CHENNAI: Masi Magam, a religious festival in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, is a time of celebration for various communities.
For Irulars, it also acts as a time for entrapment into bonded labour. This happens mostly on the sly by word of mouth, say community members.
Thousands of members of the community in Tamil Nadu went to the beach beside the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram on Sunday, to celebrate their deity Kanniamma.
Believed to be a tribal warrior, the oral legends say she breathed her last in the temple town. Community members say, that middle-men exploit the festival to trap them into bondage.
Revenue officials and social workers, in fact use the festival to network with community members to identify cases of bonded labour and carry out rescue operations later.
“I was in need of Rs 10,000 for an emergency and asked all my relatives who came for Masi Magam a few years ago. My distant relative, who worked at a ‘Karuvelam’ forest as a wood chopper said her owner, who had leased a forest in Kancheepuram district, will give the money if my husband and I worked for him,” said Mayil, a middle-aged woman who was released from bonded labour three years ago.
“Little did I know that this was a ploy.
The owner had refused to send them for the festival initially and held their son as leverage if they had to go for Masi Magam.
"He had told them that if he allowed them to go, they had to come back with at least three other families to work,” said Mayil.
With both an economic and social disadvantage, they lag on crucial parameters such as literacy, numeracy, infant mortality rate and institutional deliveries trapping them into debt cycle and bonded labour.
“Many of them are unaware of minimum wages. So they receive advance money during times of emergency and the entire family is made to work in harsh conditions in return,” said Durai Raj, a member of Rescued Bonded Labour Association, who was conducting an awareness at the festival.
Mugilan, who had escaped bondage last year said a middle-man approached him near the beach during Masi Magam five or six years ago.
“He (a middleman) told me that he was looking for people to work in his jasmine farm at Tiruvallur and promised to give us Rs5,000 in advance.
"He also said we will be paid Rs500 a day. But, once we joined work, he handed us over to an owner who did not keep any of the promises,” he said.
After receiving only Rs400 a day, despite all three members of his family working, he stayed in the job for nearly four years. Mugilan said he ran away from the jasmine farm when the owner hit his son until he bled one day.