Panchanan Muduli, 44, from Balangir, a western Odisha district that depends on rain for agriculture, was determined to afford the education of his two sons and daughter, leaving home for Hyderabad in early 2025. She was promised work at a poultry farm and a place to sleep with the chicks she would raise. Although the wages were very low, only ₹10,00 per month, he felt he would at least get a steady income that he could send home. The stench, the humiliation, the loneliness proved unbearable. In about a month, he quit the job and started traveling home.
Desperation surrounded him at Vijayawada railway station. The owner of a fish farming farm offered him work. Muduli agreed. What happened next was even worse: 15-hour workdays, temporary shelter, and a job that tied him to where he worked. He says he and other workers lived under constant surveillance and fear for seven months.
One day, when a relative of the owner died, the workers ran away. They walked for hours through the forest to escape capture from Perumallapuram village in Andhra Pradesh’s East Godavari district. Muduli was later rescued by officials of Nagarkurnool district of Telangana and declared a bonded laborer under the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976.
He returned to his village Dumerpadar with the hope that the law would help him rebuild his life. Months passed. He says no help was received. Within five months of the rescue, Muduli decided to flee again. This time with his wife and 5 year old daughter. He moved to a brick kiln in Telangana in November 2025 and continued working there.
The Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976, which was a milestone in the history of India at that time, completed 50 years of its enactment in February 2026. It came into force retroactively to October 1975 and is “a system of forced, or partially forced, labor whereby a debtor enters into an agreement with a creditor…” The reasons are usually economic or race-based, both of which are covered by the law.
Under the Act, which has not been amended since its enactment, the State Government is required to conduct periodic surveys to ascertain the presence of bonded labour. However, the final source of data is the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC)-2011. According to its assessment, 8,304 bonded laborers were rescued and released in Odisha, mostly tribals. The number of legally released bonded laborers in the country was 1.65 lakh. However, the Odisha government never disclosed what action it had taken to identify and rehabilitate these 8,304 people.
Even five decades after its enactment, the term “bonded labour” evokes images of slavery, which many believe had disappeared with colonial rule in India. Each district administration of Odisha was asked to create a corpus fund of ₹10 lakh to provide immediate relief to the freed bonded labourers. Half the districts of Odisha do not have any such fund.
Individuals and families migrate
In 2017, 35-year-old Dambrudhar Majhi from Odisha’s Nuapada district moved to Karnataka in search of survival, but found himself trapped in what he now calls the worst ordeal of his life. He and his family slept near a pile of rotten chickens. Cleaning feces and urine from morning till evening became a routine.
He says, “The three months we spent inside the poultry farm felt less like work and more like punishment. It was worse than the hell described in mythology.” Majhi recalls, “The owner promised us ₹10,000 per month, but wages were seldom paid. He would not allow us to go.” In desperation, the couple quietly sent their children to a relative. Coincidentally, the children came across labor officials at Yesvantpur Junction railway station. After this a rescue operation was conducted. “We got freedom that day,” he says.
He says even after nine years the rescue certificate is carefully preserved in his home, but the promised rehabilitation under the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act never came. Fearing return to migration, the couple now work as daily wages, but are able to get food only once a day.
His story matches that of Jayaraj Jagat of Nuapada, who along with his wife was rescued from a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu in 2012. They say they received ₹19,000 each as rehabilitation assistance. For a short time, the money provided relief and respect, allowing him to remain in his village. But poverty and lack of earning opportunities persisted in his village.
Jayaraj Jagat and his wife, who hail from Nuapada district of Odisha, and were rescued as bonded laborers in 2012, are working in a brick kiln in Telangana. Photo: Special Arrangement
By 2017, the couple had no choice but to elope again. They returned to the same cycle of exploitation. For six months each year, they lived under 6-foot-high makeshift shelters in brick kilns, and worked up to 14 hours a day. Illness was a luxury they could not afford. Hunger, debt and helplessness left them no way out. Presently, he is working at a brick kiln in Telangana.
freedom without relief
Delay in resettlement assistance is a problem, especially for inter-state migrant labourers. “When resettlement is delayed, rescued workers are forced back into the same occupations, no matter how harsh or exploitative the conditions may be,” says Umi Daniel, director of migration and education at Aid at Action, an international nonprofit that works between poverty and education.
Timely financial assistance is only the first step. “We have physically freed people from their captors, but not from the debt that binds them. Helping them get back on their feet is a long-term process,” says Daniel. Without ongoing support, avoidance becomes a temporary blockage, not a permanent escape.
The law mandates close monitoring of rescued bonded laborers, with their details recorded in official registers. It also requires the District Collector to designate an officer to monitor their rehabilitation and ensure long-term security. District-level vigilance committees headed by the Collector are in place to take this process forward.
Binod Senapati, the nodal officer of Odisha responsible for the rehabilitation of the released bonded labourers, says that he was not aware that people were not being helped. He says, “Whenever other states inform us about the rescue and release of their labourers, we immediately inform the district collectors to take care of them.”
Daniel says rehabilitation cannot be limited to a lump sum cash payment. “Survivors must be linked to anti-poverty programs like housing, livelihood schemes and social protection to break the cycle of insecurity,” says Daniel.
Jagat reiterates this: “I am good at tailoring. My wife also knows a little bit of tailoring. If we had been provided assistance, I would not have gone to another state to work in such harsh working conditions.”
Daniel says there was a sustained intervention in Odisha, when about 1,200 bonded laborers from 500 families were rehabilitated (from 2010–2015) and linked to government welfare programs, “helping them rebuild their lives with dignity”.
Before 2016, the central and state governments used to pay ₹10,000 as assistance after a laborer was rescued from bondage. Under the 1976 law, identification, release and rehabilitation of freed bonded laborers is the direct responsibility of the states and union territories.
However, in 2016, the Ministry of Labor and Employment introduced the Central Sector Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourers, which was later strengthened and re-launched in 2022. Fully funded by the Centre, the scheme does not require any matching contribution from the state governments. It guarantees immediate relief of up to ₹30,000 to each rescued labourer, followed by graded rehabilitation assistance of ₹1 lakh, ₹2 lakh or ₹3 lakh depending on gender, severity of exploitation and vulnerability. This support is meant to become the foundation for rebuilding life after bondage. Still, hundreds of released bonded laborers are waiting for rehabilitation.
No one understands this difference better than seventy-year-old civil rights activist Baghambar Patnaik, who has raised the issue of 1,472 freed bonded laborers with the Orissa Human Rights Commission. The petition includes 1,085 laborers from Balangir district, 44 from Subarnapur district, 28 from Bargarh district, 114 from Nuapada district and 201 from Kalahandi district.
“A labor group, Shramvahini, coordinated the rescue of hundreds of workers from different states. Most were migrant laborers from western Odisha who faced bonded conditions,” says Patnaik. “In the districts where they were rescued, they were tried briefly before sub-divisional magistrates and issued release certificates. But rehabilitation never took place,” he said, adding that many returned to the same exploitative work from which they had escaped.
The activist, who spent time in jail while leading a silent rally of barbers, attributes the main reasons for the failure to poor awareness and weak accountability within the administration. “The law exists. The provisions exist. There is a lack of timely action,” he says.
caste based bondage
In many villages bonds survive not through chains but through caste. For generations, families of the barber and washerman communities have been trapped in hereditary slavery, paid not in the form of wages but in the form of a few kilograms of rice. The system, unwritten, yet rigorously enforced, is passed down from one generation to the next.
“We are forced to do tasks like shaving the heads of villagers during death rituals, cleaning up leftover food after feasts and carrying ceremonial offerings on our shoulders,” says Laltendu Barik of Brahmapur village.
“This work has been imposed on us since birth. There is no way to escape it. Anyone who protests faces social ostracism,” he adds.
When members of these communities began to protest the system, the backlash was swift. They faced intimidation, ostracism and economic isolation from dominant caste villagers.
After sustained protests by people and intervention of civil society groups, hundreds of people were formally identified as bonded laborers and issued release certificates under the 1976 Act. But acceptance did not translate into rehabilitation, he says.
“Due to lack of administrative sensitivity, the state government failed to send the rehabilitation proposal to the Centre,” says Patnaik, who has moved both the Orissa High Court and the Orissa Human Rights Commission, seeking justice for the affected families. “Years later, instead of providing assistance, the government canceled many of their release certificates,” he alleges.
1,283 people from tehsils including Brahmagiri, Krishnaprasad, Delang and Nimapara in Puri district were once officially recognized as bonded labourers. Today, many of those certifications have been revoked.
Barik is one of them. He says, “I was declared a bonded laborer on March 3, 2016. But the report dated April 8, 2025 says that I am no longer a bonded laborer because I have stopped providing traditional services.
Patnaik calls this denial of reality. “This reflects deep bureaucratic ignorance,” he says. “The government is unwilling to accept that caste-based bondage still exists and comes under the Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976.”
Daniel says implementation of the law remains weak as it requires coordination between different departments like labour, revenue, panchayati raj and police. “There is no clear ownership, defined roles or standard operating procedures to ensure that the landmark act benefits the most vulnerable,” he says.
satyasundar.b@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
