Debt Bondage and Slavery
The poor remuneration of manual scavenging, agricultural labor, and other forms of low-caste employment often force families of lower castes or caste-like groups into bondage. A lack of enforcement of relevant legislation prohibiting debt bondage in most of the countries concerned allows for the practice to continue unabated.
An estimated forty million people in India, among them some fifteen million children, are working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off debts as bonded laborers. Due to the high interest rates charged, the employers’ control over records, and the abysmally low wages paid, the debts are seldom settled. Bonded laborers are frequently low-caste, illiterate, and extremely poor, while the creditors/employers are usually higher-caste, literate, comparatively wealthy, and relatively more powerful members of the community.
The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 abolishes all agreements and obligations arising out of the bonded labor system. It aims to release all laborers from bondage, cancel any outstanding debt, prohibit the creation of new bondage agreements, and order the economic rehabilitation of freed bonded laborers by the state. It also punishes attempts to compel persons into bondage with a maximum of three years in prison and a Rs. 2,000 (U.S.$43) fine. However, relatively few bonded laborers have been identified, released, and rehabilitated in the country.
In Pakistan the debt bondage system is most prevalent in the agricultural provinces of southern Punjab and Sindh. Most laborers in these areas are minority Hindus from lower castes. In a pattern similar to that practiced in India, the charging of exorbitantly high interest rates ensure that loans from landowners never get repaid. While the loan agreement is often made between the landowner and the male head of the peasant household, the work to pay off the loan is performed by the entire family, including women and children. Women have also been held in custody by landowners when bonded male members of the family leave the land or area, and have even been sold into marriage or prostitution should the male family member fail to return. As in India, children often inherit their families’ debts and remain trapped in a cycle of debt bondage.
A disturbing reflection of the slavery of centuries past is the well-documented practice of tying up or chaining bonded laborers to hinder their escape. Of the 7,500 bonded laborers reported to have escaped or been released since 1995 in the southern Sindh province, human rights organizations report that “several hundred” of them were found “tied up or in chains. “Similarly, in 1991 the Pakistani army reportedly conducted a raid that unearthed the illegal detention of 295 laborers, including 132 children, all of whom were shackled each night. Most were only given flour and chili peppers as food and had no access to plumbing facilities or medical care. National legislation in Pakistan prohibiting these practices reportedly has done little to eradicate them. Provincial governments responsible for their enforcement have yet to establish mechanisms to put them into practice.
According to the United Nation Development Programme’s “Nepal Human Development Report 1998,” despite legal pronouncements to the contrary, bonded labor has not been eradicated in Nepal. The report adds:
In the mid-western and far western hills, the debt-bonded agricultural labourers, haliyas, mainly from “untouchable” castes, work under this system. The Anti-Slavery International and INSEC in 1996 rarely observed haliyas from among members of the high caste groups…. Their report also revealed that in the regions noted above, members of “untouchable” households were charged very high rates of interest – as high as 10 percent/month – on loans forwarded by their landlords, while members of “high caste” households were generally charged only 2-3 percent/month. Such discrimination was designed to keep alive and intensify the system of debt bondage. The “low caste” Tarai groups like Musahar, Dusadh, Dom, Chamar, etc. face a similar problem: repayment of loans is actively discouraged by the landlords (ibid.). Because the primary interest of the landlord lies in continued cultivation of his land and in regular assurance of labour supply, his lending is not directed towards earning interest in cash (NRB 1988).
The legacy of slavery as a form of caste and descent-based discrimination in Mauritania is an issue the government must do more to address. While President Maaouiya Ould Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya has brought public attention to modern-day slavery practices throughout the country-and while the government purports to have implemented relevant education and agrarian reforms-its record on enforcing slavery-specific legislation, and legislation promoting the civil rights of former slaves, is weak.
Both the Arab and Afro-Mauritanian groups have long distinguished community members on the basis of caste, and both included a caste-like designation of “slave” within these systems. To this day a former “slave” distinction-particularly for the Haratines, Arabic speakers of Sub-Saharan African origin-still carries significant social implications. At best, members of higher and lower castes are discouraged from intermarrying. In Soninke communities, members of the slave caste are also buried in separate cemeteries. At worst, however, there is a widespread system of unpaid servitude required of communities whose members still self-identify as slaves. Though the government has long outlawed slave-like distinctions and practices, it has taken few steps to enforce these laws. A weak economy also leaves former slaves with few options other than remaining with the families of masters who owned their ancestors. Caste systems similar to those found among the Wolof of Senegal can also be found among Soninke, Halpular, and Wolof Afro-Mauritanians.
Caste and Socio-Economic Disparities
Significant economic and educational disparities persist between lower and higher-caste communities in the countries highlighted in this report. Lower-caste communities are often plagued by low literacy levels and a lack of access to health care and education. A lack of formal education or training, as well as discrimination that effectively bars them from many forms of employment, and the nonenforcement of protective legislation, perpetuates caste-based employment and keeps its hereditary nature alive.
As of 1997, there were reportedly only two Dalit medical doctors and fifteen Dalit engineers in Nepal. The life expectancy rate of Nepal’s Dalits is five years short of the national average of 55. Children face a higher incidence of malnutrition and the general population lacks access to clean drinking water or proper health services.
Nepal’s 1998 Human Development Report revealed that development indicators closely followed caste lines. Without a single exception, the lower the caste, the lower the life expectancy, the literacy rate, years of schooling, and per capita income.In 1999, Nepal’s fourteenth periodic report to CERD also frankly and constructively highlighted the economic disparities that continue to persist between low- and high-caste populations:
Awareness creation, income generation, education and health facilities programmes were implemented to address the problems of the backward communities. However, the gap between so-called higher and lower castes has not narrowed. There have hardly been any changes in the society or the living standard of the poor. Consequently, the people of backward communities have felt discriminated against and could not believe that the Government was doing anything for their welfare and development.
The main reasons for this are: lack of integrated programmes, weak implementation and sustainability, failure to mainstream backward communities and repressed people into the national development process, centre-oriented/based programmes rather than community-based/participatory programmes, little attention to human resource development and lack of encouragement to the development and modernization of traditional occupations and skills, lack of effective institutional mechanisms, etc.
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