlemen (i.e.
most of the women were not bonded labourers) and through women farther-reaching changes could be established. Thirdly, BF stimulated small
businesses which were formed by the people themselves. These, should form a block against the operating mafia and prevent themselves from
becoming bonded labourers. The idea was that an individual who had started his business with the help of BF, started to work with his or her family
and the family started to work with the local community. In this way the community could slowly build up a cooperative among themselves and circumvent
the mafia which made people bonded labourers including the children.
191 Karin Kapadia, 'The Profitability of Bonded Labour: The Gem-Cutting Industry in Rural South India'. In: The Journal of Peasant
Studies, Vol.22, No.3, April 1995, pp. 446-483. Frank Cass: London.