Ensuring Zero Tolerance for all Forms of Forced Labour

Introduction

• The first quarter of 2020 in Tamil Nadu witnessed an operation where 247 migrant labourers were rescued from a brick kiln in Tiruvallur district by the One Stop Crisis Team (OSCT) headed by the District Legal Services Authority.
• In a separate operation in Karnataka, 150 victims of bonded labour and labour-trafficking were rescued following an operation that was coordinated by the District Legal Services Authority.
• The Global Slavery Index estimates that on any given day in 2016 there were nearly 8 million people living in modern slavery in India.
• In terms of prevalence of modern slavery in India, there were 6.1 victims for every thousand people.
• The most current available data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) indicate that there were 8,132 reported cases of human trafficking across India in 2016.
• In the same year, 15,379 people were trafficked of whom 9,034 victims were below the age of 18.
• Persons are being trafficked for the purpose of forced labour, followed by sexual exploitation for prostitution, and other forms of sexual exploitation.
• These recent incidents of forced labour and labour trafficking show the extent of gravity of the crime.
  • Forced labour often affects the most vulnerable and excluded groups, for example commonly discriminated Dalits in India.
  • Women and girls are more at risk than boys and men, and children make up a quarter of people in forced labour.
  • Forced labour and debt bondage are common practice across the primary, secondary and tertiary economic sectors in India.
• Now to further go into the deeper understanding of forced labour we need to understand various aspects associated with it. We can differentiate it into different sections as follows:

The meaning of Forced Labour

• According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), Forced labour refers to situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle means such as accumulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities.
• Forced labour is the most common element of modern slavery.
• It is the most extreme form of people exploitation.

What constitutes the different categories of forced labour?

Forced labour covers different attributes of the conditions associated with labourers such as

• Threats or actual physical harm
• Restriction of movement or confinement to the workplace or a limited area
• Debt bondage
• Withholding wages or excessive wage reduction that violates previously made agreements
• Retention of passports and identity documents
• Threat of denunciation to the authorities, when the worker has an irregular immigration status
• Trafficking in persons is the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them
• Bonded labour out of traditional social structure
• Bonded labour in agriculture
• Bonded labour in the rural and urban unorganised and informal sector
• Child bonded labour

What are the most prone sectors for forced labour?

• Forced labour occurs in the formal and informal sector as well as in sectors not traditionally considered as employment sectors, such as domestic work.
• Generally, the informal and hence unprotected sector is more vulnerable to forced labour.
• In some cases, bonded labour patterns reflect traditional feudal relationships.
• The seasonal migration forms of working in and across the urban cities also attracts it for example previously formal sectors, such as construction, also tend to become increasingly informal with the use of contractors, intermediaries and others to hire workers, often for short periods. Such situations reinforce the risk of trafficking and bonded labour.
• Its traditional stronghold of agriculture but it is increasingly found in other sectors such as domestic service, brick-kilns, rice-mills, mining and quarrying, and carpet weaving.

What initiatives can be taken to combat forced labour?

Forced labour has deep roots as it had taken a form of deliberate crime instead of being a traditional social relationship. This requires a through approach to tackle it. Some of the initiatives could be taken as-

• The implementation of core labour standards can be done effectively.
• Awareness-raising work with employers and consumers
• Advocacy-work with trade unions
• Legislative changes and better law enforcement
• Steps against anti-trafficking movement
• An effective framework for the protection of trafficked people and migrant workers, especially women and children
• Attention should be given on the developmental approaches that could eliminate the causes of bondage
• A strong regulatory framework to tackle it.
• A set of promotional and redistributive policies that favour labourers

What Constitutional and Legal Provisions we have to prohibit forced labour?

• The Article 23 of the Constitution of India prohibits forced labour and considers it an offence punishable under the law.
• Article 19 (right to freedom), article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty), article 24 (prohibition of employment of children in factories, mines and other forms of hazardous work), article 38 (the State to secure a social order for the promotion of the welfare of the people) also provide justice and freedom to every citizen.
• State can however impose compulsory service for public purposes.
• The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 makes all forms of bonded labour illegal. Anyone who compels another person to render any bonded labour is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and also with fine which may extend to two thousand rupees.

• Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, also administered by Ministry of Labour and Employment.
• Among important labour laws regulating migrant workers are
• the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979
• the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970
• Human trafficking and forced labour are offences of unambiguously grave criminality and severity under Sections 370, 341, and 374 of the IPC.
• The Government of India ratified ILO Convention No. 29 on 30 November 1954.

Which of the factors imparts and promote forced labour?

There are few systematic analyses of the causes and correlates of bonded labour in India. Some of them could be understand as follows:

• Economic factors: Forced labour happens in the context of poverty, lack of sustainable jobs and education, as well as a weak rule of law, corruption and an economy dependent on cheap labour.
• Social structure: The link between caste and social structure and bondage, traditional feudal social relations and bonded labour can cause forced labour.
• Migration related factors: The bondage of migrant labour is seen as a way of both disciplining labour and of keeping labour costs down. There are deep vulnerabilities associated with labour nomadism among the unorganised workforce. Bonded labour systems thrive on the labour of migrants, women and children.
• Capitalism: Migratory labour is less able to assert rights and entitlements and is more vulnerable to predatory capitalism.
• Agriculture based economy: Two-thirds of the country’s workforce is still in agriculture and a similar proportion of arable area is rain-fed and drought-prone. The landholding structure is dominated by upper or middle castes who also dominate the emergent non-agrarian economy. Loans have to be taken by the poor labourers to tide over seasonal shortages or contingent expenditure. This causes a cycle of debt and bonded labour.
• Middleman and Contractors: Contractors or employers step in with advances either to meet repayment requirements in the areas of origin or to provide the labourers with assistance to tide over the financial emergency. The migrant labourers and agriculture labourers then become involved in a vicious cycle of debt from which they cannot escape and which provides a handle to contractors and employers to impose numerous adverse conditions.
• Non- tribal control in Tribal areas: In the tribal areas, the alienation of tribals from land and non-tribal control over land created the conditions for debt bondage in agriculture. Further, the uprooting of tribals from their traditional habitat, receding forest cover, low agricultural productivity and rain-fed agriculture, create the need for credit and for seeking employment and livelihoods under bondage, often through migration.
• Cultural reasons: Caste-based discrimination, vast poverty and inequality have imparted it at a large extent.
• Overpopulation in urban areas: In urban areas, following the migration of families to overpopulated cities, the disintegration of such families due to alcoholism and unemployment often results in a proliferation of children living on the street, becoming laborers, and entering into prostitution.

What is the Status of forced labour in India?

• The Global Slavery Index estimates that on any given day in 2016 there were nearly 8 million people living in modern slavery in India. In terms of prevalence of modern slavery in India, there were 6.1 victims for every thousand people.
• The high incidence in States such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh.
• These States accounted for around 84 per cent of the identified and released bonded labourers in the country, with some other States reporting a few cases as well.

Where the country is lacking to address the issue?

• Lack of understanding of the issue: The general narratives in India on bonded labour and the debates over its root cause are largely confined to socio-economic vulnerabilities. They do not sufficiently address the underlying threats by the violent oppressor/perpetrator. It requires a distinct categorization under the criminal exploitation.
• The impossibility of Decent Work conditions: India’s labour legislation provides a legal framework for decent work. But in absence of decent work exploitation begins. It is more surrounded in the informal sector which comprises the maximum percentage of the work force.
• Sacrificing labour welfare for economic growth: The transformation of the role of labour officials from implementers of the law to business 'facilitators' to maintain a business-friendly image is also causing the sacrifice of labour laws. There is a need to correct the mechanisms to prevent or respond to criminal exploitation of labour.
• Shortfalls of the portal: The Shram Suvidha portal is the Central Inspection Framework launched in 2014 by the Centre and is a unified single-window portal. Even as some States have been integrated with the portal, but there is still a lack of unification in the procedure of state and centre.
• Lack of concerns over human rights: This points to a clear lack of will by the Union and State governments to provide the needed awareness to business fraternity on human rights atrocities that are cognisable and punishable offences.
• Lack of risk assessment: Under the inspections under Shram Suvidha and optional inspections, priorities are mostly based on fatalities, accidents, lockouts, closures, strikes, court directions etc. There are no indications of risk-assessments over human rights crimes like bonded labour or labour-trafficking.
• Shift of burden: As States exclude risk determinations on labour-trafficking, bonded labour, or forced labour. It is seen that a complete shift of burden is done on to businesses to solely undertake risk assessments, traceability, and responsibility to tackle these issues.
• Gaps in enforcement: In many States, bonded labour is perceived as a customary arrangement between the haves and the have-nots in certain communities. Due to the lack of conceptual literacy on bonded labour, and its misconstruction as a labour dispute than a human rights crime, a gap in enforcement is seen.
• Lack of uniformity of directives: In the absence of directives flowing down to the district levels, all on-ground officials lack conceptual clarity, roles, and procedural uniformity, and are, therefore, limited only by their discretion, prejudices.

What could be done to reduce the burden of force labour?

• Social change and social movements, economic modernization and state intervention, a clear definition and understanding of forced labour, a more thorough review and implementation of laws, gap filling in the enforcement, awareness generation among the people are some of the steps that could be taken to stop this menace.

Conclusion

• It is necessary to provide the flow of information required for interdepartmental cooperation to achieve effective identification, rescue, and rehabilitation of the victim. It is necessary to have labour setting to be monitored for proactive prevention of such crimes and a robust response towards the forced labour.