Bonded Child Laborers in India's Silk Industry

Gary Haugen writes that the first step in preparing our minds and hearts to fight the injustices of the world is to cultivate a compassionate awareness (Haugen, Good News About Injustice, p. 38). Since many of these evils happen on the other side of earth, it is difficult to sustain the reality in our minds. But, as Christians, we should be used to believing without seeing. After all, “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).

Each day I encourage you to go before God, and ask Him to remind you that evil is on this planet, and that we should fight for justice. Below is our first weekly prayer reminder. Quotes and information is taken from Human Rights Watch: Child Labor’s article “Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India’s Silk Industry” (2005).

At 4:00 a.m. I got up and did silk winding. . . . I only went home once a week. I slept in the factory with two or three other children. We prepared the food there and slept in the space between the machines. The owner provided the rice and cut it from our wages. He would deduct the price. We cooked the rice ourselves. We worked twelve hours a day with one hour for rest. If I made a mistake-if I cut the thread-he would beat me. Sometimes [the owner] used vulgar language. Then he would give me more work.

-Yeramma S., eleven years old, bonded at around age seven for Rs. 1,700 (U.S.$35) Karnataka, March 27, 2002

This is the thing that God blessed me with, so I have to work like this. I can't do something else. . . . It is written on my head and nobody can change this. I am born into this community so we don't know what else to do. We have to do this and nothing else. . . . I don't want to go to the looms, but there is no other way.

-Vimali T., fifteen-year-old low-caste girl, bonded to a loom owner for Rs. 8,000 (U.S.$167), Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, March 21, 2002

Children are very compliant. They don't demand minimum wage, create a union. You can lock them up and keep them from going home. Adult laborers take breaks for lunch, to smoke, but children will work the whole day without breaks. They are seen as more efficient workers. On the one hand they are afraid of the employer, on the other of their parents, so they just do as they are told.

-Director of a nongovernmental organization running schools for former child laborers, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, March 12, 2002

[S]ericulture is a labour-intensive industry. . . . India,with its population explosion has no labour problem. Sericulture does not require great skill but only delicacy in the handling of the worms and it is ideally suitable for the unskilled family labour, particularly womenfolk, aged, handicapped and children.

-1997 sericulture textbook (G. Ganga and J. Sulochana Chetty, Thiangarajar College, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, An Introduction to Sericulture, 2d ed. (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1997), p. 23)

There are millions of children toiling as bonded laborers today as you read this entry. The majority of their childhood is spent in tight, dark spaces under the silk loom, working in a vain attempt to pay back a debt their family has incurred in a time of need. Sometimes this debt can be as little as $15US, but due to the need to reimburse the debt in a lump sum and extreme interest rates, many of these children will never be released until their injuries prevent them from being able to work.

The work will leave these children starving, uneducated, and too often crippled by the time they approach adulthood. There is a mandate for the Indian government to free these children, yet, due to apathy, caste bias, and corruption, the government and its officials do everything they can to deny that these children exist at all.

Despite heavy pressure in the 1990s and promises by officials to ease the problem, there has been very little action to save the futures of these small children.

Please pray that God’s justice may deliver these children from the evil ones that are using them to make a dollar or two. “The Lord is known by His justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands” (Psalm 9:8). Pray for the freedom and reclaiming of a childhood for every child laborer in India. And remember who our God is, and that He is good and able.