SOBRE EL EMBARAZO

Most of these sardars were associated formally or informally, at regional and branch levels creating a labor cartel, which worked at their fancy (Heuzé, 1996, p. 133). So, the labor contractors were able to channel the labor supply or dry up the supply of labor, at times when they wanted their demands to be met. Sardars effectively act as labor monopolists. They became the market intermediaries for labor and charged a commission from mine owners (state or otherwise) to rescue them from an uncertain situation of labor – something that they would often create themselves (Heuzé, 1996, p. 222). However, a natural question emerges - how would sardars achieve continuous supply of laborers who would listen to him?

This was done through creating bondage in laborers. Bondage spreads in cases of shortage in manpower when loyalty is badly needed but cannot be earned. The situation of bondage has a long history in the Indian subcontinent, which became especially acute during the early industrialization phase across mines, plantations and other labor-intensive industries (Heuzé, 2009, p. 147). These industries have deplorable levels of exhaustion which discourages workers to come to the job if there is no urgent need for wages. One way in which the demand for wages and obedience towards the oppressor is cultivated is through creating a demand for money.

Oppressors maintain the demand by offering debt to laborers. The debt serves two purposes: firstly, it ensures that the labor is bonded to the labor contractor, and secondly, it is an efficient way to keep the cost of labor low. Because the labor is bonded, there is no economic sense in paying them just what would be required to keep the workforce. In times of need, they are loaned money at exorbitant interest rates, which ties the worker (and the family) to the moneylender. Hierarchical societies with deep inequalities often develop such bondage systems.86

Dhanbad witnessed exactly the same mechanisms emerging. Heuzé’s work (1996, 2009) documents this in great detail. Sardars would often source labor from outside regions, promising work, money and decent living conditions, nothing of which was eventually offered.87 The early cohorts of labor arriving from outside usually took an advance from sardars, which bound them to the latter (Rothermund, 1978, p. 9). The debt bondage would start by sardars giving mining

86 _{Even though bondage was legally abolished in India in 1976, the practice still remains. By some estimates, around}

half of the 30 million migrant workers in India are recruited through labor contractors, and many, if not the majority subsequently (and consequently) enter into some form of debt bondage (Lerche, 2010, p. 73).

87 _{Heuzé (2009, p. 156) notes that legal aspects of contract coupled with deception and coercion has been a common}

tools to the labor on debt and would continue with several monetary advances that the laborer would need in time. The common interest rates prevailed at 240-560 per cent annually (Heuzé, 2009, p. 157). To continue the demand for debt, many sardars operated alcohol shops which forced labor into bondages further (p. 147).

This was also possible due to the ‘overwhelmingly powerful position’ of sardars, and their ‘intimate local and private influence’ (Heuzé, 1996). The subservience of these very laborers bought by sardars through debt bondage and loans (p. 134) is a practice which is ‘as old as the coalfields' (p. 222) and moneylending is ‘integrated in the ensemble of patronage realities’ (p. 223). This subservience can also be viewed as further intensification of feudal and hierarchical milieu in which the sardar-labor relations were historically located. These hierarchies command subservience at multiple levels – caste, gender, age and class. In this way, the Sardar holds a unique position in social hierarchy of the region, which is manifested by the bondage that they exercise. Breman’s (1974) famous paradigm of coexistence of patronage and exploitation finds its typical application here.88

Note that the bondage may well mean voluntary choice (Genicot, 2002). Studies on tied-labor agreements show how it becomes beneficial for both parties to enter into a tied agreement of master-labor relationship – for instance when risk-averse laborers get an insurance against wide job market fluctuations (Bardhan, 1983). For an immigrant risk-averse laborer in Dhanbad, the only way of securing a job at a colliery is to gain membership of one of the sardar’s cohorts. The

sardar offers debt to the laborer during times of need and thus binds him further. The theory of

adverse incorporation (Wood, 1999; Hickey & du Toit, 2007; Phillips, 2011) also illuminates the adverse terms which laborers agree to accept to join the employment. In particular, one of the insights proposes that poverty necessitates prioritizing short-term gains and practical needs at the expense of long-term strategies for accumulation and achievement of security (Wood, 2003). Important here is to appreciate that, while the entry into the bonded labor market seems to be voluntary, the key is the legitimacy of the set of options available to the laborer at a given time (Genicot, 2002, Steinfeld, 2001). This legitimacy crucially depends on their existing vulnerability, which may be exacerbated by the enmeshed social and family structures of their obligations (O’Neill, 2011). The conditions of bonded labor are therefore not ex ante forced, but manifested in the lack of exit options for the laborer. This is created by withholding payments, threatened or actual violence, indebtedness and/or confiscation of documents (Phillips, 2013, p. 178). These

vulnerabilities are also high for migrant workers (Bauder, 2006; Cohen, 2006). This is exactly the case of bonded labor in Dhanbad.

Even today, moneylenders in Dhanbad largely comprise of the erstwhile colliery owners and

sardars.89 Large numbers of mine workers are indebted for life and some official efforts towards ‘rescuing’ them have been mentioned.90 _{These moneylenders are ‘the pehalwans and musclemen,}

having active links with the lower echelons of the management of the BCCL and sections of trade union leadership. Their methods are certainly ingenious; forging loan documents, or persuading a borrower to sign blank sheets of paper, plain blackmail, and occasional snatching of a worker's paypacket are only some of the methods adopted by the moneylenders.’91 In many cases, a typical moneylender would be a trade union leader as well as an employee of BCCL (Sinha, 1976, p. 53). Indeed, the ‘careful perpetration of primitive cultural practices… which drives the workers to

drink and indebtedness’ (Dhar, 1979, p. 691) is a characteristic of Dhanbad.