Bonded Labor and the Family Life Institute

            What is bonded labor? Typically it occurs when people are given high interest loans and thus forced into paying back their debts by working for their lender. More than that it is a psychological control over an indebted person that often enslaves entire families for generations. This practice is illegal in the US as well as the practice of predatory loans, which have only recently been banned by the US government. That it is not to say that bonded labor does not exist in the US, but globally there is even less protection for these indentured servants.

            What kind of work do these laborers perform? This is again a more complex question than it appears. Bonded labor is part of the sex trafficking industry and child labor operations but it also part of more hidden activities. Bonded laborers can be hidden in remote brick yards or in plain sight as house workers. These instances of hidden bonded labor make estimating numbers of laborers very difficult, but I will try to give you a few general global statistics:

-       Approx. 12.3 million forced laborers world wide. Of this…

-       2.4 million are trafficked

-       9.8 million are exploited by private agents

-       2.5 million work for state or rebel military regimes

-       56% are women and girls

-       40-50% are children

-       (Statistics from Prof. Prince Solomon, MCC)

            In India bonded labor is an ever present problem plagued by domestic trafficking, paid off police and extremely poor population that are extremely vulnerable to these Kandha Vatis or loan sharks as we would call them in the US. However, there are social workers and organizations fighting against the bonded labor system in India, performing raids and offering rehabilitation services for those they liberate. We were lucky enough to visit one such organization run through Madras Christian College called the Family Life Institute.

            The Family Life Institute works to release bonded laborers as well as offering services to reintroduce these people into society with their new found freedom. These services include classes and counseling, health services, a maternal care program, work opportunities, and a school for their children. We heard a few of their stories through Professor Solomon of MCC who works in the social work department as well as acting as one of the directors of the FLI. He started by telling us about the difficulties with successfully completing raid, the major difficulty being police corporation. First, the social workers must covertly gather evidence of a bonded labor operation including recordings of the testimonies from the laborers themselves. Only then will they order a warrant and employ the police force for the raid. Professor Solomon emphasized the fact that social workers are forced to keep their activities and plans hidden from the police until the last moments for fear that the police will tip off the organizers of these labor camps. This is just once tragic facet of the bonded labor scheme in India. It is hard for me to imagine trying to make any change in a system where the authority that we so rely on in the US, is just as much your enemy as the people you are trying to implicate. Finally, there are often middle men organizing the trafficking of these people that are nearly impossible to trace adding to the persistence of the system.

            Professor Solomon also told of the difficulties that are faced immediately after the liberation of these people. Part of why the bonded labor scheme is so enslaving is the psychological aspect. Often the situation could be that the laborer has paid their debt long ago, but they remain trapped, sometimes for generations, because they have no concept have how much of their loan they have paid. They are convinced that their debt is still unpaid and furthermore, the employer convinces them that they have no other options. They enslave families by forcing children work to pay their parents debt; they play mind games setting up their workers to feel a sense of trust with them. These barriers have to be broken to convince the newly liberated workers that they are indeed free. There are still more effects of the bonded labor including depression, domestic violence and alcoholism. The day we visited the FLI, Professor Solomon was visiting a group of recently freed laborers to teach a class about domestic violence. These people could be uneducated or unfamiliar with Tamil or English as they are often from many different parts of the country, so he uses illustrations to make his point. Although we were not present at this class (we were doing some work at the school house) it was interesting to hear about his successes and his difficulties in rehabilitating these people.  

            Working with Professor Solomon and the FLI opened my mind to the true fact of what is bonded labor. Hearing statistics is much different than understanding the far reaching social and psychological effects of this indentured labor system. Although Professor Solomon repeatedly emphasized the difficulties they often faced and the small part they were playing in a much larger picture, it gave me hope that this program even exists. The FLI is growing in size and publicity, even making short films that tell the stories of bonded laborers. This work of making the issue more known is perhaps the most important work they can do in moving towards an elimination of bonded labor.

Auroville: A Not So Ideal Community

                Upon the announcement that would be visiting Auroville, an experimental living community near Pondicherry, I was at first excited. Having visited another experimental community named EarthHaven last year as well as having spent an entire semester my freshman year studying utopian communities in one of my seminars, I was excited to make comparisons. This is of course not to mention the fact that alternative communities appeal to my general discontent with the present state of affairs on a personal level. What I found in Auroville was much different. They are certainly not a utopian community, which was made clear to our group at a few of our stops. What was clear to me is that Auroville is truly a grand experiment lacking cohesion and plagued with contradictions.

                There are many parts of Auroville that appealed to me, but these were very specific pockets of the community. For example, our first stop was a non-profit organization based within the community called Upansa. This organization focused on a variety of  projects that had interests in protecting the environment, employing local women, participating in disaster relief, protected farmers, etc. So far, I am more than on board with Auroville; Upansa sounds like something I can whole-heartedly support. I felt the same way on visiting the Earth Institute, a sustainable, earth-based building company. They had studied soils extensively (I loved the wall of global soil samples) and had developed their own earthen brick making machinery that was operated entirely by manual labor, no fossil fuels required. Again, here was an aspect of Auroville that greatly intrigued me. However, these were only small pockets within Auroville, and as the day progressed and the greater ideals of the community were revealed to us, I grew more and more agitated.

                Here I suppose I should give a brief history of Auroville. Auroville was begun by a woman, Mirra Alfassa, more fondly referred to within Auroville as “The Mother” in 1968. The Mother, a woman of Egyptian descent living in Paris during the students’ movement, saw this as “a time to experiment with new structures of life, a new way of being and thinking,” (Dr. Aster Patil). The Mother believed that man was a “transitional being” needing to meet both his material and spiritual needs in order to be completely whole. The ideals of Auroville include the idea that Auroville is owned by no one and there is no politics or religion; Auroville is simply governed by the Foundation of Auroville and is autonomous, for the most part, from the Indian government. Finally, Auroville was constructed on barren land that as the story was told to us, was completely wasted by the tribal people who lived there before the current residents, with absolutely no growth except for a single banyan tree that still stands today. Therefore, the people of Auroville are environmental champions that have restored the land nearly to its former livelihood. Finally, at the center of Auroville is a large golden globe, the Matrimandir. This huge structure was conceived by the Mother as a symbol of man’s striving towards perfection and the birth of divine humanity. Inside the structure is a white marble room for meditation, by appointment of course.

                Thus with the introduction of the “ideals” of the community as well as the sight of the Matrimandir, my frustrations began. Our tour guide repeatedly told us that Auroville was not based on any religion or politics, yet everywhere we looked there was a religious devotion to the Mother and her mandates. After all the Matrimandir was constructed based solely on her recommendation, even though there is growing opposition within the community. I could chalk this up to my own perceptions, mistaking her constant quotations and ever present portrait for religious devotion. Yet I can still find criticism. My major complaint with Auroville comes back to the Matrimandir. Even if I can move past the suspicious ideals and the contradictions, I cannot get past the fact that Auroville is a community shunning capitalism and the current systems society is operating under, yet they have one of the most outstanding displays of affluence I have ever seen at their center in the Matrimandir. Everything about this structure bothers me. It is entirely unsustainable and a waste of resources – the lands surrounding Auroville were certainly not plentiful in gold reserves or marble outcrops. Furthermore, the structure is surrounded by twelve manicured gardens that require hundreds of man hours and countless resources to construct and maintain (though I must say this tongue-in-cheek as a student at Furman). I understand that environmental sustainability is not at the core of Auroville, but it does bother me that the environmental restoration of this land was preached to us while around us I found countless signs of degradation. Finally, my major complaint is this: Matrimandir is undoubtedly a multi-million dollar project (the real cost was never disclosed) that took place in one of the poorest countries in the world. There were even people within Auroville without housing, yet construction on the Matrimandir’s gardens continued full-steam ahead. It is hard for me to stomach this community dominated by westerners and clearly affluent that as a whole appears to be self-centered, ignoring the needs of the worlds poorest that press in all around them. Again I am probably over generalizing, but these are my impressions.

                I can appreciate aspects of Auroville. I can even appreciate that it is an experimental community that allows its residents to explore their own structures and systems of human life. If this was all of Auroville that I knew, I could even see myself living there. Here I should note that it was mentioned to us, though only in passing, that some Aurovillians do not subscribe to the philosophy of the Mother and they are not ostracized for this fact at all. However, I would never be able to stomach Matrimandir. I would never be able to live within India, knowing all I know about the poverty and people of India, in a place that seems so removed from the Indian people and their woes.