Documentary: Invisible chains - bonded labour in India's brick kilns

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We used to get up at midnight 12 or 1 am

and work through the day
making clay ready for molding.

We lined up the brick for drying
and changed bricks sides later

I like reading,

but my father had to take me
to the brick kiln to work

as he did not have money.

The children in the brick kilns
are getting punished in many ways

Children are denied
their basic right to education--

whether they are working
or not in the kilns.

The children's health
is significantly affected

and in a bad situation.

One of my sons is 14 years old,
another is 9, and the third one is 7.

Children have to work at any cost,

what would they eat if they don't work?

The water is so bad.

Neither we can wash utensils, nor the clothes.

It's stagnant, dirty water,
good for nothing.

We wake up at 1 at night,
start working and later we cook and eat.

We rest for two hours
and then start the work again.

We prepare the clay for molding
and molding bricks into the cases.

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Anti-Slavery International have worked
to address force labor and child labor

in brick kiln industry

and we work on both source state
and destination

with seasonal migrants

We work in three states: Chhattisgarh,
Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab.

I have four children.

All of them have gone to Punjab
to work in brick kilns.

I stay alone at home here.

We can't survive on the land
as we have very little

and that is why people go to other places
to earn and make a living.

The government have done nothing.

What can it do?

Whatever food supply comes in,
the dealers take it all.

They are forced to migrate
to escape a starving situation.

they barely survive
and return with nothing.

So this is the ongoing--
it's a cyclic problem.

INcreasingly, there is a denial.

I mean there has always been denial

of the existence
of the bonded labor system.

And that has not changed,

and in fact it has become even more worse

because the form of bondage is changing,

and if the government
doesn't keep up with that,

then we cannot address
the problem of bondage.

How they cannot leave the kiln.
There is no boundary there?

They are still speaking
the old language of bondage

as physically curtailing workers
from leaving the kiln.

Their freedoms are still curtailed,

nut the means that are used are different.

It is withholding their wages
with the implied threats.

from the contractors
and from the brick kiln owners.

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After working for several decades
on bondage in brick kiln industry

we realized that a lot
of these issues and problems

arise from the system of wages
that exists in brick kiln industry.

Piece rate wage system,
only the bricks count;

the human beings dont't count.

Workers are paid for the 1,000 bricks
that they mold.

It does not matter how many hands
go into making that 1,000 bricks.

or how many hours go
into making that 1,000 bricks

and that is what exists
in the brick kiln industry.

Because of which women are invisible.

they are never paid.

Children are forced to work.

Child labor is incentivized.

If you don't put children to work

then you can't complete
the kind of production required

to earn the minimum wage.

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Brick molders, loaders,
brick firemen, brick pullers--

none of us got any money for our work.

they told us they will pay
the money in the brick kiln.

We went there and worked,

but they didn't pay us money.

I have three children,

one year and four year old girls

and a four year old son.

They all had to come with me.

We reached such a helpless stage

that we did not have even a penny with us.

We kept molding bricks
and completed the work,

but we were not given any money.

We did not have anything to eat there.