RIGHTS-INDIA: Horror Stories Behind Silken Touch

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jan 23 2003 (IPS) - Yeramma is 11, and she has worked like a slave for the past three years because her parents took a loan of 35 dollars for treatment of her sister.

Yeramma is 11, and she has worked like a slave for the past three years because her parents took a loan of 35 dollars for treatment of her sister.

Her day begins at 4 am when she begins her silk winding. She works 12 hours, and she is beaten if she breaks a silk thread by mistake. She is among hundreds of thousands of children working in the silk industry in India in conditions like this, or worse.

These children, some as young as five, endure beatings, abuse and all for very little food in India’s silk industry, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released in London Thursday.

The Indian government is failing to protect the rights of these children who toil as virtual slaves, the HRW report says.

The 85-page report, ‘Small Change: Bonded Child Labour in India’s Silk Industry’, calls on the Indian government to implement its national laws to free and rehabilitate these "bonded children."

That is the expression used to describe 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.

"The attention has been focused so far on children carpet weaving, and manufactures of beedis (rolled cigarettes) and sporting goods," Zama Coursen-Neff, author of the report and counsel to the children’s division of Human Rights Watch told IPS.

"In some states like Uttar Pradesh in the north children have been moved into homes where they will be more difficult to find."

The survey focuses on silk weaving and silk embroidery in three Indian states, Uttar Pradesh in the north, and Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the south. In many factories in the south, "children can be seen working openly in factories with up to 50 looms," Coursen-Neff says.

"By the most conservative estimate possible we can say there must be at least 350,000 bonded children working in India’s silk industry," she said. "But there is a serious lack of data."

The HRW report establishes that most of the children being made to work in the silk industry are from Dalit families, described by some as untouchables.

"India must implement its own bonded labour and child labour laws, locate these children, rescue them, rehabilitate them and prosecute the factory owners," Coursen-Neff said. The Ministry of Labour says the problem is being solved, but HRW investigators saw children working in the silk industry everywhere.

"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," the report says. "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."

The report says children sit at cramped looms in damp, dim rooms. "They do not go to school and are often beaten by their employers," the report says. "By the time they reach adulthood, they are impoverished, illiterate, and often crippled by the work."

Human Rights Watch first investigated bonded child labour in India in 1996. Since then, the Supreme Court made rehabilitation of child workers a legal requirement, and India’s 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," Coursen-Neff says. "The National Human Rights Commission’s involvement is especially encouraging. However, many of the small improvements are now being rolled back."

Human Rights Watch is asking the government to recognise and address the connection between caste and bondage. "Caste is one of the foundations of the bonded labour system," said Coursen-Neff. "Dalits are denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and expected to perform free labour."

Her investigation showed that "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 labour and bonded labour laws. "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 won’t reach children who can’t leave work voluntarily -those who are working under force."

Karnataka is India’s primary producer of silk thread. Production there still depends on bonded children, the report says, most of them Dalit or Muslim under 11 years of age.

In Tamil Nadu which has successfully identified more bonded labourers than any other state, most state initiatives have focused on children working in match and fireworks manufacture. The state government has "simply abandoned Supreme Court-mandated rehabilitation of child workers," the report says.

In Kanchipuram district, a major silk sari weaving area in Tamil Nadu, child bondage flourishes openly, the report says. A 13 year-old girl working in a silk weaving factory in Kanchipuram told Human Rights Watch: "Always (the weavers and owners) are beating me – I don’t like to work. They always scold and shout. They beat me on the back and head…"

In addition to India, Human Rights Watch has also investigated bonded labour in Pakistan and Japan and has advocated for prosecution of offenders and rehabilitation of bonded labourers in Nepal and Sri Lanka.