They’re not in chains, but they are shackled by debt, paid virtually nothing and treated harshly

There is even an informal market where workers can be “sold”

60, binds her hands in cloth to protect them from the bricks she shifts for 12 hours a day

the persistence of a dreadful pre-modern phenomenon: slavery. It is rarely recognised as such, even by many slaves

The unlucky ones are “bonded”—they have taken a loan from their employers to pay for basic needs and must work to pay it off

Some never will, and will pass the debt on to their children

Poverty forces them into slavery; violence keeps them there

In India an extra dimension is added by the social divisions of the Hindu caste system

had incurred the wrath of the local upper castes

employing bonded labourers