Over 1000 families in bonded labour

By Ramya Kannan

CHENNAI, AUG. 2. More than 1000 families are working as bonded labourers in rice mills in and around the Red Hills area, 20 km from the hustle and bustle of Perambur here.

They hail from different parts of the State, the largest population coming from the surrounding areas of Thiruvallur, Kancheepuram and even Chennai. The rest have migrated from districts as far as Theni and Madurai. The pattern is more or less similar - the usual debt trap that keeps them bonded for life. The rice mill-owners have employed people designated `accountants' whose primary job is in fact to `procure bonded labourers'.

These accountants are sent to different villages, especially where the traditional vocation is agriculture. Farm workers who have been laid off are their targets: the opening offer is Rs 5,000. ``Occasions like weddings, sickness and deaths prompt them to borrow from the middlemen'', according to Mr. Susai Raj of Jeeva Jyothi, an NGO working among the children of bonded labourers.

Once the money is spent, they will have no way of repaying the debt and movement to the city begins. The debt burden increases, as interest accumulates and they pay back on a bag-to-bag basis.

Successive generations of the same family fall into the debt trap and remain within their cramped quarters in the courtyards of `nerkalams' (rice drying units).

Though the children are `legally' not bonded, they are unobtrusively absorbed into the same hierarchy - the bottom of which their parents occupy. Though Jeeva Jyothi has been working over the last three years with the children, urging parents to send their wards to school, a good number of the kids still play in the hot sun of the `nerkalams', breathing the fine dust that rises from thrashing rice. That is, if they are lucky.

And not as unfortunate as is Uma, who has recently come from Uthiramerur to work in a `nerkalam' with her elder sister. She will take the place of her sister who has been working at one of the units at Periyar Nagar, but now has to withdraw due to pregnancy.

Their mother admits that they cannot move out without repaying the loan. ``When are we ever going to do that? We are merely coolies''. She is willing to pledge her two remaining children, if the `need arises'. Every sack of `cleaned and dried' rice (which takes a minimum of three days in the brightest weather) attracts a payment of Rs. 8. The interest on loan is deducted from this amount, before the daily wage is paid.

There are an estimated 1,630 children in the rice mill industry. Jeeva Jyothi's statistics show that 40 per cent of them are in the age group 0-5, 50 per cent between 6 and 14 years and 10 per cent between 15 and 18. Only 200-odd children have been admitted to schools or are receiving non-formal education, while 70 per cent remain untouched. ``In the evening, they pick up brooms and begin sweeping'', according to Mr. Gady Meir, presently working with the Jeeva Jyothi project.

While there has been opposition from some of the owners, most of them have not inhibited the process of educating the children.

In some instances, offers have even been made for providing uniforms and books to the children. While acknowledging this, the workers also say those who tried to escape from the `nerkalams' were beaten up, kicked, dragged and brought back.

Now with this experience, their acceptance of the system that binds them is almost absolute.

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Section  : Southern States
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