Burdened by debt, bonded to life of toil
Dawn broke not with promise, but with a burden of arduous and long working conditions, accompanied by minimal safety protections, for four persons trapped by
Dawn broke not with promise, but with a burden of arduous and long working conditions, accompanied by minimal safety protections, for four persons trapped by a ₹1-lakh debt at an illegal stone-cutting quarry on rough, hilly terrain in Anantapur district for over a year. Through the day, braving extreme weather, Santhala Anji, his 18-year-old son and two others were put to cut 100 stones with just an iron hammer and a chisel. This was the plight of the bonded labourers who were rescued last month from an illegal stone-cutting unit near Chennampalle village. Community engages in stone-cutting works Hailing from the Vadde community, a BC community primarily engaged in stone-cutting works. Five years ago, Anji took a loan of ₹1 lakh from his employer, Vadde Narayana Swamy, to undergo a lung infection treatment. This is where Anji’s life took a turn. Not just Anji, the other members of the small settlement outside Chennampalle village had different reasons for taking loans from Narayana, but the fate of all of them turned out to be similar. “They [the henchmen of the debtor] arrived in the village at 6 a.m. on Mondays. We had to go with them even if we were not feeling well or there was any other emergency in the family. They did not hesitate to assault us or humiliate us with the choicest of abuses if we expressed our inability to go with them on any day,” Anji recounts his ordeal. The workplace, an illegal stone-cutting site near the Sunakalamma temple in Chennampalle village, is a vast expanse of hilly terrain. “We had to cut stones into various sizes, and every one of us were given a target to cut a minimum of 100 stones. The work was arduous as we used traditional methods. We broke rocks with ‘sutti (iron hammer)’ and an ‘uli (a small chisel)’. We were not given any machines or safety equipment. We didn’t even wear masks, though the work involved exposure to dust pollution,” he tells The Hindu. Anji and the other three were not allowed to return home after their work. “They provided a small makeshift thatched hut at one of the highest points of the terrain. Whether it rained or it was a hot summer, we had no other option but to stay in the hut during the nights,” another victim, 40-year-old Vadde Kumaru, says. Kumaru took a loan of ₹50,000 five years ago from his employer.
He adds that their employer provided them with ‘ration biyyam’ (PDS rice) and vegetables that was sufficient for a week. At night, they were given a quarter bottle of liquor. “We were up early in the morning and cooked our own food. By 6 a.m., we had to start stone-cutting, and it continued till we complete the task of cutting 100 stones,” he says. They were allowed a lunch break, but to fetch a glass of water, they had to walk two kilometres to reach a motor. “In harsh summer, when the motor [bore] dried up, we had to depend on small holes and pockets in the hillocks for water where it was stored,” he says. On Sundays, they got a break. “They dropped us near the stream at Agraharam, five kilometres away from our village, and we walked from there to reach our homes,” Anji’s son, 18-year-old V. Shiva Kumar, says. He was forced to work to repay the ₹1-lakh loan taken by his father. He is the eldest of five siblings and, like several other children in the village, is uneducated. Rescue operations The issue came to light after Anantapur-based NGO Rural and Environment Development Society (REDS) submitted a representation to the district administration. Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO), Anantapur, M. Ram Mohan, convened a meeting of all the stakeholder departments the next day. The Labour Department, led by the Deputy Commissioner of Labour, Anantapur, G. Lakshmi Narasaiah, entrusted a team of officials with monitoring and supervising the rescue operations as per the provisions of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976. On June 4, officials of various government departments, including Labour, Factories, Revenue, Social Welfare and Police, along with representatives of REDS and International Justice Mission (IJM), conducted a rescue operation and got the labourers released from bondage. District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) secretary N. Rajasekhar personally participated in the operation, walking nearly two kms to reach the place where the labourers were working and from where they were rescued. What followed was a cumbersome official process to get them “officially released” from bondage and provide them with rehabilitation. “This case had all the aspects of bonded labour. Though they were not chained, their movements were restricted. They are under debt bondage. They were put under arduous work conditions without basic safety gear and a proper diet,” Narasaiah says. “As per the Act, bonded debt means an advance obtained, or presumed to have been obtained, by a bonded labourer.
The BriefWire