Labour laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer and union. Individual labour law concerns employees' rights at work also through the contract for work. Employment standards are social norms for the minimum socially acceptable conditions under which employees or contractors are allowed to work. Government agencies enforce labour law.
Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation, where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, and the person who is holding the debt thus has some control over the laborer. Freedom is assumed on debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation.
The Government of India, often abbreviated as GoI, and also referred to as the Central Government or Union Government or simply the Centre, is the Union government created by the Constitution of India as the legislative, executive and judicial authority to govern the union of twenty eight states and eight union territories. The seat of the government is located in New Delhi, the capital of India.
Untouchability is the practice of ostracising a group of people regarded as 'untouchables', as ascribed in the Vedic Hindu literature to persons of "high caste" or to persons excluded from the caste system resulting in the segregation and persecutions from the people regarded as "higher" caste.
Dravida Peravai, is a political party in Puducherry, India. The DP was formed in 1996 by a break-away faction of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The Party claims to be a "Green" party. The present Party General Secretary is N. Nandhivarman. The DP strives to unite Tamils and impart a scientific outlook for the enrichment of Tamil culture. Despite claiming to be "Green" the Party has fought for national projects like the Indian Rivers Inter-link, the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project and the Tenth Degree Canal, an Indo-Thailand joint venture. The DP is concerned about future continental and coastal changes affecting Tamil Nadu and Tamils. The Dravida Peravai supports what they refer to as the "Tamil struggle" in Sri Lanka.
The Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Duties' are sections of the Constitution of India that prescribe the fundamental obligations of the states to its citizens and the duties and the rights of the citizens to the State. These sections are considered vital elements of the constitution, which was developed between 1947 and 1949 by the Constituent Assembly of India.
Fundamental rights in India are the rights guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution of India. There are six fundamental rights recognised by the Indian constitution : the right to equality, the right to freedom, the right against exploitation, the right to freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights and the right to constitutional remedies.
The Directive Principles of State Policy of India are the guidelines or principles given to the institutes governing the State of India.These provide Part IV of the Constitution of India, are not enforceable by any court, but the principles laid down there in are considered 'Fundamental' in the governance of the country, making it the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws to establish a just society in the country. The principles have been inspired by the Directive Principles given in the Constitution of Ireland which are related to social justice, economic welfare, foreign policy, and legal and administrative matters.
Kamaiya and Kamlari were two traditional systems of bonded labour practised in the western Terai of Nepal. Both were abolished after protests, in 2000 and 2006 respectively.
Bandhua Mukti Morcha (BMM) or Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) is a non-governmental organisation in India working to end bonded labour. Based in New Delhi, it was founded in 1981 by Swami Agnivesh who continued as its chairman until his death in 2020.
Labour in India refers to employment in the economy of India. In 2020, there were around 501 million workers in India, the second largest after China. Out of which, agriculture industry consist of 41.19%, industry sector consist of 26.18% and service sector consist 32.33% of total labour force. Of these over 94 percent work in unincorporated, unorganised enterprises ranging from pushcart vendors to home-based diamond and gem polishing operations. The organised sector includes workers employed by the government, state-owned enterprises and private sector enterprises. In 2008, the organised sector employed 27.5 million workers, of which 17.3 million worked for government or government owned entities.
Indian labour law refers to law regulating labour in India. Traditionally, Indian government at federal and state level have sought to ensure a high degree of protection for workers, but in practice, this differs due to form of government and because labour is a subject in the concurrent list of the Indian Constitution.
Human trafficking in India, although illegal under Indian law, remains a significant problem. People are frequently illegally trafficked through India for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced/bonded labour. Although no reliable study of forced and bonded labour has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to 65 million Indians. Men, women and children are trafficked in India for diverse reasons. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, especially in those areas where the sex ratio is highly skewed in favour of men. Men and boys are trafficked for the purposes of labour, and may be sexually exploited by traffickers to serve as gigolos, massage experts, escorts, etc. A significant portion of children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups.
In 2011, the national census of India found that the total number of child labourers, aged [5–14], to be at 10.1 million, out of the total of 259.64 million children in that age group. The child labour problem is not unique to India; worldwide, about 217 million children work, many full-time.
Debt bondage in India or Bandhua Mazdoori was legally abolished in 1976 but remains prevalent due to weak enforcement by the government. Bonded labour is a system in which lenders force their borrowers to repay loans through labor. Additionally, these debts often take a large amount of time to pay off and are unreasonably high, propagating a cycle of generational inequality. This is due to the typically high interest rates on the loans given out by employers. Although debt bondage is considered to be a voluntary form of labor, people are forced into this system by social situations.
Sumangali is a form of child labour which, although forbidden, is practised in India, particularly the textile industry in Tamil Nadu. It is likened to soft trafficking, a less explicit form of human trafficking. In the scheme, a girl is hired on contract for three to five years, during which she earns a wage, and after which she is paid a lump sum to pay for a dowry. It is said to have originated in Coimbatore in the late 1990s.
Indentured servitude in continental North America began in the Colony of Virginia in 1609. Initially created as means of funding voyages for European workers to the New World, the institution dwindled over time as the labor force was replaced with enslaved Africans. Servitude became a central institution in the economy and society of many parts of colonial British America. Abbot Emerson Smith, a leading historian of indentured servitude during the colonial period, estimated that between one-half and two-thirds of all white immigrants to the British colonies between the Puritan migration of the 1630s and the American Revolution came under indenture. For the colony of Virginia, specifically, more than two-thirds of all white immigrants arrived as indentured servants or transported convict bond servants.
Colorado Amendment A was a 2018 referendum to amend Article II, Section 26 of the Constitution of Colorado to remove language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude only as punishment for crime.
Nepal has a labour force of 16.8-million-workers, the 37th largest in the world as of 2017. Although agriculture makes up only about 28 per cent of Nepal's GDP, it employs more than two-thirds of the workforce. Millions of men work as unskilled labourers in foreign countries, leaving the household, agriculture, and raising of children to women alone. Most of the working-age women are employed in agricultural sector, contributions to which are usually ignored or undervalued in official statistics. Few women who are employed in the formal sectors face discrimination and significant wage gap. Almost half of all children are economically active, half of which are child labourers. Millions of people, men, women and children of both sexes, are employed as bonded labourers, in slavery-like conditions. Trade unions have played a significant role in earning better working conditions and workers' rights, both at the company level and the national government level. Worker-friendly labour laws, endorsed by the labour unions as well as business owners, provide a framework for better working conditions and secure future for the employees, but their implementation is severely lacking in practice. Among the highly educated, there is a significant brain-drain, posing a significant hurdle in fulfilling the demand for skilled workforce in the country.
The haruwa–charuwa system is a forced-labour system based on debt bondage, prevalent in the agricultural sector of the eastern Terai region in Nepal. Haruwa means "forced tiller" and are usually adult males, while charuwa means "forced cattle-herder" and are usually women and children. The victims of this bonded labour system are usually dalit families, most commonly from the Musahar caste. Due to landlessness and poverty, they are forced into service of landowner families under slavery-like conditions. The haruwa–charuwa system is similar to the Haliya and Kamaiya systems of western Nepal.
