Manual Scavenging and Bonded Labour

In one line

Two forms of caste-assigned labour, two statutes abolishing them, and two findings by the Supreme Court that they had not stopped.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings and begar and other similar forms of forced labour, and makes any contravention an offence punishable in accordance with law. Two statutes give it effect for the practices in which caste and labour meet. The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976 abolishes the bonded labour system, extinguishes every bonded debt, frees every bonded labourer and creates Vigilance Committees for identification and rehabilitation. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013, replacing the Act of 1993, prohibits the construction of insanitary latrines and the engagement of any person as a manual scavenger or in hazardous cleaning of a sewer or septic tank, and provides for identification, rehabilitation and survey.

Article 23

The text. Traffic in human beings and begar and other similar forms of forced labour are prohibited and any contravention of this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law. Clause (2) permits the State to impose compulsory service for public purposes, provided it makes no discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste or class or any of them.

Begar means labour or service exacted by a person without giving remuneration for it, a form of forced labour historically associated with caste obligation.

And its reach was widened. In People's Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India the Court held that labour taken for less than the minimum wage is forced labour within article 23, because a person working for less than the minimum wage works under the force of economic circumstance rather than freely, and that article 23 operates against private persons as well as against the State.

Bonded labour

What it is. A system under which a debtor, or a person of his family or descent, is required to render labour to the creditor for a nominal or no wage, in consideration of an advance or of a customary or social obligation, and is thereby deprived of the freedom to take other employment, to move freely or to sell his produce at market value.

The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976, in outline. The bonded labour system stands abolished and every bonded labourer stands freed and discharged from any obligation to render bonded labour. Every obligation of a bonded labourer to repay a bonded debt is deemed to have been extinguished, no suit or proceeding lies for its recovery, and any decree already passed is deemed satisfied. A freed bonded labourer's property mortgaged for the debt is to be restored. The District Magistrate is charged with implementation and Vigilance Committees are constituted at district and sub-divisional level for identification, rehabilitation and the defence of prosecutions. Enforcing bonded labour, advancing a bonded debt, and compelling a person to render bonded labour are offences.