Despite the passage of 50 years since the legal abolition of bonded labour in India, the practice continues to persist in various forms, deeply rooted in economic desperation and systemic failures.
Historical and Legal Context
- Abolition Act of 1976: The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was enacted on 9 February 1976 during the Emergency under Indira Gandhi’s 20-Point Programme, which explicitly prioritised the eradication of bonded labour.
- Constitutional Basis: The Act was designed to implement Article 23(1) of the Indian Constitution, which prohibits human trafficking and begar (forced labour without payment).
- The Concept of Debt Bondage: Bonded labour typically involves debt bondage, where a labourer takes a loan from an employer and, due to high interest rates, is forced to work without pay or for very low wages, thereby losing their freedom of movement.
Current Reality of Bonded Labour
- Pervasiveness in Industries: Bonded labour is not restricted to rural areas; it is prevalent in brick kilns, sugar plantations, the silk industry, and tea and coffee estates.
- Government Subcontracting: The bonded labour is often found in government-funded projects through subcontracting chains.
- Large firms may subcontract work to smaller firms, which in turn subcontract, leading to a lack of oversight and the exploitation of labourers at the bottom of the chain.
- Cinematic Reflection: While technology has changed, the condition of the labourer has not.
- From Ankur (1974) to Homebound (2025), cinema shows that while the form of power has shifted from feudalism to market capitalism, the structural exploitation of marginalised labour remains unchanged.
Challenges that need to be tackled
- Caste-Based Exploitation: Practices like begar are often traditional systems of exploitation.
- In Karnataka, a similar system called Bitti Chakri still exists in rural areas, representing deep-seated caste-based exploitation.
- Judicial Bias: Judicial bias can itself become a barrier to justice.
- Example: When courts characterise bonded labour cases as a “misuse of law,” it risks trivialising exploitation and discouraging vulnerable victims from seeking constitutional remedy.
- Labour Law Dilution: Recent changes to labour laws intended to improve the ease of doing business have replaced Labour Inspectors with Labour Facilitators.
- This has reduced strict checks and the fear of criminal punishment for employers, potentially increasing exploitation.
- Exclusionary Nature of Technology: While Aadhaar was meant to stop fraudulent claims for government benefits such as MGNREGA or rations, it has inadvertently harmed physical labourers.
- Workers with worn-out fingerprints from manual labour (like carrying bricks) often fail biometric scans, leading to the denial of their wages and exclusion from the system.
- There is no systemic mechanism to ensure that labourers receive minimum wages in their bank accounts.
- Need for Living Wages: The core reason for bonded labour is the absence of a living wage.
- If workers were paid enough to sustain themselves, they would not be forced into high-interest loans that lead to bondage.
Way Forward
- Blockchain for Transparency: Adopt blockchain-based, end-to-end wage-tracking systems to create tamper-proof, transparent payment trails from the government to the labourer, eliminating leaks and contractor-level siphoning.
Conclusion
Legal reform without social transformation and empathetic governance cannot eradicate the shadow of bonded labour.
- With rights-based governance, technological transparency, and a shift in social consciousness, the invisible “worn-out fingers” of labour can finally receive the dignity and justice they deserve.
11 Feb 2026
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