The government’s campaign to discredit a report on slavery

By Manali Joshi

Recently, a survey report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation (WFF)  revealed that India is home to the highest number of slaves in the world. Days after this, the Intelligence Bureau (IB)  sent a note to the Central Government, warning that India is being “targeted”. It suggested that the government should launch a campaign to counter and “discredit” the data. The IB submitted its note to the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Security Advisor, the External Affairs and Labour Ministries, and to the R&AW last week.

The note says, “Global documentation on slavery is increasingly targeting India as home to the highest number of slaves in the world”. It also says that the report could potentially harm India’s image and efforts towards achieving Target 8.7 in the Sustainable Development Goals. Target 8.7 deals with the eradication of forced labour, child labour, modern-day slavery, and human trafficking.

What does the survey say?

The ILO-WFF report, ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage’, 2017, estimates that there are 40 million slaves in the world, including 25 million in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the report, products made and services provided by modern slaves now seem to be available through legitimate commercial channels. They produce “some of the food we eat and the clothes we wear” and clean “the buildings in which many of us live or work.”

The 2016 survey ranked 167 countries based on the proportion of the population estimated to be in slavery. India was ranked fourth, after North Korea, Uzbekistan, and Cambodia. In terms of absolute numbers of people in slavery, India was ranked first—ahead of China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In its assessment of the response of governments to fight slavery, the 2016 report ranked India behind Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, but ahead of Pakistan and China.

IB’s objection

The IB finds the statistics “questionable” due to a lopsided sampling in the survey. The 2017 report is based on interviews with 71,758 respondents in 48 countries. Nearly a fourth (17,000) of them were in India. The next largest sample was just 2,000 for nine countries including Russia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In other survey countries, typically 1,000 interviews were conducted. Further, India was also the only country where WFF conducted specific surveys for the 2016 report. A total of 14,000 respondents were interviewed in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. Moreover, the survey reports do not explain the special focus on India.

IB’s suggestions and WFF’s defence

The IB has suggested a three-pronged strategy to counter the report’s findings. First, it says that “motivated” advocacy should be countered with credible data that estimates slavery in India through a larger sample survey. Second, it says that the ILO-WFF report’s questionable data should be “discredited” by the Indian Statistical Institute. Third, that there should be a diplomatic intervention to force the ILO to disassociate from the WFF, which is a private foundation.

In the 2016 report, it was claimed that the index was a “brave line in sand measurement” backed by “worldwide power of [US-based research giant] Gallup to survey entire countries and provinces in more than 50 languages”. Further, its response to the critics of the imperfection of the index was to attach a solution for its reform.

India’s enactments for forced slavery

Article 23 of the Constitution prohibits and criminalises human trafficking and forced labour. The Parliament has passed The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. In the case of the People’s Union of Democratic Rights and Others v. Union of India and Others, 1982, the Supreme Court defined forced labour as any labour for which the worker received less than the minimum wage stipulated by the government. The logic behind this is that no one would work for less than the minimum wage unless “he is acting under compulsion”.

Failure to implement the laws

The enactments clearly show that India has taken considerable steps in tackling the issue of slavery. However, one cannot deny that the country has failed to implement these laws. There have been many instances when women and minors have been smuggled, not just outside India, but also within India. They have been forced to work, either as sex slaves or as domestic helpers. There have been famed NRIs, and even diplomats, who allegedly preyed on their maids and denied them their salaries and dignity. The IB’s reaction and subsequent recommendations to discredit the survey reports, instead of recommending a few measures to address the issue, reflects a denial of this issue and hurts the country’s false sense of pride.

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