A moment that had many of us at the Bandhua 1947 office celebrating was the statement made by Jairam Ramesh, expressing his keenness for the government to be a part of the national campaign against bonded labour.
“We cannot say that we have abolished bonded labour. It may be true on paper and we have laws on it, but we haven’t managed to finish it,” said Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Rural Development. He admitted that millions were still enslaved, even four decades after India enacted the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act in 1976.
“Under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission umbrella, we will begin pilot projects in 10 districts which are considered to have a substantial population of bonded labourers. We will locate the bonded labourers there, get surveys done, rehabilitate them and create conditions for alternative livelihood,” he said to the media.
Why are we so elated? Because in order for freedom to prevail, the system needs to change. For years, states governments have sworn that there is no bonded labour in their states, but the media has played a massive role to bring the truth to the surface. After umpteen media reports on bondage and slavery, the government has decided to step up to the plate. The NRLM has signed up to be an institutional partner of the Bandhua 1947 campaign.
What does this mean? Starting December 2013, NRLM will fund projects in the districts of Gaya (Bihar), Bastar & Kondagaon (Chhattisgarh), Bolangir & Naupada (Odisha), Gumla (Jharkhand), Prakasam & Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh), Kanchipuram & Vellore (Tamil Nadu). They will help locate and rehabilitate bonded labourers by inclusion in self-help groups and their federations, provision of soft loans and vulnerability reduction funds, and special projects for alternative livelihoods including skill development interventions. Sarada Muraleedharan, COO of the NRLM also stated that convergence with the interventions of the Ministry of Labour for rehabilitation of bonded labour are also underway.
Bandhua 1947 