INDIAN CONDITIONS

Q: What are the ground conditions in India?

Ans: It is well known that in India, employment in the unorganized sectors such as agriculture, construction, brick kilns, beedi rolling, agarabtti, handicrafts, leathers, repair shops, and so on, which would account for the bulk of, it not, the entire unorganized workers of the country, have been added to the schedule to the Minimum Wages Act by the Central and State Government and minimum rates of wages have been fixed/revised in respect to employment under the Act. It is equally well known that it is seldom that even the notified rates of wages, abysmally low as these generally are, accrue to the workmen and what is worse, women workers get even lesser wages than men workers. From this, it is agreed on the basis of the Asiad Workers judgment, that all the workers in the unorganized sectors, barring a few, are forced labour' in so far as they do not get the minimum wages as notified by the appropriate Government. From this, it is an easy step to the next stage of the argument, based on the Bandhua Mukti Morcha judgment that all these 'forced labour' are 'bonded labourers'. Thus, even if we leave out the self employment from the total work force, the total number of bonded labour in the country will run into millions considering that the number of agricultural labour itself is about 75 millions. A far cry from the nearly quarter of a million bonded labour that Government statistics put, out of which all but a couple of thousands or so have been identified, released and rehabilitated under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 !

Q: Where does the truth lie? Are we a nation which still, after fifty years of the Constitution, has millions of men and women workers (and children) in a state of bondage or is this merely a definitional problem as to what constitutes 'forced labour' and bonded labour' and if so, to what extent can the Supreme Court judgment be pressed into service? Which factors should we apply in identifying bonded labour?

Ans: The factors are the handicaps of :

(i) Absence of freedom to choose one's employment.

(ii) Denial of freedom to relinquish one's employment whenever desired.

(iii) Debt bondage and

(iv) Consequential nominal or no wage payment.

Q: Will you please elaborate on these factors?

Ans: Taking the first of the four viz, absence of freedom to choose one's employment, it will not be disputed that in our country only very few have that kind of freedom, and such option or choice is generally confined to the extremely well qualified and, therefore, at the upper echelon of jobs. The ordinary run of working men and women, most of whom are unskilled or semiskilled will have to make do with whatever job that they are able to get. It is this absence of choice that is emphasized in the Asiad Workers Judgment in the following words: "Moreover, in a country like India where there is so much poverty and unemployment and there is no equality of bargaining power, a contract of service may appear on its face voluntary, but it may, in reality, be involuntary, because while entering into the contract, the employee by reason of his economically helpless condition, may have been faced with Hobsons choice, either to starve or to submit to the exploitative terms dictated by the powerful employer. It would be a travesty of justice to hold the employee in such a case to the terms as per contract and to compel him to serve the employer even through he may not wish to do so. That would aggravate the inequality and injustice from which the employee even otherwise suffers on account of his economically disadvantaged position and lend the authority of law to the exploitation of of the poor helpless employee by the economically powerful employer. Article 23, therefore, says that no one shall be forced to provide labour or service against his will, even though it be under a contract of service.

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