INDIA:Jawahar Manjhi has been enslaved for 27 years over a loan of 40kg of rice, writes Rahul Bediin New Delhi
Britain and others in the West may be marking 200 years of the abolition of slavery by the British empire, but in an outpost of that long-gone order, India - the jewel in Victoria's crown - it is alive and well.
Jawahar Manjhi is living testament to the continuation of the reviled practice in a modern form, bonded labour. Manjhi has been enslaved for 27 years, the length of time he has been unable to repay the loan of 40kg of rice.
"The original loan was 40kg. But 27 years on, I do not know how much I have repaid and how much more I owe to the mahajan [ moneylender]," said Manjhi, who comes from Paliganj, 60km from the state capital, Patna.
Living in a one-room mud hut with his wife and four children, the 45-year-old labourer says he has no idea how the interest on the rice loan, taken in 1980 for a family wedding, was calculated. Neither does he know if he will be able to repay it in his lifetime or whether his children will inherit the liability.
The moneylender told him recently that 5,000 Indian rupees (about €86) would liberate him from his bond, but that is far beyond his reach.
As a teenager, Manjhi borrowed the rice in return for working in the moneylender's fields. It was agreed at the time that he would pay off 1kg of rice for each day he worked. But he took additional loans of rice to feed himself and his family and now has no idea what is outstanding as he continues to work every day in the fields.
Manjhi said there were several others like him in Bihar, India's most backward, lawless and impoverished state, but state labour minister Sushil Kumar Modi denied bonded labour still exists. It was abolished by India in 1975, but officials concede that millions, including children, are trapped in a vicious and self- perpetuating cycle of poverty that reduces them to slavery.
According to the South Asian Coalition Against Child Servitude, New Delhi has, at a conservative estimate, over 500,000 children working as bonded labour.
Officially about 20 per cent of India's billion-plus population lives below the poverty line, earning less than $1 a day. Unofficially it is much higher, and though strong economic growth has brought prosperity to the cities, it has bypassed rural areas.
There has been a rash of suicides in recent years by poverty-stricken farmers unable to repay loans from money- lenders known to levy an interest as high as 60 per cent a month, rendering the debtor incapable of repaying the principal sum.