The Life of Labour: Slavery in Modern India, How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks – The Wire

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Credit: International Labour Organization

Slavery in modern India the brick-kilns of Rajasthan

Slavery is a word that would seem to have no place in our modern world a world which is built on a language of rights and freedoms. Last week, Life of Labour linked to a series by the Guardian on instances of slavery across the modern world each one a brutal reminder of a feudal world we were supposed to have left behind. In one video, a Russian NGO called Alternativa rescues men and women who work as slaves in brick-kilns and sheep farms. This is not the slavery we expect slaves with t-shirts and passports sounds oxymoronic. But as withhuman rights abuses in the Middle East, Russian slavery is built on hidden debts, withheld wages, confiscated documents and, when that isnt enough, physical violence.

Brick-kilns are the sites of slavery and human rights abuse in India as well. Based on NSSO data, Anti-Slavery International calculatedthat there might be 100,000 kilns in India employing 23 million (or 2.3 crore) workers. In a letter dated 6th April 2017 to Rajasthans labour secretary, the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) described the condition of brick-kiln workers and there were many similarities with the Russian situation.

The letter said, The vulnerable conditions of the these workers stem from the fact that:

(a) The state government has failed to enforce provisions oflabour legislations; (b) Most of these workers are interstate or intrastate migrants recruited from remote villages of UP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and part of Rajasthan by illegal contractors onan advance wage during the off-season; (c) The workers are illiterate or have modicum of education, almost landless, poor with high indebtedness/deficit budgets and belong to backward communities like SC, ST or OBC. Representation of forward castes like Rajputs, Brahmins, Banias is not there; and (d) The establishments are located in the remote areas therefore the workers remain invisible and get exploited, deprived of social safety net benefits and legal labour rights.

In a reporton the issue, Equal Times described how a man from Uttar Pradesh borrowed money for a wedding and found himself travelling thousands of kilometres to repay his debt. His wife, three young children under the age of 10 and his ageing father all worked at the kiln, yet Brijesh was the only one officially employed and paid. The payment was a sustenance amount as he worked off his debt.

Just like Russia, the kilns tend to be situated in remote areas. So,geography becomes the first hurdle in trying to escape. These kilns are effectively gulags or debtors prisons but with the formal veneer of wage labour. In this instance, mechanisation cannot come fast enough. In an interviewwith IndiaSpend, Ken Bales, a professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Nottingham, said The interesting thing is that there are lot of things people do for business not just in India, but across the world with slaves that if they didnt have slaves for it, they wouldnt do itThere is a belt from Punjab to Uttar Pradesh, below Nepal, where they make bricks because of the kind of soil found there. You can buy Chinese brick-forming machines for not many rupees, and they dont need to pay for the machines because they have slaves children and mothers. As soon as you break it (slavery), either they have to shut down or they have to buy those machines.

But despite knowing about these kilns and the existence of strong central legislation against bonded labour, state governments like Rajasthan are notoriously impotent at dealing with the issue. PUCL hascriticised the state for notifying a minimum wage of Rs 227 for 1000 bricks. This wage was absurdly low compared to neighbouring states like Punjab (where it is Rs. 587), Haryana (Rs. 472) and Uttar Pradesh (Rs. 365). Within Rajasthan, areas like Ganganagar, Ajmer and Bhilwara pay more than double of this notified rate. But in places like Jaipur, the minimum wage is whats paid. And the prices of bricks are much higher in Jaipur than in Ganganagar or Ajmer, so there is no market reason for the wages to be so low.

Pioneering the use of behavioural science at work

In the United States of America, theyve moved way past slavery and now simply trickpeople into choosing to work hard by themselves. Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists, Uber has experimented with video game techniques, graphics and non-cash rewards of little value that can prod drivers into working longer and harder and sometimes at hours and locations that are less lucrative for themBy mastering their workers mental circuitry, Uber and the like may be taking the economy back toward a pre-New Deal era when businesses had enormous power over workers and few checks on their ability to exploit it. Read the fantastic investigation by NYT here.

Caste and Safai Karamcharis

A recent studypublished in EPW of 360 safai karamcharis employed by the Bombay Municipal Corporation argues that policies aimed at uplifting conservancy work may actually be institutionalising caste-based occupations, This study reveals that almost 90% of safai karamcharis in the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) belong to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Other Backward Classes. Castes like the Mahar, Matang, Meghwal, Harijan, Valmiki and Chambhar dominate, whereas others like Kathewadi, Kunbi, Vadar and Devendrakulathan are found in smaller numbersIn our study, we found that more than three-fourths (77.2%) of safai karamcharis are second-or third-generation workers. Nine out of 10 have adopted this occupation after their fathers retirement or death and only 5% took their mothers place.

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The Life of Labour: Slavery in Modern India, How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks - The Wire