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By Aditya Malaviya Nearly 5,000 Tamilian bonded labour families released from granite and marble quarries in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh by the Supreme Court of India have settled in 20 villages in Perambalur district, Tamil Nadu. They are trying to begin a new life, free from the exploitative shackles of contractors
In the heart of Tamil Nadu, when 49-year-old P Kasi addresses you in chaste Hindi, it is a huge surprise! He says with a glitter in his eyes: “Mera janamdin March 13, 1992, ki dopahar ko hua tha, jab ham aazad hue bandhua mazdoori se… (I was (re) born at midday on March 13, 1992, when we were freed from bonded labour).” Kasi lives in a small brick house in Mahatma Gandhi village, Kalpalayam road, Konalayi post, Manakehanallur tehsil in Trichy district, with his wife, two sons and three daughters. And he can’t believe that someone is actually interested in listening to what he has to say! 
There are around 40 freed bonded labour families living in the village; they are from places as far away as Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Kasi’s family is from Alhondna village, two kilometres from the town of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. “My parents went to Alhondna because contractors promised them good money -- Rs 50-60 a day. But they were paid wages only for a month, and then… nothing! I was born here, and when I grew up it was only natural I join them. “I earned Rs 10-20 a day. If we fell ill we just took whatever medicine was at hand; no one knew what it was, except that it had helped someone tide over a similar problem earlier. “One day, I escaped from our camp outside the village and went to Delhi secretly (getting caught meant a merciless beating). On March 13, 1992, with the help of well-wishers there, I managed to get an audience with the then Union minister Mrs Venkatachalam, who immediately called up someone in the Uttar Pradesh government for our release. 
“We were also helped by a local advocate in Jhansi, Mr Burma, who typed an application and gave it to me to give the minister. “As a result the police, accompanied by a magistrate, raided the contractor in Jhansi. The magistrate, Sanjay Reddy, called all 55 families together and took us to the collectorate, where we stayed for a couple of days. The magistrate gave the police orders to shoot anyone who tried to trouble us at night!
“In the days that followed, documentation and release certificates were drawn up and we left for Trichy accompanied by two government officials. Once there, we were handed over to the collector. Each family was given Rs 6,250 by the government and a small piece of land. With the money I bought three cents of land in the village of Toraiyur (one cent is 1/100th of an acre; in square feet, one cent is 435.6 square feet). The government also gave me three cents of land in the village. I even got back the jewellery that my family had pledged to the contractor.” Nearly 5,000 Tamil bonded labour families released from granite and marble quarries in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh by the Supreme Court of India have settled in 20 villages in Perambalur district. 
Fifty-four-year-old K Krishna from Oddampatti Pudur village in Trichy district looks worn and tired. He and his wife, Chellamma, have spent their entire lives earning a living working as bonded labourers. Krishna says: “I was four years old when my father passed away. I went with my mother when she travelled in search of work, finally settling in Udaipura village, near Ganjbasoda, 47 years ago. In fact, the contractor took us from Lalitpur (in Uttar Pradesh) to Ganjbasoda. He paid us Rs 300 a week to cut stone tiles and dig soil, but we often received no wages even though we had to pay for everything except water!” Krishna worked with the contractor, Ghanshyam Yadav, for four years before a chance meeting with functionaries of Ekta Parishad, a Gandhian NGO, led to his release and the release of other bonded labourers. Ariavelam, State Coordinator, Ekta Parishad, Tamil Nadu, says: “The quarry workers are spread across the five districts of Karur, Namakkal, Trichy, Perambur and Pudukottai. They are compelled to work under hazardous conditions, with no safe drinking water or rest sheds. The work is insecure, the wages discriminatory (skewed against women) and below minimum levels. To make matters worse, medical problems like breathlessness, chest pain, musculoskeletal weakness and osteoarthritis are common.” Forty-five-year-old Baghyam, Ramaswami’s wife, who lives in Porakambi village in Perumbalur district, says: “I have five daughters and my husband is bedridden. My husband took me to Ganjbasoda when I was very young. Both of us broke stones for a living, earning Rs 400 a week. If there was no work, we had no money; we had to buy food on loan from the local grocer. The stones from which tiles were cut had to be dug out of the ground manually. If the mud was not removed properly, we were not paid. Women were paid Rs 150 a week; the men, Rs 200. If a member of the family went to the market to buy provisions, someone from the family had to stay behind as ‘hostage’ -- if the person ran away, the contractor could force the captive to pay his dues!” “Of course there are laws (against bonded labour), numerous laws, but enforcement is almost unheard of. The Government of India is also party to a number of laws like the Convention on Suppression of Slave Trade and Slavery, 1926, Forced Labour Convention, 1930, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966, etc. That nothing ever happens is what upsets -- but does not surprise -- me,” says Ariavelam. There have, however, been a few who have ventured to change things on the ground. Like the group of women in Perumalpalayam village in Perambalur district, Erur panchayat, who have been literally chipping away at the hitherto traditionally male bastion of quarrying. A migrant from Datia district in Madhya Pradesh, 45-year-old Parvathi is president of the newly formed Angad self-help group which has 20 members. It all began around five years ago, when Selva Kumar of the Indian Development Organisation Trust visited the village and mobilised around 20 women to set up a self-help group. Each member pledged to save Rs 10 every month, initially. “We were suspicious and, in fact, asked Thiru Selva Kumar for a guarantee that he would not run away with our money! So he gave us Rs 500 from his own pocket as seed money. That was the beginning,” says Parvathi. Forty-year-old Tanga picks up the story: “But we felt saving Rs 200 a month was not enough. So, from Rs 10 per month that we were contributing, we increased it to Rs 25, then to Rs 50. This way we succeeded in collecting Rs 50,000 in two years (2002-2004). “With the money, we went to the district collector’s office for a permit to take a quarry on lease. The entire process took almost two years and it involved a lot of money that we did not have.” Indeed, it was an expensive process: the women had to pay Rs 70,000 as permit charges to the government to lease a hill near the village for quarrying, for a five-year period. Another Rs 30,000 had to be deposited with the government towards miscellaneous expenses, and the village panchayat (Thiruvellakurchi village) had to be paid another Rs 80,000 as panchayat fees. For all this, the self-help group borrowed Rs 100,000 from Natraj, the village sahukar(moneylender), at an interest rate of 5% per month. The Indo Trust loaned it Rs 50,000 at 2%. When the permit was granted in 2000, the women did a spot of clever thinking. They began allowing people from the village to work at the quarry for Rs 100 a month. This earned them an income of Rs 2,000-Rs 3,000 every month, though it obviously depended on the number of people working in the quarry. The lorry transporting rocks to the marketplace pays the group Rs 500 per trip. In turn, the women pay Rs 180 per trip to the government treasury for gitti (gravel-sized stones) and Rs 130 per trip for larger stones, bringing the group’s mean earnings to around Rs 250 per trip from transport. All in all, the SHG profits by Rs 3,000-4,000 every month, except during the lean season. Waste stone is sold at Rs 400 for every half-truck; the group is able to sell two such truckloads a month. As a rule, only men from the village get employment. So far, the business is making only enough to repay the group’s debts. From the last lease (2000-2005), they made a profit of Rs 30,000, which was used as down payment for the second lease (2005-2010). For the second and third instalments, though, they had to take a loan from organisations like the Indo Trust and Ekta Parishad (in fact, the second instalment of Rs 25,000 was paid through a loan the group took from the local village moneylender at 3% interest). Says Mallika, a self-help group member: “I earn Rs 50 every day, while my husband earns Rs 100 from this quarry. At least now we are able to meet our living expenses and are not at the mercy of contractors.” P Murugeshan agrees: “We have to pay Rs 200 to the neighbouring quarry every month for work, and we are constantly being told not to come to the quarry every day. Against this, we pay only Rs 100 to our SHG women.” Initially, the women had no idea how to run a quarrying business. But, thanks to support from the men in the village, their confidence soon allowed them to push ahead. Interestingly, in the first year, the men were given the responsibility of running the business. But they ran up losses! The women then took over, reserving only some of the record-keeping tasks for the men. With the men grinning sheepishly in the background, the women can’t help giggling as they admit that things have been much better since! (Aditya Malaviya is a journalist based in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh) InfoChange News & Features, March 2008
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