Child Slaves
In Indias Silk Industry
London, January 23, 2003
The Indian government is failing to protect the rights of hundreds of
thousands of children who toil as virtual slaves in the countrys
silk industry, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
The 85-page report, Small
Change: Bonded Child Labor in Indias Silk Industry, calls
on the Indian government to implement its national law to free and rehabilitate
these bonded children. Bound to their employers in exchange
for a loan to their families, they are unable to leave while in debt
and earn so little they may never be free. A majority of them are Dalits,
so-called untouchables at the bottom of Indias caste system.
The Indian government
claims there are no bonded children in India, said Zama Coursen-Neff,
counsel to Human Rights Watchs childrens rights division.
In fact, theyre everywhere. They are easy to find.
Human Rights Watch interviewed
children, employers, government officials and members of nongovernmental
organizations in three states that form the core of Indias sari
and silk industries: Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
At every stage of the silk
industry, bonded children as young as five years old work 12 or more
hours a day, six and a half or seven days a week. Children making silk
thread dip their hands in boiling water that burns and blisters them.
They breathe smoke and fumes from machinery, handle dead worms that
cause infections, and guide twisting threads that cut their fingers.
As they assist weavers, children sit at cramped looms in damp, dim rooms.
They do not go to school and are often beaten
by their employers. By the time they reach adulthood, they are
impoverished, illiterate, and often crippled by the work, the report
said.
Human Rights Watch first
investigated bonded child labor in India in 1996. Since then, the Supreme
Court made rehabilitation of child workers a legal requirement, and
Indias National Human Rights Commission has successfully pressured
some local governments to act.
The government has
taken a number of steps in the right direction since our first investigation.
The National Human Rights Commissions involvement is especially
encouraging, Coursen-Neff said. However, many of the small
improvements are now being rolled back.
High-level government officials
interviewed by Human Rights Watch denied that children were bonded or
work in factories; they claimed to have therefore shifted their focus
to raising public awareness about child labor, instead of freeing children
and prosecuting employers.
Most government efforts
never reached beyond high-profile industries like carpets and beedi
cigarettes, said Coursen-Neff. Instead of living up to its
promises, the Indian government is starting to backtrack, claiming the
problem is being solved. Our research shows that it is not.
Human Rights Watch also urged
the government to recognize and address the connection between caste
and bondage. Coursen-Neff pointed out that caste-based violence and
discrimination, not just poverty, keep many Dalit families in bondage.
Caste is one of the
foundations of the bonded labor system, said Coursen-Neff. Dalits
are denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and
expected to perform free labor. Upper-caste communities inflict violence
and economic boycotts on Dalits who challenge their expected social
roles, keeping Dalit families in bondage and a perpetual state of poverty.
Human Rights Watch called
on international donors to pressure the national and state governments
in India to enforce the child labor and bonded labor laws. International
donors are increasingly funding some schools for former child workers.
Funding schools is
important, but international donors should do more, said Coursen-Neff.
Donors must pressure the Indian government to enforce its own
laws to free bonded children. Otherwise, schools wont reach children
who cant leave work voluntarilythose who are working under
force.
Human Rights Watch also called
on the national and state governments to greatly expand cooperation
with nongovernmental organizations to address the problem of bonded
child labor.
Major Silk States:
Karnataka, in the south,
is Indias primary producer of silk thread.
There, production still depends on bonded children. Most are under age
14 and are Dalit or Muslim. In 2001, the state government promulgated
an ambitious plan to eliminate all child labor, but it was not in operation
at the time of Human Rights Watchs investigation one year later.
A nine-year-old boy bonded in Karnataka told Human Rights Watch: 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. . . . [The owner
beat me] if I didnt do my work properly.
In the northern state of
Uttar Pradesh, most attention has been paid to child labor in the carpet
industry, not silk. While bonded child labor in carpets has not been
eliminated, vigilance from the National Human Rights Commission and
pressure from domestic and international activists has provoked the
government to better enforce the law and to provide schools and other
social services. Much less attention has been paid to silk weaving,
where child labor that was in factories has been pushed into individual
homes. A 14 year-old boy who worked as a weavers
assistant in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, told Human Rights Watch that he
could not leave his loom owner because he was paying off a loan, which
in two years he had only reduced from Rs. 2,500 (U.S. $52) to Rs. 475(U.S.
$9.90). The owner pays [a small salary] but deducts for the advance
[loan], he said. He deducts but wont write off the
whole advance. . . . We only make enough to eat.
In Tamil Nadu in the south,
which has successfully identified more
bonded laborers than any other state, most state initiatives have
focused on children working in match and fireworks manufacture.
However, the state government has simply abandoned Supreme
Court-mandated rehabilitation of child workers for those children found
after 1997,in clear
violation of the courts order. In Kanchipuram district, a major
silk sari weaving area in Tamil Nadu, child bondage flourishes openly.
A 13 year-old girl working in a silk weaving factory in Kanchipuram
told Human Rights Watch: Always [the weavers and owners] are beating
meI dont like to work. They always scold and shout. They
beat me on the back and head. They are always knocking their fists on
my head or hitting me with a comb [wood piece in the loom]. . . . We
dont play at all.
Silk thread and silk fabric
are also produced in other states in India.In addition to India, Human
Rights Watch has also investigated bonded labor in Pakistan and Japan
and has advocated for prosecution of offenders and rehabilitation of
bonded laborers in Nepal and Sri Lanka.
For the full report visit http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india/