On the islands dotting the Krishna river in Telangana, there are no roads, no phone networks, and no easy way out. It was in these isolated fishing camps that Erukala Raju, a 35-year-old migrant worker from Andhra Pradesh, spent six months in bonded labour in 2025, cut off from the world and stripped of his freedom. His experience, reported by Frontline India, is not an aberration but a stark reminder that bonded labour in India has survived its legal abolition through silence, denial, and systemic failure.
Raju left his village in Palnadu district after a domestic dispute, travelling to Vijayawada in search of daily wage work. Like thousands of other migrant workers, he was approached at the railway station by a middleman offering food, wages, and steady employment. Instead, Raju was trafficked across State borders and dropped on a muddy river island. His phone was confiscated. Escape was impossible. Nights were spent fishing from 9 pm to 9 am, followed by hours sorting the catch. Sleep came in fragments of four or five hours, food was scarce, and wages were never paid.
When workers protested or attempted to flee, they were beaten. Contractors rotated shifts to keep watch, ensuring constant surveillance. Raju tried to escape repeatedly and failed each time. “At one point, it felt like we were already dead,” he told Frontline India. His rescue came only in July 2025, when authorities reached the camps by boat and freed 33 bonded labourers, including four minors. Yet even after rescue, the law’s promise faltered. Raju has still not received the interim compensation mandated under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, nor full rehabilitation.
This year marks 50 years since the Act came into force, banning bonded labour and obligating the State not just to free workers but to rehabilitate them so they do not fall back into exploitation. The law’s definition of bonded labour is broad, recognising that coercion can exist without chains or written contracts. In theory, India abolished bonded labour in 1976. In practice, it merely changed its form.
The Global Slavery Index 2023 estimates that nearly 11 million people in India live in conditions of modern slavery. According to a recent report by the National Campaign Committee for the Eradication of Bonded Labour, this persistence is not due to gaps in law but to systematic non-implementation. Identification, rescue, prosecution, and rehabilitation have all been weakened, often deliberately. Official data presented by the Union government shows around 2.97 lakh bonded labourers rescued since 1978, a figure activists argue represents only a fraction of the real scale.
Denial begins at the district level, where authorities routinely refuse to acknowledge the existence of bonded labour. Under the Act, the responsibility to identify and rescue bonded labourers lies with district magistrates and vigilance committees. Yet, as NCCEBL convenor Nirmal Gorana told Frontline India, officials often invert the law by asking workers to prove they are bonded, instead of placing the burden on employers. By simply declaring that no bonded labour exists, administrations evade both responsibility and scrutiny.
This failure is deeply caste- and gendered. The vast majority of bonded labourers belong to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, or Other Backward Classes. Women constitute nearly half, many reporting sexual and physical violence at worksites. Despite this, provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act are rarely invoked. The law recognises bonded labour as a form of structural violence, but its enforcement erases caste and gender entirely.
Rescue, when it happens, is often incomplete or procedurally flawed. FIRs are delayed or not filed, statements are recorded in coercive environments, and conviction rates remain dismal. Even after the introduction of the Central Sector Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourers in 2016, fewer than four per cent of cases have resulted in conviction. Rehabilitation hinges on the issuance of a bonded labour release certificate, a document meant to be provided within 24 hours of rescue. In reality, certificates are routinely withheld, cutting workers off from compensation, housing, healthcare, and livelihood support.
The consequence is widespread re-bondage. More than half of rescued children and nearly a third of rescued adults receive no compensation at all. Most do not access employment schemes, health insurance, or skill training. Without support, many return to migrant labour, where exploitation repeats itself. The system does not break the cycle; it reinforces it.
The story of Parmeshwar Shah illustrates how symbolism has replaced substance. Rescued from a construction site in Maharashtra in 2023, Shah received partial compensation but no release certificate and no long-term rehabilitation. Within months, he was back in migrant labour, once again facing withheld wages and threats. In 2025, Shah was invited as a special guest to the Independence Day celebrations at the Red Fort, showcased as evidence of successful rehabilitation. During the Prime Minister’s address, bonded labour was not mentioned once. “We went with a lot of hope,” Shah told Frontline India. “But we did not get the benefits we were told about.”
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves describes the situation as a collapse of political will. He argues that the Bonded Labour Act is now implemented at “10 per cent or less” of its intended strength, part of a broader dismantling of social legislation. Recent labour reforms, he warns, risk creating new forms of coercion rather than eliminating old ones. The failure to enforce protections, he says, is not accidental but deliberate.
That abandonment is most visible after rescue. Santosini Chimda, freed from a brick kiln in 2016 as part of one of India’s largest rescue operations, is still waiting for rehabilitation nearly a decade later. Though she received a release certificate, compensation and housing never followed. What distinguishes her story is not State support but collective resistance. Along with other survivors, she formed Shramavahini, a network that now helps thousands of former bonded labourers navigate documentation and report abuses. In the absence of government action, survivors have been forced to become their own safety net.
As Frontline India’s reporting makes clear, bonded labour in India has not disappeared. It has adapted, spread into informal sectors, and even taken digital forms in the gig economy, where algorithmic control and penalties coerce workers without legal protections. The law remains on the books, but its spirit has been hollowed out.
Fifty years after abolition, bonded labour survives not because it is legal, but because enforcement has been abandoned. Freedom, without rehabilitation or accountability, remains fragile. For millions like Raju, Shah, and Chimda, abolition is still a promise waiting to be kept.
