Amid the relentless clatter of equipment, Ravi Kumar Gupta feeds a roaring metal furnace with scrap, blown steel and molten iron. He rigorously provides chemical compounds tailor-made to the kind of metal being produced, adjusting gasoline and airflow with precision to maintain the furnace working easily.
As his shift ends about 4pm, he stops briefly at a roadside tea store simply exterior the gates of the metal manufacturing facility in Maharashtra state’s Tarapur Industrial Space. His security helmet continues to be on, however his ft, as a substitute of being shielded by boots, are in worn-out slippers – scant safety towards the molten steel he works with. His eyes are bloodshot with exhaustion, and his inexperienced, full-sleeved shirt and light, torn blue denims are stained with grease and sweat.
4 years after migrating from Barabanki, a district within the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Ravi earns $175 monthly – $25 lower than India’s month-to-month per capita income. And the paycheques are sometimes delayed, arriving solely between the tenth and twelfth of every month.
Middlemen, who’re both locals or longterm migrants posing as locals, provide labour to factories in Maharashtra, India’s industrial heartland. In return, the middlemen skim between $11 and $17 from every employee’s wages. As well as, $7 is deducted month-to-month from their pay for canteen meals, which consists of restricted parts of rice, dal and greens for lunch, in addition to night tea.
Requested why he continues to work on the metal manufacturing facility, Ravi responds with resignation in his voice: “What else can I do?”
Giving up his job isn’t an choice. His household – two younger daughters in class, his spouse and mom who work on their small plot of farmland, and his ailing father who’s unable to work – rely on the $100 a month that he’s in a position to ship dwelling. Local weather change, he says, has “ruined farming”, the household’s conventional occupation.
“The rains don’t come when they need to. The land not feeds us. And the place are the roles in our village? There’s nothing left. So, just like the others, I left,” he says, his thick, calloused fingers wrapped round a cup of tea.
Ravi is a cog within the wheel of the hovering desires of the world’s fifth-largest economic system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has boldly spoken of creating India a $5 trillion economic system, up from $3.5 trillion in 2023.
However as Modi’s authorities woos world traders and assures them that it’s simple at this time to do enterprise in India, Ravi is amongst hundreds of thousands of employees whose tales of withheld wages, limitless toil and coercion – telltale indicators of pressured labour, in accordance with the United Nations’ Worldwide Labour Group (ILO) – present a haunting snapshot of the ugly underbelly of the nation’s economic system.
Farm to furnace
The Factories Act of 1948, which governs working circumstances in metal mills just like the one the place Ravi works, mandates annual paid go away for employees who’ve been employed for 240 days or extra in a 12 months. Nevertheless, employees like Ravi don’t obtain paid go away. Any day taken off is unpaid, whatever the cause.
Like many others, Ravi is required to work all seven days every week, totalling 30 days a month, even though Sundays had been formally declared a weekly vacation for all labourers in India way back to 1890.
Employees in lots of Indian factories don’t obtain a wage slip detailing their earnings and deductions. This lack of transparency leaves them in the dead of night about how a lot cash has been deducted – or why.
Worse nonetheless, if a employee is absent for 3 or 4 consecutive days, their entry card is deactivated. Upon returning, they’re handled as a brand new worker. This reclassification impacts their eligibility for necessary advantages such because the provident fund and end-of-service gratuity.
In lots of circumstances, employees are pressured to rejoin below these unfair phrases just because their pending wages – both direct from the corporate or by way of the middlemen – haven’t been paid. Strolling away would imply forfeiting their hard-earned cash.
Along with all this, Ravi confirms that neither he nor his colleagues, each in his firm and in close by factories inside the industrial space, have acquired any written contracts outlining their job roles or employment advantages.
In line with a 2025 research (PDF) printed within the Indian Journal of Authorized Evaluation, many employees face exploitation via unfair contracts, wage theft and compelled labour as a result of absence of written agreements. These practices notably have an effect on extra susceptible teams like migrants, girls and low-skilled employees, who typically have restricted entry to authorized recourse. Al Jazeera contacted the Maharashtra Labour Commissioner on Could 20 looking for a response to issues round pressured labour in industries the place employees like Ravi are employed, however has not acquired a reply.
There may be additionally the absence of ample security gear: Ravi works close to the furnace, the place temperatures cross 50 levels Celsius (122 levels Fahrenheit). However employees aren’t supplied with protecting glass. “Neither the middlemen nor the employer offers us even essentially the most primary security gear,” he says.
But, helplessness wins.
“We all know how harmful it’s. We all know what we have to keep secure,” he says. “However what alternative do we’ve?
“While you’re determined, you don’t have any alternative however to adapt to those harsh, unsure circumstances,” he mentioned.
‘If I get thrown out, what then?’
Within the port city of Kakinada, alongside India’s Bay of Bengal coast – about 1,400km (870 miles) from the place Ravi works – 47-year-old Sumitha Salomi earns even lower than him.
A shrimp peeler, Sumitha has no formal job contract with the manufacturing facility the place she works. Like many others, she has been employed via a contractor – a girl from her personal village. The manufacturing facility, a closely fortified facility that exports peeled vannamei shrimp to america, employs migrant employees from the neighbouring state of Odisha and different areas. The premises are tightly guarded, and entry is strictly managed.
However within the villages the place the manufacturing facility’s employees dwell, a typical story emerges: None of them have written contracts. Nobody has social safety or well being advantages. The one work gear they’ve are gloves and caps – not for his or her security, however to keep up hygiene requirements for the exported shrimp.
India exported shrimp price $2.7bn to the US within the 2023-24 fiscal 12 months, in accordance with official figures.
Sumitha explains that her pay will depend on the burden of the shrimp she peels. “The one break we get is about half-hour for lunch. For girls, even once we’re in extreme menstrual ache, there’s no relaxation, no aid. We simply hold working,” she says.
She earns about $4.50 a day. She is aware of the precarity of her job. Her wages are handed to her in money, with none payslip, leaving her with no approach to contest what she receives.
As a divorced mom, Sumitha carries the burden of a number of tasks. She’s nonetheless repaying loans she took for her elder daughter’s marriage, whereas additionally making an attempt to maintain her youthful daughter in class. On prime of that, she cares for her aged widowed mom who wants most cancers medicine that prices about $10 a month.
However she doesn’t query the manufacturing facility bosses about her working circumstances or the absence of a written contract. “I’ve a job – contract or no contract. That’s what issues,” she says, her voice stoic.
“There are not any different jobs right here on this village. If I begin asking questions and get thrown out, what then?”
Not like seasoned veteran Sumitha, 23-year-old Minnu Samay continues to be grappling with the cruel realities of her job within the seafood trade.
Minnu, a migrant employee from the japanese state of Odisha, is employed at a shrimp processing manufacturing facility positioned inside the high-security Krishnapatnam Port space in Nellore, about 500km (310 mile) south of Kakinada.
Migrant employees like Minnu are allowed to depart the manufacturing facility simply as soon as every week for about three hours, primarily to purchase necessities in Muthukur, a village 10km (6 miles) from the manufacturing facility. As she hurries via the slender market lanes, choosing up sanitary pads and snacks throughout this temporary window of freedom, she tells her story.
“I used to be 19 after I left dwelling. Poverty pressured me. My mother and father had been deep in debt after marrying off my two sisters. It was exhausting to outlive,” Minnu says. “So once we met an agent in our city, he organized this job right here.”
Slowly, she has realized whereas on the job, chopping and peeling shrimp. Minnu earns roughly $110 monthly.
“We all know we’re being exploited, our freedom is restricted, we’ve no medical insurance or correct rights, and we’re consistently below surveillance,” she says. “However like lots of my coworkers, we don’t produce other choices. We simply regulate and hold going.”
Most extra time work is just not paid, she mentioned. “We’re watched by cameras each second, trapped in what appears like an open jail,” she says.
On Could 20, Al Jazeera despatched queries to the Andhra Pradesh Labour Division, and on Could 22, to the Indian Ministry of Labour, looking for responses to issues over widespread pressured labour in industries the place employees like Sumitha and Minnu are employed. Kakinada and Nellore are in Andhra Pradesh state. Neither the Andhra Pradesh Labour Division nor the federal Indian Ministry of Labour has responded.
Labour rights consultants say that these tales lay naked the pressing want for enforceable contracts, the abolition of exploitative hiring practices and initiatives to coach employees about their rights – very important measures to fight pressured labour in India’s unorganised and semi-organised sectors.
On March 24, India’s federal Labour Minister Shobha Karandlaje informed parliament that roughly 307 million unorganised employees (PDF), together with migrant employees, had been registered below an Indian authorities scheme.
However researchers say that the true scale of India’s unorganised workforce is probably going even bigger.
‘Hid’ pressured labour
Benoy Peter, govt director of the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Improvement (CMID), a civil society organisation primarily based within the southern Indian state of Kerala, cited a doc (PDF) from India’s Nationwide Pattern Survey Group, which mentioned that the nation’s complete workforce is roughly 470 million in power. Of this, about 80 million employees are within the organised sector, whereas the remaining 390 million – greater than the whole inhabitants of america – are within the unorganised sector.
The UN Worldwide Labour Group’s India Employment Report 2024 (PDF) helps Benoy’s commentary, stating that low-quality jobs within the casual sector and casual employment are the dominant types of work in India. The ILO report mentioned that 90 % of India’s workforce is “informally employed”.
And plenty of of those employees are victims of pressured or bonded labour. India ratified the ILO’s Compelled Labour Conference 29 in 1954 and abolished bonded labour in 1975. But, in accordance with the Stroll Free Basis, India has the best estimated variety of folks dwelling in fashionable slavery worldwide, with 11.05 million people (eight in each 1,000) affected.
The true numbers, once more, are seemingly worse.
In 2016, the then Indian Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya knowledgeable Parliament that the nation had an estimated 18.4 million bonded labourers, and that the federal government was working to launch and rehabilitate them by 2030.
However in December 2021, when Indian parliamentarian Mohammad Jawed inquired (PDF) about this goal in parliament, the federal government said that solely roughly 12,000 bonded labourers had been rescued and rehabilitated between 2016 and 2021.
The textile sector is among the many worst offenders.
In line with a parliamentary document from March this 12 months, the southern Tamil Nadu state led textile and attire exports, together with handicrafts, with a price of $7.1bn. Gujarat, Modi’s dwelling state, adopted in second place, exporting $5.7bn price of those items.
Thivya Rakini, president of the Tamil Nadu Textile and Frequent Labour Union (TTCU), says that in a decade of visiting factories to work with garment employees, she has, in nearly all situations, seen at the least one – and sometimes a number of – indicators of pressured labour as outlined by the ILO. These indicators embody intimidation, extreme extra time, withheld wages, sexual harassment, and bodily violence, akin to slapping or beating employees for failing to satisfy manufacturing targets.
India’s textiles trade has round 45 million workers, together with 3.5 million handloom employees throughout the nation.
“Compelled labour within the textile trade is widespread and sometimes hid,” Thivya says. “It’s not a random incidence. It stems straight from the enterprise mannequin of style manufacturers. When manufacturers pay suppliers low costs, demand giant volumes on tight deadlines, and fail to make sure freedom of affiliation or primary grievance mechanisms for employees, they create an setting ripe for pressured labour.”
Ladies make up 60-80 % of the garment workforce, she says. “Many lack formal contracts, earn lower than males for a similar work, and face frequent violence and harassment,” she mentioned. Many are from marginalised teams – Dalits, migrants or single moms – making them much more susceptible in a patriarchal society.
Different sectors are tormented by pressured labour too. Transparentem, an unbiased, nonprofit organisation centered on uncovering and addressing human rights and environmental abuses in world provide chains, investigated 90 cotton farms within the central state of Madhya Pradesh from June 2022 to March 2023 and launched its closing report (PDF) in January 2025, uncovering baby labour, pressured labour and unsafe circumstances: Kids had been dealing with pesticides with out safety.
‘No alternative however to tolerate exploitation’
Between 2019 and 2020, the Indian authorities consolidated 29 federal labour legal guidelines into 4 complete codes. The said goal of those reforms was to enhance the benefit of doing enterprise whereas making certain employee welfare. As a part of this effort, the entire variety of compliance provisions was considerably decreased – from greater than 1,200 to 479.
Nevertheless, whereas many states have drafted guidelines wanted to implement these codes, there has nonetheless not been a nationwide rollout of those legal guidelines.
Supporters of the brand new labour codes argue that they modernise outdated legal guidelines and supply better authorized readability. Critics, nonetheless, notably commerce unions, warn that the reforms favour employers and dilute employee protections. One of many codes, for example, makes it more durable to register a employees union.
A union should now have a minimal of 10 % of the employees or 100 employees, whichever is much less, in an institution to be members of a union, a big rise from the sooner requirement of simply seven employees below the Commerce Unions Act, 1926.
Santosh Poonia from India Labour Line – a helpline initiative that helps employees, particularly within the unorganised sector, by providing authorized support, mediation and counselling companies – tells Al Jazeera that if employees are barred from forming unions, that may weaken their collective bargaining rights.
“With out these rights, they are going to don’t have any alternative however to tolerate exploitative working circumstances,” he says.
To Sanjay Ghose, a senior labour legislation lawyer practising on the Indian Supreme Courtroom, the issue runs deeper than the brand new consolidated codes.
“The true difficulty is the failure to implement these legal guidelines successfully, which leaves employees susceptible,” he says.
Ghose warns that India’s stagnating job creation may compound the exploitation and compelled labour amongst employees.
India’s prime engineering faculties, the Indian Institutes of Expertise (IITs), have lengthy prided themselves on how the world’s largest banks, tech giants and different multinationals queue up at their gates annually to lure their graduates with large pay packages.
But, the proportion of graduates from the IITs who safe jobs as they go away college has dropped sharply, by 10 proportion factors, since 2021, when the Indian economic system took a serious hit from COVID-19 – successful it hasn’t totally recovered from.
“Even graduates with excessive ranks from premier establishments just like the IITs are struggling to safe job placements,” Ghose says. “With restricted choices out there, job seekers are pressured to simply accept no matter work they will discover. This results in exploitation, unfair working circumstances, and, in some circumstances, pressured labour.”
Pramod Kumar, a former United Nations Improvement Programme (UNDP) senior adviser, provides that weakened personal funding and overseas direct funding (FDI) have made nationwide development largely depending on authorities spending. Consequently, job alternatives are primarily restricted to the casual sector, the place unfair working circumstances are prevalent, resulting in exploitation and compelled labour.
Non-public sector funding in India dropped to a three-year low of 11.2 % of gross home product (GDP) in fiscal 12 months 2024, down from the pre-COVID common of 11.8 % (fiscal years 2016-2020), in accordance with rankings agency India Rankings & Analysis. Moreover, FDI in India declined by 5.6 % year-on-year to $10.9bn within the October-December quarter of the final fiscal 12 months, pushed by world financial uncertainties.
In opposition to that financial backdrop, Poonia, from the India Labour Line, says he can’t see how the federal government plans to satisfy its bold goal of rescuing 18 million bonded labourers in India. He mentioned he expects the alternative.
“The state of affairs goes to worsen when the benefit of doing enterprise is prioritised over human rights and employees’ rights.”
