In the early hours of the morning, long before dawn has risen, eleven-year-old Yeramma quietly wakes amidst the heavy machinery of the silk factory. For the next twelve hours, she will toil in silence with two or three other children in the Indian state of Karnataka, winding silk with one hour’s pause for rest. The small workers prepare meals from rice provided by the factory owner, knowing that it will be deducted from their wages. Bent over her machine, Yeramma works with the utmost precision afforded by her small but agile hands; a mistake, as minor as a cut in the thread, will result in a beating. Vigilance, she hopes, will keep a fresh scar from her back.

Four years ago, Yeramma was a young student at one of India’s government schools. When her sister became ill and hospital fees quickly surpassed the family’s earnings, she was bonded to a silk manufacturer for 1,700 rupees (US$35). At merely seven years of age, Yeramma’s youth was forfeited to India’s expansive silk industry. She will likely spend the rest of her lifetime paying off $35 in debt.

Yeramma’s testimonial is scarcely unique. In recent estimates, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that approximately 217.7 million children ages five to seventeen are engaged in labor around the world. Within Asia and the Pacific alone, 122.3 million children between five and fourteen are economically active. In a special report conducted in 2003, the Human Rights Watch concluded that between 60 million and 115 million child workers exist in India, and at least 15 million of those work as bonded laborers. India’s silk industry alone employs at least 350,000 children, and an overwhelming majority of child laborers are bonded. As in Yeramma’s case, debt of less than $50 often creates an insurmountable obstacle to liberty.

The Tragedy of Bonded Labor

“At work the supervisor used to beat me with a belt. He tied me up and beat me with a belt on my back. He did this two or three times. . . . He tied a chain that was attached to the wall to my leg.”

-Nine-year-old bonded laborer in India’s silk industry (Human Rights Watch)

As defined in a Human Rights Watch report, a bonded child is “a child working in conditions of servitude to pay off a debt.” In many instances, the loan is incurred by destitute parents in order to pay for the most basic necessities. This prevents the child from seeking other employment, even in the face of brutal mistreatment. The child becomes a commodity exchanged between parents and employer, much like an expendable good. With physical exertion serving as the accepted currency of repayment, there is an inherent ambiguity in measuring the progress of repayment. Unscrupulous creditors find it increasingly simple to retain laborers long after the real value of labor exceeds the initial amount of loan, and exploit uncertainty to their advantage in keeping wages minimal or nonexistent. Unfortunately, a tremendous percentage of bonded labor goes unnoticed, especially among girls who work from home. India bears the world’s largest number of bonded child laborers, many of whom work in the agricultural and textile industries. The Indian government has proved incapable of cohesively and effectively combating child labor within its borders.

It remains difficult to wage successful war against debt servitude for cultural as well as economic reasons. India’s caste system, in particular, creates an environment that is conducive to bonded labor by maintaining a tradition-based social hierarchy in order to justify the subjugation of “untouchables,” or Dalits. Threats of retaliation from upper castes, the lack of land and economic opportunity, and the long-standing expectation of free labor conspire to keep Dalits, religious minorities, and women in particular, in a state of permanent subservience. Economic dependency feeds intimidation and the threat of violence prevents many cases of abuse from being reported—or justly prosecuted if they are; thus, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated. In the absence of other credit options, poor villagers lacking financial security and collateral necessarily turn to local landlords, pledging their labor—or the labor of their children—as repayment. Moneylender and master are often one and the same, and families find themselves trapped in a cycle of debt and servitude in which accelerating interest rates are paid in labor value. Like slavery, debt bondage confers tremendous dominance to the master, as the laborer must be available to heed orders twenty-four hours a day. In terms of escaping from this condition, employment changes or refusal to work is virtually impossible. Dissent often invites severe physical and psychological punishment, including torture and beatings. Additionally, strict social striation fed by the caste system makes defiance markedly difficult.

It is therefore vital to acknowledge that any campaign to combat juvenile bonded labor must couple efforts to foster education and reduce poverty with reform of social relations. Addressing long-established power dynamics will no doubt pose a formidable challenge, but it is a crucial step toward comprehensive reform. Otherwise, the struggle to eliminate bonded labor may bypass those groups who are in greatest need of liberation.

Laws and Global Initiatives

Child labor has not escaped the attention of policymakers around the globe. Perhaps the most momentous piece of legislation in recent years was produced at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Article 32 of the convention mandated that:

“State parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

Ten years later, Convention No. 182 of the ILO was created to eliminate the worst forms of child labor, stressing immediate action to combat exploitation of children. India has yet to ratify ILO Convention No. 182.

Within India itself, the Bonded Labour System Act abolished all forms of bonded labor in 1976. The practice of bonded labor was methodically defined, taking into consideration multiple forms of agreements binding a debtor in service to a creditor. In the decades following the Bonded Labour System Act, India passed additional legislation restricting the use of children in the work force. The 1986 Child Labour Act made provisions for the prohibition and regulation of child labor. It is clear, therefore, that prohibitive legislation on the issue of child service is not lacking. What is absent, however, is a unified, centralized approach to the enforcement of regulatory laws.