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India had ratified the ILO Forced Labor Convention No. 29 on 30 November 1954, and the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, passed by both Houses of Parliament in February 1976, came into force with effect from 25 October 1975, the day the President of India died. Issued an ordinance on this subject. The topic of abolition of forced/bonded labor was placed as Item No. 4 in the 20-point economic program announced to the nation by the then Prime Minister on 1 July 1975, which read, “The system of bonded labor wherever it exists should be abolished. Will be declared illegal”.
The Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976 provides an institutional mechanism in the form of Vigilance Committees at the district and sub-division level of the State Government, which are responsible for identifying bonded labor and bonded labor systems.
According to Section 13 of the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976, every State Government is mandated to constitute Vigilance Committees in every district and every sub-division, as it thinks fit. The enactment of a central law dealt a fatal blow to the age-old harmful system found in different forms in different parts of the country and brought it under the umbrella of a single legal framework with clarity, uniformity and precision.
Government data It turns out that, since 1976, more than 313,000 bonded laborers have been rescued in India, of which 293,725 have been successfully rehabilitated. Unfortunately, details of 19,962 bonded laborers for rehabilitation are not available, as they either died or moved away without disclosing their address.
Government in 2016 informed The Parliament said that bonded labor will be abolished in India within 15 years, by 2030. It is estimated that by then 1.84 crore bonded laborers will be rescued and rehabilitated. This means that an average of 12,20,000 bonded laborers would need to be rescued every year, which is not happening.
That goal will likely be missed and bonded labor will continue in India.
(Rejimon Kuttappan is an independent journalist, labor migration expert and author of Undocumented (Penguin 2021). This is an opinion, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them. )
