Scandal of silk industry where child 'slaves' work seven days a week

Hundreds of thousands of children, some as young as five, toil as "slaves" in India's silk industry, enduring beatings, burns and 12-hour days, according to Human Rights Watch.

They are bonded labour, powerless juveniles doomed to remain bound to their employers because they are recruited to work in exchange for a loan to their families that they can never earn enough to repay.

The human rights group interviewed children, employers and officials in three states, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which form the core of India's silk industry, and produced a shocking picture of a Dickensian world of cruelty and exploitation. Its 85-page report concluded that "at every stage of the silk industry, bonded children as young as five work 12 or more hours a day, six and a half or seven days a week under conditions of physical and verbal abuse.

"The Indian government knows about these children and has the mandate to free them. Instead, for reasons of apathy, caste bias and corruption, many government officials deny that they exist at all," it said.

Children making silk thread routinely dipped their hands in boiling water, which burnt and blistered them. "Their hands become raw and often infected. They breathe smoke and fumes from machinery, handle dead worms that cause infections, and guide twisting threads that cut their fingers."

Most of the children were Dalits, the bottom rungs of Indian society formerly known as Untouchables. They could be found working openly in south India in factories with up to 50 looms.

The report said children sat at cramped looms in damp, dim rooms. "They do not go to school and are often beaten by their employers. By the time they reach adulthood, they are impoverished, illiterate and often crippled by the work.

"Contagious diseases, especially tuberculosis and digestive disorders, spread easily in the crowded rooms. Poor lighting and constant visual strain damages the eyesight. The fine silk threads cut the fingers, and the cuts are difficult to heal properly. Children complained that employers beat them and abused them verbally."

Child labour in India, where there are an estimated 60 to 115 million working children, has long been an issue with human rights activists. After an international outcry over child labour in 1996, India's Supreme Court issued laws for punishing employers of children in hazardous labour and ordered India's National Human Rights Commission to supervise implementation of the bonded labour law by states. There were some high-profile raids on employers. Only a very small number produced convictions.

Human Rights Watch's new findings reveal that the problem is still enormous. It says that, by the most conservative estimate, there must be at least 350,000 bonded children in India's silk industry.

It called on the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee to implement existing laws to free bonded children.

"The Indian government says there are no bonded children, but they're everywhere. They are easy to find," said Zama Coursen-Neff, author of the report.

An Indian government spokesman said he hadn't seen the report, but said that the issue was subject to industrial laws and constantly under review from non-government organisations and the media. How many cases in the report were legitimate cases of employment and how many were a cause for concern remained to be seen, he said.