The horrific revelations of forced and bonded labour emerging from Muzaffarnagar have shocked the conscience of the country.
Twelve migrant workers were held captive in a factory, beaten with iron rods, denied wages, prevented from escaping and terrorised using guard dogs. Survivors have testified that workers who attempted to flee were subjected to brutal violence and that one worker may even have been murdered after trying to escape. This is not merely a criminal incident. This harrowing episode lays bare the reality that modern slavery continues to operate in the heart of Uttar Pradesh under the watch of the BJP government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 abolished bonded labour half a century ago. Yet in “New India”, workers continue to be lured with advances, trapped through debt, denied wages, confined to workplaces and subjected to violence when they demand freedom. The workers of Muzaffarnagar were not victims of an administrative lapse; they were victims of a political economy that treats labour as disposable and migrant workers as invisible.
The Muzaffarnagar horror is not an isolated incident. Earlier this year, the National Human Rights Commission intervened in no fewer than 216 cases of alleged bonded labour in brick kilns across Uttar Pradesh. The Commission summoned senior officials of the state government to explain failures in identification, rescue and rehabilitation mechanisms and sharply criticised official apathy in addressing the issue.
In neighbouring Baghpat district, eighteen workers from five families were rescued from a brick kiln after being trapped through debt advances and forced to work under coercive conditions. Similar incidents have repeatedly emerged from the brick kiln belt stretching across western Uttar Pradesh, exposing the persistence of debt bondage in one of India’s fastest-growing state economies.
Nor is Uttar Pradesh alone. In Telangana, dozens of fishing workers trafficked across states were rescued from conditions of bonded labour. In Madhya Pradesh, seventy-four workers, including entire families and children, were rescued from a brick kiln in Raisen district earlier this year. In Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, children have been forced into labour to repay debts incurred by their parents. Bonded labour has not disappeared; it has merely adapted itself to the era of informalisation, contract labour and mass migration.
The Yogi government projects Uttar Pradesh as a model of development and law and order. But what kind of development rests upon bonded labour? What kind of law and order allows workers to be imprisoned in factories and guarded by dogs?
A government that can deploy bulldozers overnight against the poor and dissenters strangely appears incapable of dismantling the networks of contractors, labour intermediaries, kiln owners and factory owners who profit from bonded labour.
Research by the International Labour Organization, the International Organization for Migration and Walk Free Foundation has shown that debt bondage remains one of the most widespread forms of modern slavery globally. Their 2022 report estimated that 2.8 crore people worldwide were trapped in forced labour in 2021, with South Asia remaining one of the regions most affected.
In his 2005 study Bonded Labour in India: Its Incidence and Pattern prepared for the International Labour Organization, labour economist Ravi Srivastava argued that bonded labour in contemporary India had metamorphosed with the passage of time. It has concentrated among migrant workers in sectors such as brick kilns, stone quarries, rice mills, power looms, construction and small manufacturing units. The bonded labour in India cannot be understood separately from caste relations. The overwhelming majority of workers trapped in bondage came from historically oppressed and economically marginalised communities, particularly Dalits and Adivasis, whose landlessness and dependence on seasonal wage labour made them especially vulnerable to labour contractors and exploitative advances.
The brick kiln sector has been repeatedly identified as one of the country’s largest sites of debt bondage. The International Labour Organization’s 2009 investigation into brick kilns in Tamil Nadu documented how workers were recruited through large advances at the beginning of the season, only to find at the end of the year that arbitrary deductions, manipulated accounts and inflated debt calculations had left them indebted and compelled to return to the same employer in the following season.
The Muzaffarnagar case follows this exact pattern. So the cases of bondage cannot be finished unless serious political solutions are ensured for political problems like landlessness among the Dalits, the rural circuits of money lending, complete violation of land ceiling and strong political will.
We stand in solidarity with the workers of Muzaffarnagar and all victims of bonded labour across the country.
We Demand:
• Immediate arrest and prosecution of all those responsible for the Muzaffarnagar bonded labour racket.
• A judicial inquiry into the functioning of labour inspection mechanisms in Uttar Pradesh.
• Identification and rescue of bonded labourers across the state, especially in brick kilns, factories and construction sites.
• Immediate compensation, rehabilitation and secure employment opportunities for rescued workers and their families.
• Accountability from the Uttar Pradesh government for its failure to prevent the continuation of bonded labour fifty years after its legal abolition.
• Strict implementation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and regular monitoring of industries with a history of labour exploitation.A state that celebrates economic growth while workers are held captive in factories is not progressing — it is moving backwards.
The workers of Muzaffarnagar do not need sympathy. They need justice. Bonded labour is not a relic of the past; it is a political choice protected by state inaction.
