Release from bondage first step only, map hotspots for prevention: Activists

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu’s efforts to eliminate bonded labour must move beyond rescue and rehabilitation towards identifying vulnerable regions and communities where the practice continues to persist, says activists from the Released Bonded Labourers Association (RBLA). The demand assumes significance as the State has set a goal of becoming free of bonded labour by 2030.

Kuppammal, president, RBLA, Tiruvallur, and a member of the District Vigilance Committee (DVCs) for Bonded Labour, recalls her experience as one of the rescued labourers.

At the time, Kuppammal was in her 40s, walking through the streets of Siruvanur, a gram panchayat in Tiruvallur, when a school caught her eye. She had been buying groceries, walking back to the rice mill where she was a bonded labourer.

Kuppamal had studied until Class 8 but had to drop out after being married off at 13. After seeing the school, she had only one goal: her six-year-old daughter would go to school.

That fight for survival would unravel the life she and her family had known for generations, setting Kuppammal on a decade-long effort to challenge the order of her world.

Tiruvallur, like many districts, houses small-scale industries owned by dominant OBCs such as Gounders, Mudaliars, Reddiyars and Mutharaiyars, who use their influence and the system to turn migrant workers, mostly Tamil or Telugu natives, almost all of them Dalit or tribal, into bonded labour.

Kuppammal is from the Irular tribe. The mill owners were Aarumugam and Natesan Mudhaliyar.

“Women can’t talk to the mill owners directly. I spent a month waiting outside his office only to be denied permission for my daughter to go to school. He said “your daughter will work here too”,” Kuppammal said.

What followed was a string of violent attacks on her husband and father-in-law, as Kuppamal had committed the sacrilege of asking for something. She began working in the mill after marriage, joining her husband’s parents and in-laws who were already bonded labourers there.

The mill ran on its own clock: 3 am to 2 am the next day. Six people, 3 couples, worked in shifts, sleeping 2-3 hours while the paddy steamed. She became a mother there – 3 daughters, no pregnancy check-ups, vaccinations or hospital visits.

Her eldest died at one, drowning in a water tank while the family worked; Kuppammal said that the owner told them to bury the child and return to work. Her second daughter’s schooling became the family’s first open challenge. By 6, the girl was already helping in the mill.

When Kuppammal approached a village school headmaster for help, he asked the owner’s permission to enrol her daughter at a government school. The third suffered severe burns from the steaming pipes, and the owner refused to allow hospital treatment. By then, leaving had become more than a wish.

When she told the owner about leaving, he demanded Rs 25,000. The family had no savings, as their entire salary was just Rs 15 every three days, minus Rs 500 for ration rice. She sought help from a lorry worker, who connected her to an NGO. A petition went to then Revenue Divisional Officer Uma Maheshwari.

By late 2005, authorities raided five rice mills in the Kosapalayam-Siruvanur area in a single day. Kuppammal received Rs 1,000 as immediate assistance and 6 months later, Tiruvallur RDO office gave her a cheque for Rs 19,000. But release left the family with nowhere to go.

Kuppammal returned to her locality, Thideer Nagar, and lived in a tent outside her mother’s house, while people in the village refused to employ them because they are ‘runaways’. “I realised slavery was so normalised that coming out was some kind of oath-break,” she said. “It took my family 5 years to get a ration card and Aadhaar.”

Today, Kuppammal is the president of RBLA in Tiruvallur. Her eldest daughter, Oviya, completed a catering course, while her second daughter, Monisha, completed BE Computer Engineering.

Kuppammal herself had gone in disguise in 6 rescues. “Not all rescue and rehabilitation happens with ease,” she said, recalling a poultry-farm case. “Police recorded that the workers had taken loans of Rs 50,000 to buy motorcycles.”

She addressed the issue in court and confronted the Public Prosecutor over the way workers’ statements were being handled. She alleged that the victims were being coached to give a particular version of events and that the owner’s actions were being shielded.

Kuppammal’s journey from a bonded labourer to an empowered woman is not an isolated case.

Krishnaveni was also married at 13 into a bonded-labour family in Tiruvallur, after being born in Andhra Pradesh. After her rescue, she worked as a daily-wage labourer while her children went to school. In 2023, the family finally built its own house.

The difficulties faced by survivors after release were also what pushed them to come together. In 2013, more than 3,000 released labourers gathered in Tiruvallur. From the brainchild of individual activists and NGOs who had been working closely with bonded labourers for decades, the RBLA was formally registered in 2014.

The idea was to build a network of survivors who could work for other survivors rather than remain dependent on an organisation to navigate every problem, but with limited third-party help. “We train them from the basics, including how to get IDs and apply for patta,” said an RBLA personnel. Survivor leaders, mostly women, learn to approach officials and navigate the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act.

RBLA now spans 21 districts with over 4,000 survivors, and recorded 27 rescues in Chengalpattu alone between 2022-25. The survivor-led model also changes how bondage is identified.

“We can recognise signs of bondage from our own experience and, through family and community links, sometimes enter workplaces as relatives or visitors to gather information,” Kuppammal said.

Its Vidiyal project, specifically aimed at released bonded labourers, has been taken up in 11 districts. The organisation has so far rescued and rehabilitated around 350 survivors across the State.

The organisation’s role has increasingly extended into the government machinery dealing with bonded labour. RBLA members serve on DVCs, where they can identify areas where bondage persists and raise rehabilitation issues such as housing.