In Bengaluru, bonded labour still a harsh reality

BENGALURU: A wailing mother begging at her master’s feet for a day’s leave to cremate her young son, who died as the family had no money for his treatment. A woman mortgaging her toddlers, leaving them with her master in exchange for a day’s leave to meet her dying brother.

No sick leave, no permission to step out of their workplace for years, little to eat, bare drinking water and sanitation facilities, nominal pay for 12-14 hours of bone crushing work, and repeated physical torture against both men and women.

These were the conditions in which 258 bonded labourers from Bengaluru Urban, Mysuru and Ramanagara districts lived, till the International Justice Mission (IJM), a Washington DC based international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, law and law enforcement, carried out a series of rescue missions from January 2017 till now.

These rescue operations, aided by the Union ministry of labour and employment, district administration, police and Anti-Human Trafficking Unit – CID, rehabilitated 258 bonded labourers in the past year. Over the past decade, they rescued 15,000 bonded labourers from across Karnataka.

TOI met these labourers and their families who narrated their horrendous experience of a life in captivity, shockingly, in the 21st century, in and around the state capital.


Bonded labour continues to survive and manifest in occasional rescue operations, cocking a snook at the tall claims about India’s arrival on the world stage as a power of reckoning. Mere outlawing of a practice without addressing the ripe conditions that engender it may only provide lawmakers their two minutes of glory in the portals of legislature. But social justice is about striking at the foundations of inequity. Pockets of immiseration are a reality in the countryside, requiring a multipronged strategy. Authorities need to follow up enforcement with proactive rehabilitation, lest the rescued lapse into bondage.

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