Bonded Labor: All Evils Rolled Into One
The Dawn, Pakistan
January 19, 2006
Bonded labour: all evils rolled into one
By Hina Shahid
One of the most important topics being discussed by the media and NGOs in Pakistan is the issue of bonded labour these days. Pakistan, along with India and Nepal, lists amongst the main South Asian states where forced labour is rampant. Asia accounts for 9.5 million out of a global total of 12.3 million victims of this gruesome scenario.
Although the word bonded labour is often used with the colloquial meaning of severe poverty and dependence on the goodwill of others, there is no accepted technical definition, and a standardized set of tools that exist for analyzing and quantifying bonded labour in Pakistan. Like trafficking, bonded labour is an area of human experience that is highly complex and which evokes powerful and contradictory feelings amongst those attempting to understand it.
The system of debt bondage in Pakistan is the outcome of certain categories of indebtedness which have been prevailing for a long time, involving certain economically exploited, helpless and weaker sections of the society. This system originated from the uneven social structure characterized by feudal and semi-feudal conditions. Bonded labourers constitute perhaps the weakest section of the rural poor.
Bonded labour: all evils rolled into one
By Hina Shahid
One of the most important topics being discussed by the media and NGOs in Pakistan is the issue of bonded labour these days. Pakistan, along with India and Nepal, lists amongst the main South Asian states where forced labour is rampant. Asia accounts for 9.5 million out of a global total of 12.3 million victims of this gruesome scenario.
Although the word bonded labour is often used with the colloquial meaning of severe poverty and dependence on the goodwill of others, there is no accepted technical definition, and a standardized set of tools that exist for analyzing and quantifying bonded labour in Pakistan. Like trafficking, bonded labour is an area of human experience that is highly complex and which evokes powerful and contradictory feelings amongst those attempting to understand it.
The system of debt bondage in Pakistan is the outcome of certain categories of indebtedness which have been prevailing for a long time, involving certain economically exploited, helpless and weaker sections of the society. This system originated from the uneven social structure characterized by feudal and semi-feudal conditions. Bonded labourers constitute perhaps the weakest section of the rural poor.
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