Lifeworlds of female bonded labourers among the Sahariya tribe

ABSTRACT

Debt bondage is one of the most widespread forms of unfree labour today. The majority of the existing studies focuses on bonded labourers as a homogenous group rather than examining group dynamics within the population of bonded labourers. This paper tries to overcome these limitations and examines experiences of women bonded labourers from the Sahariya tribe in India. It argues that gendered norms intersect with other patterns of structural violence creating a situation where women are doubly exploited but also opening new (limited) agentic spaces for these women.

KEYWORDS:

• Bonded labour
• gender
• polyphony
• India

Introduction

Debt bondage, which involves “exploitative interlining of labor and credit agreement” (Kara 2012, 3) is one of the oldest forms of unfree labour and remains widespread today (Kara 2012). This practice exists in almost all parts of the world including Europe and the US (Breman 2007, Kara 2012), but it is most prevalent in South Asia where, due to poverty, landlessness, and caste-based discrimination, many marginalised groups have to accept exploitative conditions of labour dictated by landlords and moneylenders (Samonova 2019). In South Asia, bonded labourers may be found in almost all sectors of the economy from agriculture to the production of frozen shrimp, tea, carpets, brick kilns, matches, fireworks, and the sex industry (Bales 1999, Bales 2005, Kara 2012, Miers 2013). This paper focuses on one of the most traditional forms of bonded labour – agricultural bonded labour among the Sahariya tribe in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

There is a rich body of literature on agricultural bonded labour that examines mechanisms of enslavement (Kara 2012, Burns et al. 2015, Mishra 2011), lived experiences of bonded labourers (Oosterhoff et al. 2017, Upandyaya 2004, Giri 2010, Kole 2007), and potential ways of liberation (Samonova 2019, Oosterhoff et al. 2020, Chaudhary 2011, Chandrasekharan et al. 2020). It is widely recognised that bonded labour is closely linked with ethnic and caste-based discrimination, lack of opportunities, highly unequal local socioeconomic structures, and relations based on social hierarchy (Mishra 2011, Sriavastava, 2009). However, in most of the existing studies, bonded labourers are discussed as a homogenous group and little attention is paid to gender dynamics within this group.

With some notable exceptions (Guerin 2013), most of the studies on agricultural bonded labour focus either on experiences of men heads of households who take loans or families as whole, while little is known about everyday experiences of women that are trapped in bondage along with their men relatives. At the same time, it is widely recognised that focus on households is not enough to capture inequalities at the intra-family level and that the lack of this nuanced knowledge hinders the development of target policies (Agarwal 1997, Cornwall 2016, Kabeer 2001). Feminist literature on rural households shows that women in rural societies often have a double burden of productive and domestic work that is reinforced by customary beliefs and gendered practices of labour division, distribution of resources within family, and gendered positions of women as inferior family members (Kabeer 2001, Doss 2014, Kansanga et al. 2019), but literature on bonded labour remains largely silent on experiences of women as wives of bonded labourers (Herzfeld 2002). This paper tries to overcome these limitations and examines experiences of such women from the Sahariya tribe. It argues that gendered norms intersect with other patterns of structural violence creating a situation of double exploitation for women but also opening new (limited) agentic spaces. The focus on women’s voices restores the “epistemological justice” (Skeggs 2002) for women bonded labourers and helps us to see the complexity of power dynamics that take place within bonded families.

Theoretical framework: polyphony of voices

The postmodern paradigm in social sciences understands social processes as the fluid field of multiple agencies and meanings. Examination of the concept of bonded labour from this perspective shows that it comprises meanings, experiences, and perspectives of heterogeneous groups and actors that tell one story of exploitation and suffering but from different angles, perspectives, and viewpoints. To navigate through this complex and sometimes contesting sea of voices, this paper utilises the concept of polyphony first developed by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin.

The term polyphony emerged in Bakhtin’s analysis of the novels of Dostoevsky that include a “multiplicity of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness each with equal rights and its own world” (1984, 208). The narrative of the novel is presented through the eyes of multiple actors and its complexity arises through actors’ counter-looks on life. For Bakhtin, such a polyphonic narrative stays in a direct opposition to the monologic discourse that “is a discourse where only one point of view is represented” (Hays 2005, 7) and which “denies the existence outside itself of another consciousness with equal rights” (Bakhtin 1984, 292). Polyphony implies a dialogue with the world that is never finished but is always open to new voices, new interpretations, worldviews, and positioning (1984).

While this concept of polyphony emerged within the field of literature studies, it was later applied by various authors to other fields (Tyler 1986, Rhodes 2016, etc.). It is often seen as a useful alternative to the traditional positivist discourse and is used in pedagogy, social sciences, and gender studies as a way to challenge the dominant discourse by introducing voices of others into the narrative and destabilising finalised stories by adding new viewpoints and meanings (Keenoy and Oswick 2004, Rhodes 2001). Especially fruitful is the use of this concept in gender studies (Francis 2010, Connell 2008, Bauer and McKinstry 1991, O’Reilly 2007). Francis (2010, 2012) argues that polyphony is useful for a nuanced analysis of the multiplicity of gender productions as it overcomes traditional binary opposition between men and women, and allows for a focus on the multiple femininities and masculinities that co-exist and enter into a dialogue with each other.

Bahktin’s concept of polyphony provides a useful theoretical lens for the understanding of experiences of people trapped in debt bondage in India. As Holloway and Kneale (2000) argue, one of the benefits of analysis of polyphonic voices is the acknowledgement of the absence of a dominant and privileged discourse and openness to a multiplicity of meanings that emerge in dialogue with each other. Using the polyphony perspective, we can see the practice of bonded labour as an unfinalised field of various experiences and voices that emerge from different dialogical positions and backgrounds and are equally important for the understanding of the whole narrative. From this viewpoint, we do not prioritise women’s voices over men’s, as the voices of both men and women are important; however, we recognise that women’s experiences are crucially important to the understanding of the system of bonded labour.

Methods

The paper is based on the data accumulated during two field trips that took place in 2015 and 2016. The fieldwork aimed to cover experiences of bonded labourers living in two Indian states: Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. It was conducted in six villages: two in Kishanganj block, one in Shahabad block of the Baran district in Rajasthan, and three in the Sheopur district in Madhya Pradesh. The villages were selected based on the number of Sahariya people living there (up to 60 per cent of the whole village population), the high prevalence of bonded labour among Sahariyas, and accessibility by car/bus.

The main method of inquiry was in-depth, semi-structured interviews and group discussions with bonded labourers. In total, 15 individual interviews and seven group discussions (with three to four participants in each) were conducted. The participants were bonded labourers and their wives, aged between 20 and 60 years. All research participants were landless and lived in houses provided by their landlords. To ensure the study was able to cover the wide variety of experiences and avoid possible bias in group discussions, participants from the same family were not included. Additionally, interviews with local officials, landlords, local activists, and staff of NGOs that work in the field were conducted to gather a fuller picture of the policies and practices on bonded labour in the region. The total sample is presented in Table 1. The research followed the ethical guidelines of the university. Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper.

Table 1. Total sample.

	Women	Men
Individual interviews	7	8
Individuals in group discussions	15	19
NGO staff and local activists	4	4
Local officials	0	2
Landlords	0	2
Total	61

Due to my limited knowledge of Hindi, local interpreters (men and women) translated and transcribed the interviews for me. To avoid possible biases and meaning losses in translation, I conducted a training with the interpreters beforehand, where I explained the main purpose of the study and went through all interview questions to make sure that they understood the intentions of these questions. Interviews with NGO staff were conducted in English and transcribed by me.

I interpreted the data with the help of grounded theory in order to identify the links and connections between various sets of data (see Corbin and Strauss 1990). In contrast to many other methods of analysis, grounded theory does not aim to prove a pre-defined theory but rather applies inductive reasoning and allows theories to “emerge” from the data (Charmaz and Mitchell 2001), and thus it provides an opportunity to gain insights into the everyday realities of research participants and develop a better understanding of social phenomena. A constant comparison of data from different settings, which is an essential part of this analytical method, allows for the identification of commonalities and isolated events. The first step of the analysis was open coding of interviews transcripts, which can be seen as a “spontaneous annotation” (Bamkin et al., 2016) of the data. The next step was the development of theoretical categories (such as “dominance” or “social obligations”) based on these spontaneous codes, which later formed a theory that provided insights into gendered experiences of women bonded labourers.

“Nobody is free”: Sahariya women and bonded labour

The Sahariya tribe belongs to the Adivasi group or indigenous inhabitants of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. They have traditionally lived deep in the forest and had a little contact with the outside world. However, new forest policies, non-recognition of their traditional agricultural practices like shifting cultivation and communal land ownership along with the mass migration of other ethnic groups to the region led to the radical transformation of Sahariya’s lives. Today the life of the Sahariya community is characterised by chronic poverty, malnutrition, and indebtedness.

Most men Sahariyas nowadays work as manual labourers in agriculture. The practice of bonded labour among Sahariya people begins with a debt taken by a poor and often landless peasant. Labour in this case is seen as collateral to the loan and the debtor has to work for a landlord until the debt is repaid, which means that, theoretically, bonded labourers can free themselves. However, as in all cases of traditional agricultural bondage, the system functions in such a way that repayment of a loan is almost impossible, and debt bondage in the region has a life-long character (Samonova 2019).

The practice of bonded labour has been prohibited in India for decades. Articles 21, 23, 29, 33, and 42 of the Indian Constitution directly prohibit all forms of slavery. Moreover, there is a special Bonded Labour System Abolition Act 1976 which explicitly declares that all forms of debt bondage are illegal. However, these regulations are hardly implemented on the ground (see Burns et al. 2015) and the Sahariyas have a very low level of awareness about their rights. Local NGOs provide them with information about laws and existing government programs that aim to support indigenous populations; however, conversations with bonded labourers show that most of them do not believe that they can benefit from the legal prohibition of bonded labour. As one of the men bonded labourers says, “the entire politic is with these landlords”, which makes it almost impossible to claim your rights. Local authorities, in turn, tend to undermine the problem, claiming that there is no such issue as bonded labour in the area and what is called “bondage” is a traditional form of labour agreement, and NGOs are “making a big deal of this to get more money and attention”.

Both bonded labourers and staff of local NGOs agree that bonded labour itself is a symptom of structural inequality and endemic poverty among the Sahariyas. All stories of bonded labourers share the same narratives of poverty, landlessness, urgent need of money, a debt that cannot be repaid, and lifelong (and sometimes intergenerational) exploitative labour for long hours with limited compensation. One of the women participants of a group discussion explained the decision to enter bonded labour:

We do not sit at home, we work every day, but the money is enough for food only. If a single problem comes to our life, like [a] health [issue], we take money from the landlord and become bonded. We don’t have anything like jobs, other sources of income, nothing and that’s the major problem. Everybody works, and nobody is free.

This narrative of work that is not enough to remain free from debt is common in interviews and group discussions. Both men and women addressed the lack of necessary resources for survival, occupation of their ancestral land by landlords, deforestation, and violence against the tribal population, along with failed government services and corrupted authorities as the main reasons for their extreme poverty and vulnerability to any shocks. In this context of extreme poverty, a loan is often seen as the only way to cope with sudden crises and urgent needs.

Loans are usually taken by men family members. On the one hand, it reflects the needs of landlords in hard manual labour. However, it also represents a male domination in the society, where public and private spheres of life are clearly separated and interaction with the outside world is seen as a man's responsibility. The group discussions revealed that Sahariya women traditionally occupy inferior positions within their families and have less power to influence important decisions on family budgeting and survival strategies. Women rarely have a strong voice in family decision-making processes on such important issues as taking a loan and entering bondage.

While it is men who take the loans, such a loan effectively means the bondage of the whole family. There are two main ways of entering into debt bondage for Sahariya women and in both of them women have little chance to influence the situation. The first way into the bondage is to marry a man who is already bonded. Ram, a man from Kishanganj block of Rajasthan, tells the story of his family:

I took a loan many years ago because my wife was sick, I took Rs 20,000 to buy medicine and had to work for the landlord. The medicine didn’t help and my wife died and I still work for the landlord. Later I married another girl from the village, but I am still bonded and my new wife is bonded with me … There is no way out, this is a lifetime work for us.

In many other cases, bondage starts when couples are already married. In our group discussions, most of the women participants mentioned that their husbands had not consulted with them before taking loans and entering into bondage. At the same time, most women do not question the authority of their husbands to make such a decision, which reflects the general power imbalance in families. Moreover, the fact that women were not asked about their opinion does not necessarily mean that they disagree with this choice and that the inclusion of women’s voices would prevent entering into bondage. In contrast, many women in our group discussions supported the decisions of their husbands and acknowledged that taking a loan was the only way to survive for them and their families.

At the same time, all these women agreed that bondage negatively impacts the life of the whole family in several ways. The most visible is the fact that by entering into the bondage, the family loses the opportunity to find work elsewhere and has to accept exploitative labour relations, as once a man head of the family becomes bonded, all family members, including wives and children, are also considered as bonded labourers. Although women did not take out loans themselves, a common practice was that the whole family would be prohibited from working outside the landlord’s household, thus restricting the freedom of the entire family.

Like one is bonded, the whole family like the wife, sisters, daughters, whoever it is, they cannot work on someone’s farm, in someone’s house, in fact they cannot do anything for someone else. They just live with this person [bonded labourer] and when they have some problems in life, they again will take the money from that landlord.

In this quote, 23 year-old Parvati, whose husband took a loan four years ago, describes the everyday reality for her and other women in their village. Being unable to find other sources of income, they are forced to rely on their landlords who directly exercise control over the life of the whole family and dictate what kind of work women family members are allowed to do.

During the low agricultural season, women stay at home and fulfil their household chores; however, during the harvest season, they are called to the fields to work alongside with their husbands. This work is compulsory for all women family members and women see it as a good chance to earn some money: landlords pay them between 100 and 200 Rs per day of work (which is slightly below the minimum pay rate in India). However, this money is often paid to husbands. As Ravi, a young woman from a village Madhya Pradesh mentioned:

My husband receives all the money from our owner [the landlord], all what I earn goes in my husband’s hands, and I don’t see this money, unless my husband buys us food. I asked the landlord to pay me directly, but he says that I am married and all money belongs to my husband.

This story reveals an interplay between gendered norms and unfree labour: though the wife did not take out the loan herself, she is automatically included in the coercive agreement between her husband and the landlord, which restricts her freedom and forces her to accept the work provided by the landlord. At the same time, gendered norms shared by both the landlord and the husband deny Ravi the right to control the limited earnings she could get under these circumstances.

This intersection between gender norms and the structural oppression of the Sahariya community frames the life choices and experiences of both men and women. While such structural factors as poverty, landlessness, and internalised social norms prevent Sahariya people from selling their labour freely and force them to accept coercive labour agreements, gendered norms of male superiority deny women their freedoms, not only in interactions with landlords, but also within their own community and family. The next section aims to place women’s experiences with bonded labour in the wider context of gendered relations in families and societies.

Sahariya women’s everyday lives: between subordination and resistance

While the status of bonded labourers significantly limits women’s abilities to work outside the household, it does not affect their duties at home. Like women in many other parts of the world, Sahariya women are responsible for domestic chores and child care, which remains largely unrecognised by their husbands (see also Kabeer 2001; Singh and Pattanaik 2020). This household work is combined with other productive activities, such as a gathering of wood and herbs in the forest and agricultural work during the high season on landlords’ fields.

While women are responsible for most tasks in the household, they have little control over family resources. The previous section has already shown that many landlords do not pay women for their work directly, which gives husbands full control over the money. There is also a social expectation that women will hand the money they generate through the sale of forest produce to their husbands. The main decisions about the spending of money are made by men family members, while women are usually excluded from these discussions. This refers not only to serious decisions on taking out loans or spending money on an important ceremony, such as a wedding or funeral, but also everyday decisions, such as buying food for the family. Almost all women informants revealed that it was their husbands who usually went to buy food and other necessities (even if there was a market/subsidised shop in their village), which gave them little control over what exactly was bought and in what quantity. While husbands usually consult with wives about what needs to be bought, they retain their right to refuse to buy some items that they consider unnecessary or too expensive:

Women are very dependent on males in this village. My husband is the one who goes to the market and buys food. Sometimes I ask him to buy certain things, but he comes back and says that these things are too expensive and we do not need them. I am supposed to cook the food he buys, but I can’t cook if I don’t have things I need for it. If I try to insist [on buying certain food] he does not listen to me … 

The purchase of everyday goods is constrained by poverty, corrupt shop owners, questionable quality of products, and failed networks, which significantly reduces the choice options for bonded families (Samonova 2019). However, the men's control over the buying process further limits the ability of women to fulfil their needs and the needs of their families.

Such gender relations based on men's dominance are often problematised by interviews with staff of local NGOs. As woman staff member of an NGO that aims to reduce malnutrition among Sahariyas’ children argues, this power imbalance not only affects the ability of women to make decisions about food purchases but also limits women’s ability to seek medical help:

Women have very limited autonomy and there are so many duties on you and you don’t have freedom, you need permission from your father or man to bring your child to the [malnutrition] treatment centre.

The other narrative that repeatedly appears in interviews with NGO workers is alcohol and tobacco addiction, which is widespread across the men members of Sahariya community. In group discussions, women are very vocal about these uncontrolled spendings and express their serious concerns that such behaviour would ruin the future of the whole family. Indira, who is locally seen as an educated woman as she attended first class in a primary school, calculated her daily losses due to her husband’s additions:

He spends about Rs 40 per day on alcohol and tobacco, it makes Rs 280 per week … And he receives Rs 80 per day from the landlord! It’s half of his wage! We could save this money to send our son to school or buy more food, but the money is just wasted … 

Unsurprisingly, high levels of alcohol consumption lead to increased levels of violence in families and communities in general (see Giusto and Puffer 2018). Domestic violence is an everyday part of the lives of these women. A woman NGO worker mentions that many women are:

so used to it [domestic violence] that they do not see it as a problem. They are like: why are you talking about it? It happens to everyone, to me, to my sister, to my auntie … They don’t know that it is wrong.

While high levels of alcohol consumption and domestic violence are also widespread in other communities (Oosterhoff et al. 2020), the other type of violence that Sahariya women experience every day is directly linked to their status as bonded labourers. The interviews are full of narratives of physical, psychological, and sometimes sexual violence committed by landlords. The concept of fear appears in the interviews constantly as an integral part of the everyday life of Sahariyas. In one of the villages, Hemraj, a man who has been working as a bonded labourer for 15 years summarised their experiences:

The landlords here are very violent, they beat their bonded labourers regularly. We are under them like slaves, we cannot do anything … If we make claims, they will kill us. Every landlord has a gun … 

While men bonded labourers are mostly afraid of being beaten by landlords, women have a more sophisticated combination of fears. NGO workers openly speak about high levels of sexual violence in the area, but the topic is rarely addressed by Sahariya women themselves as it seems to be taboo within the community. However, some women made references to other types of gender-based violence by landlords that occurred either with the respondents themselves or in their community. Many women link these incidents to the absence of wives of landlords in the communities as landlords usually have their families in their native states of Punjab and Harajana and live on their lands alone. Most of these accounts refer to sexual harassment (including inappropriate comments and touches), rather than cases of rape. However, even these uneven indications showed that women do not feel safe when dealing with landlords alone.

While wives of bonded labourers are placed at the bottom of the family hierarchy and have little power to resist the decisions of their husbands and the power of landlords, it would be false to paint their lives only in dark colours. In the interviews, there were found several examples that bondage of husbands can sometimes open up new opportunities for women to establish their (limited) power within the family and gain more control over resources. Interviews with women showed that the constant absence of husbands may lead to a shift in leadership roles within the family. Padma, a middle-aged wife of a bonded labourer claims:

My husband is often away in the fields, he comes only in the evening and goes back in the early morning. That is why I am now the head of the family in his absence. Sometimes, I decide some things that I am not supposed to decide, because he is not there … For example, I joined a women’s group here in the village without his approval … Sometimes, I also buy some extra food with the money I earn from selling wood. Usually, I give the money to my husband, but when he is not there I can spend the money myself.

Husbands’ absence from home due to their work for landlords to some extent limits their influence on everyday decisions and opens more freedom for women to realise their own ideas about family life and the future of their children. This process can be seen as an exercise of women’s “thin” agency. In contrast to the “thick” agency that takes place when women have a variety of choices and freely act upon their will, “thin” agency takes place within an environment where only few alternatives are present (Klocker 2007). As Padma acknowledges, despite her limited freedom of action in the absence of her husband, he is still in charge of the overall family spending and a radical restructuring of the family budget remains impossible due to his reservations. Interviews show women’s agency is not only limited by poverty, bondage, and patriarchal norms, but also by generational orders, as women living in the same house with their in-laws have much less freedom to manoeuvre in comparison with those who live just with their husbands. During the same group discussion where Padma shared her experiences, another woman mentioned that her mother-in-law would not allow her to do such things, as she “is the main person in the household”.

Thus, the exercise of this “thin” agency does not lead to the transformation of gender relations and generational structures but rather has an opportunistic character as women take advantage of the current situation (Bell 2012). At the same time, even this limited agency might bring some changes in family lives and is widely supported by local NGOs. As many NGO workers acknowledge in interviews, Sahariya women are much more active in terms of their willingness to participate in programs and activities than men. One of the senior NGO officers who has been working with the community for decades argues that men “unite only for weddings” while women are very active as “there is a socially rooted kind of power” among women. This “socially rooted power”, or the ability of women to navigate within the male-dominated world without challenging power structures, is often a foundation for many NGO activities, including programs against child malnutrition and women’s saving groups. While these activities cannot liberate women from bondage, they nevertheless may contribute to the improvement of certain aspects of the lives of bonded families and increase their resilience (Samonova 2019).

Conclusion

This paper examines the lived experiences of the wives of Sahariya bonded labourers through the lens of polyphony. This polyphonic approach shows the complexity of power relations in the everyday lives of these women. The Sahariya community lives within a wider context of structural violence, rooted in poverty, along with caste- and ethnic-based discrimination, and social exclusion. While these factors contribute to the restriction of freedom of all community members, gendered norms and expectations further limit women’s agency. The experiences of women discussed in the paper show that women’s low position in the social hierarchy effectively limits their control over their lives, as well as their access to financial resources and agency within the family.

At the same time, the paper shows that exploitative labour agreements with landlords, may provide small opportunities for women’s thin agency as the absence of husbands allows women to make certain decisions about their families and take actions that otherwise would be reserved for men. Such actions take place in highly restricted contexts where poverty and bondage intersect with gender and intergenerational norms leaving women few options to choose from. The experiences of NGOs, however, show that even such limited women’s agency may create positive changes at personal and, potentially, community levels. While these improvements remain marginal, they show the importance of women’s agency in understanding the complex problem of bonded labour. Thus, the inclusion of women’s voices and perspectives in the discussion on agricultural bonded labour along with the perspectives of men and NGO workers can not only enrich our understanding of the phenomenon but also provide insights into new ways of addressing the problem.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund.

Notes on contributors

Elena Samonova

Elena Samonova received her PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests lie in the area of human rights, bonded labour, gender inequality, and agency of marginalised groups. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University College Dublin.