A Judicial Response to the Bonded Labour System (2001–2020)

Abstract

Bonded labour remains one of the more persistent forms of exploitation to survive in modern India, notwithstanding more than four decades of statutory prohibition under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976. While the legislative framework has existed since the mid-1970s, its practical force has depended heavily on how the judiciary has chosen to read, apply, and enforce it. This chapter examines the role played by the High Court of Madras, and to a lesser extent the Supreme Court of India, in shaping the trajectory of bonded labour jurisprudence in Tamil Nadu between 2001 and 2020. Drawing on judgments, orders, and public statements of sitting judges over this period, the discussion traces twelve distinct strands of judicial engagement: precedent-setting interpretations handed down to subordinate courts; judgments that entered the law reports; directions issued to the State Government pressing it toward eradication of the practice; instructions to prosecuting agencies to register cases and trace victims; the willingness of judges to speak publicly on the issue; the reprimanding of perpetrators through firm sentencing; the denial and cancellation of bail; judicial participation in public meetings and conferences; directions for prompt investigation and fair trial; the imposition of stringent bail conditions tied to victim compensation; the final disposal of long-pending appeals; and the small number of matters that have travelled up to the Supreme Court. Read together, these strands suggest that judicial intervention, more than any single legislative amendment, has been the principal force keeping the 1976 Act operative in Tamil Nadu, even as the data considered here also expose how uneven and slow that enforcement has often been at the level of the police and the subordinate courts.