Mansa, September 24
For the past 22 years, Amarjit Singh, who is the manager of a 55-acre farm in Mansa Khurd village here, has been working from dawn to dusk for a measly daily wage of Rs 52.05.
Wrinkles writ large on his face, he looks older than his 60 years. Poverty, indebtedness to the zamindar, failing health, besides years of toil in the fields, have all taken a heavy toll of his health.
Amarjit’s father had taken a loan of Rs 10,000 from the landlord to marry off his
sisters. “He could not pay the loan, so I was sent to work in the farm. All these years, I have been unable to pay the principal amount, so as an interest on the loan, I continue to work for the
landlord,” he says.
This year, the landlord has again hired Amarjit for an annual remuneration of Rs 19,000. But Amarjit got only Rs 8000, after deducting the remaining money as the loan he had taken last year. “Since a massive deduction has been made from my wages, I have
no option but to take a loan again this year.
“It’s a vicious cycle of indebtedness. I have no option but to continue to work in the landlord’s farms, “ he rues, while resigning himself to his fate.
Throughout the prosperous cotton belt of Mansa and Bathinda, hundreds of agricultural labourers like Amarjit Singh continue to work for a pittance — just because they themselves, or their parents, had taken a loan from the landlord and were unable to repay it.
Agricultural labour, which provides sinews to Punjab’s agrarian economy, still continues to work as “attached labour” — an evolved form of bonded labour. They are paid so poorly that each year they have to take loans on usurious rates of interest and thereby continue to work for a pittance for the same landlord.
Inder Singh, who has been “attached” to another landlord in Mansa, laments that because of the vicious cycle of indebtedness, he cannot leave the landlord with whom he is attached.
“Had I not been in debt, I would have taken up a job as a labourer in the city. Then I would have been able to send my children to school. At least my next generation would have had a better fate, “ he says, expressing fear that his young son, too, could be asked to join in the fields by the landlord any day.
Kanwaljit Singh, state committee member of Mazdoor Mukti Morcha, who has been working in the districts of Mansa, Sangrur and Bathinda to free the “attached” farm labourers, says that because of poverty these farm labourers are unable to seek education.
“They remain illiterate and unorganised. So, generation after generation, they continue to work for the landlords. In July this year, we freed Pali, a farm labourer of Dhandoli village in Sangrur, who had been attached to the landlord for 14 years. Before him, his mother had been attached to the landlord for 35 years, and was relieved from bondage only after she became seriously ill,” he says.
Over the past three years, organisations like Mazdoor Mukti Morcha and CPI (Liberation) have been working amongst these labourers and creating awareness about minimum labour wages and better working conditions.
Though they enjoy huge support among the farm labourers, the landlord community has banned their entry in many villages. In the villages of Qasimpur China and Daryapur here, the labourers and landlords have been at loggerheads for almost a fortnight now, after the labourers demanded the statutory minimum wages.
In order to suppress the agitation of the labourers, the landlords of these villages have got together and declared that no one will hire them for work. Those who defy them would have to pay a hefty fine.
