Understanding Bonded Labour: Its Origins and Impact on Society

Bonded labour is often described as a modern form of slavery – and in India, it is far more than a historical relic. It is a living reality for millions of people, particularly those from the most marginalized sections of society. At its core, bonded labour traps a person in a cycle of work tied to a debt – a debt that may have been taken out by a parent, a grandparent, or even inherited by birth into a certain caste. Understanding what bonded labour actually is, where it came from, and how it continues to operate today is the first step in grasping why Indian law has had to deal with it so seriously.

What is bonded labour?
Historical origins: feudalism, colonialism, and caste
Feudal agrarian structures
The colonial push into deeper debt
Caste as the backbone of bondage
Beyond agriculture: bonded labour across sectors
Brick kilns
Stone quarries, mining, and construction
Domestic work
The disproportionate impact on women and children
The chukri system
Children inheriting bondage
Why does bonded labour persist despite the law?
The socio-economic trap

What is bonded labour?

Bonded labour, also called debt bondage or bandhua mazdoori, is a system where a person is compelled to work – for little or no wages – in order to repay a debt. The defining feature is that the terms of repayment are almost never clear or fair. High interest rates, arbitrary additions to the original amount owed, and manipulation of records mean that the debt never really shrinks. The labourer keeps working, but the obligation keeps growing.

Under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, the term “bonded labour” refers to any labour or service rendered under the bonded labour system – which includes situations where the debt was taken by the worker themselves, by a linear ancestor, or even arises from a social or customary obligation tied to caste or birth. Restrictions on freedom of movement, on means of livelihood, and on the ability to sell one’s goods or property can all be part of this arrangement.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) classifies bonded labour as a form of forced labour and a contemporary manifestation of slavery. Unlike outright physical captivity, bonded labour uses the machinery of debt to achieve the same result – a person who cannot leave, cannot refuse, and cannot earn their way out.

Historical origins: feudalism, colonialism, and caste

The roots of bonded labour in India are deep and intertwined with the country’s social and economic history. Debt bondage in India has historical roots going back to the colonial era, but the social soil that made it possible was cultivated much earlier – through the caste system and feudal land ownership.

Feudal agrarian structures

In pre-independence India, land was concentrated in the hands of upper-caste landlords. Landless labourers – almost always from lower castes – had no economic alternative except to work on these lands. When they needed money for survival, for a wedding, or during a bad harvest, they had nowhere to turn but to their landlords. The loan came with impossible conditions, and the only collateral the borrower had to offer was their own labour. This gave rise to the halipratha system – a master-servant relationship that Mahatma Gandhi himself criticized as early as 1939.

The colonial push into deeper debt

British colonial policies worsened this already fragile situation. The introduction of cash crops, heavy revenue collection, and commercialization of agriculture pushed peasant households into recurrent debt. As noted by legal scholars, colonialism heightened the dimension of debt bondage both within and outside agriculture – making it structurally embedded rather than exceptional. By the time India gained independence in 1947, bonded labour had become normalized across large parts of rural India.

Caste as the backbone of bondage

Perhaps the most significant factor sustaining bonded labour has been India’s caste hierarchy. Research on bonded labour in India consistently demonstrates that Dalits, Scheduled Tribes, and other backward classes bear the brunt of this exploitation. The caste system denied lower-caste communities access to education, formal credit, land, and legal redress – leaving them with no buffer against financial shocks and no leverage when landlords imposed exploitative conditions.

When bonded labour aligns with caste hierarchies, it does not remain an individual problem. Entire communities stay locked in bondage across generations. Children inherit their parents’ debts and their parents’ social position, making escape structurally difficult, not just economically hard. Researchers have pointed out that employers under this system are often motivated not just by profit, but by the drive to maintain political dominance and social control over lower-caste communities.

Beyond agriculture: bonded labour across sectors

A common misconception is that bonded labour is primarily a rural, agricultural phenomenon. In reality, it has spread – and in some cases intensified – across a range of industries as India’s economy has expanded.

Brick kilns

According to an ILO report, India’s brick manufacturing sector employs an estimated 10 million workers, most of whom are seasonal migrants. The system works through an advance payment – a sum given to workers before the season begins, which then becomes a debt they must work off. Middlemen collect money from kiln owners and pass on only a fraction to workers, but in the employer’s records, the entire sum appears as the worker’s debt. Labourers have reported working 16-hour days in harsh conditions, with wages withheld until the end of the season – by which time the amount is reduced by arbitrary deductions. Debt-bondage is now considered endemic in India’s brick kiln industry despite the legal prohibition in place since 1976.

Stone quarries, mining, and construction

Bonded labour has been documented in stone quarries, coal mining, construction sites, carpet weaving, rice mills, bidi making, and the garment industry. The system that was once largely confined to agriculture now operates wherever large numbers of low-skilled migrant workers can be controlled through debt. In construction, labour contractors provide advances for relocation and basic necessities, which then become debts that trap workers far from home, in unfamiliar regions, without the language or social connections to seek help.

Domestic work

Urban households have also been sites of bonded labour, particularly involving women and children brought in to repay family debts. These arrangements typically involve no formal contract, minimal or no wages, and restrictions on movement – making them invisible to labour inspectors and difficult for victims to challenge.

The disproportionate impact on women and children

Within the bonded labour system, women and children occupy an especially vulnerable position. The ILO has identified women, former untouchable castes, and tribal groups as the primary victims of bonded and forced labour in India. Women in bonded labour situations face what researchers call double exploitation – performing productive agricultural or industrial labour while also providing unpaid domestic work within the same household or workplace.

The chukri system

One of the starkest examples of gendered bonded labour is the chukri system, found primarily in parts of West Bengal. Under this system, women are coerced into sex work in order to repay debts – typically to a brothel owner who claims repayment for food, clothing, and living expenses. Workers under this system generally work without any payment for a year or more, as the supposed debt is never transparently calculated or honestly settled. The system flourishes particularly in areas of Kolkata, making it a regionally significant form of bonded labour with severe consequences for the dignity and safety of those entrapped.

Children inheriting bondage

Children in bonded labour families do not just assist in their parents’ work – they often inherit the debt itself. A child born to bonded parents begins life with an obligation they never agreed to. As the documented history of bonded labour in India shows, this intergenerational transfer is not incidental – it is a feature of the system, ensuring a permanent, captive workforce.

Why does bonded labour persist despite the law?

India was actually the first country in the world to specifically legislate against debt bondage, doing so through the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976. The Act unilaterally extinguished all bonded debts, freed all bonded labourers, and made the practice a cognizable criminal offence. Article 23 of the Constitution had already prohibited forced labour and begar. Yet, the practice continues in various forms across the country.

Several structural factors explain this gap between law and reality. Administrators tasked with enforcement often come from the dominant castes whose interests benefit from cheap, captive labour. Illiteracy, physical remoteness from urban centres, lack of legal aid, and social dependence on the very employer who exploits them make it nearly impossible for bonded labourers to access legal remedies. The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment has acknowledged that while thousands of bonded labourers have been released and rehabilitated in recent years, organised networks continue to exploit social hierarchies to supply bonded labour across sectors.

According to the Global Slavery Index Report 2023, an estimated 8 in every 1,000 people in India were part of some form of modern slavery at any given point in 2021 – translating to over 11 million individuals. This figure encompasses bonded labour in its various contemporary forms.

The socio-economic trap

What makes bonded labour so persistent is that it is not just a legal problem – it is a socio-economic one. Poverty, landlessness, lack of access to formal banking, and caste discrimination together create conditions where a person has no realistic alternative but to accept exploitative terms. Fieldwork among bonded labourers consistently shows that workers understand their situation as exploitative but feel they have no exit – because the landlord or employer is also often their only source of credit, food, and housing. Refusing bondage can mean losing access to all of these at once.

This is why legal abolition alone has never been sufficient. Long-term elimination of bonded labour requires dismantling its structural conditions – expanding access to formal credit, strengthening land rights, enforcing minimum wages, and directly challenging caste-based occupational discrimination. Without these, the debt trap simply reasserts itself in new forms, as it has in brick kilns, construction sites, and domestic work across urban and peri-urban India.

What do you think? If bonded labour persists despite a specific law abolishing it since 1976, what does that tell us about the relationship between legislation and the social structures that law is meant to dismantle? And given that bonded labour has migrated from agriculture into industries like construction and manufacturing, how should labour inspection systems be redesigned to reach workers in these informal, hard-to-monitor sectors?

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Table of Contents

What is bonded labour? 🔗

Historical origins: feudalism, colonialism, and caste 🔗

Feudal agrarian structures 🔗

The colonial push into deeper debt 🔗

Caste as the backbone of bondage 🔗

Beyond agriculture: bonded labour across sectors 🔗

Brick kilns 🔗

Stone quarries, mining, and construction 🔗

Domestic work 🔗

The disproportionate impact on women and children 🔗

The chukri system 🔗

Children inheriting bondage 🔗

Why does bonded labour persist despite the law? 🔗

The socio-economic trap 🔗