Tainted Carpets: Slavery and child labour in India’s hand-made carpet sector

In 2014, India was the largest exporter of handmade carpets and the United States was the largest importer of handmade carpets in the world. Imports of carpets from India to the United States rose by 136 per cent from 1991 to 2012, making India also the fastest growing exporter of carpets to the United States.

The cities of Bhadohi, Mirzapur and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh have traditionally been considered as the ‘carpet belt’ of India. However, this research which covered nine states found a new ‘carpet belt’ in northwestern Uttar Pradesh covering the Shahjahanpur, Badaun and Hardoi regions, where chronic levels of forced, bonded and child labour persisted unchecked.

According to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Forced Labour Convention, labour that is involuntary and coerced is classified as forced. The researchers for this report documented 3,215 cases of forced labour under Indian law and of these, 2,612 fell under the ILO’s definition of forced labour too. Workers often had to toil for nearly 14 hours a day to earn what was due to them as per the minimum wage for an eight-hour workday. Their payments were also delayed in several instances.

Around 62.5 per cent of cases (2,010 cases) were those of bonded labour. Most bonded labourers did not even know how much money they ‘owed’ and had little or no freedom to move or switch employment. Entire villages of Muslims near Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and Gwalior and Morena in Madhya Pradesh were under debt bondage for years, the report states.

Cases of child labour documented in the study stood at 1,406 or 43.7 per cent of total cases. However, the number of children making carpets full-time is projected by the report to be considerably higher, since researchers were actually denied entry into many factories.

A total of 286 cases of human trafficking were documented by the researchers accounting for 8.9 per cent of all cases recorded. More than half of these (150 cases) were documented in and around Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh. The report notes Bhadohi being a crucial centre of carpet weaving as the reason for the highest number of cases – workers are routinely trafficked to meet the high labour demands.

Of all the carpet workers surveyed in this report (3,215), only two self-identified as Brahmins. Among the rest 1,406 were Muslims, 998 belonged to Other Backward Classes, 804 were from Scheduled Castes and five were from Scheduled Tribes.

The highest daily wages were earned by Brahmins (2.26 US dollars) followed by workers from the Other Backward Classes (1.81 US dollars), Scheduled Tribes (1.74 US dollars) and Scheduled Castes (1.65 US dollars). The lowest average daily wage was earned by Muslim workers – 1.58 US dollars.

The handmade carpet supply chain involves the workers (both adults and children) at the lowest rung, presided over by sub-contractors, contractors, purchasing agents and exporters and finally the importers, wholesalers and retailers. The study found 172 exporters to have exploitative and brutish production sites.

Carpet-weavers have been trapped in a vicious cycle with exploitative conditions and wages that remain unchanged for more than a decade. The report advocates for authorities to increase the minimum wage and to enforce it. It also called for regular and more frequent inspections, investigations and prosecutions to help curb instances of forced labour.

The report also suggest the formation of a public-private partnership that oversees the elimination of bonded labour and child labour through coordination between the government and civil-society organisations. It also encourages the establishment of a carpet-workers’ union.

Focus and Factoids by Yazhini Sathiamoorthy.