In January 2020, the CNN Freedom Project visited Sidlaghatta, a synagogue about 65 kilometers northeast of Bangalore, Karnataka, and met Hadia and Naseeba. This mother and daughter were forced by their ‘master’ to work 11 hours a day, for which they earned only 200 rupees (about $ 2.75) to repay a loan of 100,000 rupees (about $ 1,370) which has since doubled it.
Naseeba has been working in a silk factory for three years, her mother nine years, cooking silkworm cocoons and removing the threads from which she is made. The steam was dirty and their hands were bleeding, she said.
“(The master) came and said to my mother, ‘If you do not repay the money, we will have a rich man and you will have to sleep with that man,'” Naseeba said.
“I’m scared of the owner because he gave us a house to live in,” she added. “Where should we go? We can not go anywhere. We do not know what he will do with us after (watching) this video.”
Hadia and Naseeba hid their faces on camera and agreed to only be identified by CNN after receiving their release certificates.
In India, bound laborers can approach authorities to request a certificate of release. If an investigation finds that their case is genuine, the certificate is issued to them, proving that their debt has been canceled and giving them the right to legal aid. The process can take time – sometimes years – and may require bound laborers to take action in the face of social pressure and intimidation.
“It is very difficult to convince the bound laborers (to go to authorities) because they feel that they are being looked after by the masters or the owners who helped them in the hour of their need,” Kiran Kamal Prasad said. founder of Jeevika, an organization working to eradicate bound labor.
Authorities often come from the same communities as the guardians of bound laborers, or are the same dominant castes as the owners, Prasad explained.
“Very often authorities do not implement the (Bonded Labor System) Act,” he added. “It takes a tremendous effort on our part to get the officials to do what they have to do.”
Life after forced labor
Jeevika has allies in people like Shiva Kumar, a senior official of the local government in Sidlaghatta.
“I grew up as a son of a bondage worker,” he told CNN. “The (bound laborers) in the town think it is their (fate). If they come forward with complaints, we will file a criminal case against the landlord.”
For Prasad, freedom is only the first step for the victims. “We want to build the workers’ agency to help them bring about justice for themselves,” he said.
There are programs in villages, where communities of former slaves come together to put their savings in a collective fund. They can use the fund if they need it, without asking their former masters – or any other master – for a loan.
Jeevika has been helping to secure the freedom of nearly 7,000 bond workers in India for the past six years, and last year it added Hadia and Naseeba. The mother and daughter submitted papers and in May 2020 they received their release certificates.
Accompanied by government officials from the silk factory in which they toiled for years, they finally felt enough to show CNN and the world their faces again.
