A twenty-year saga of bondage

Swami Agnivesh, with touching faith in the system, knocked at the doors of the apex court with a petition pointing out the horrendous state of affairs that prevailed inthe Faridabad mines. A procession of advocate commissioners followed to collect the facts for the helpless and voiceless poor. Report after report before the court told it that not only the Constitution but every conceivable Act of Parliament 8212; on bonded labour, child labour, mining, crimes against the human body especially of women and children, minimum wages, explosives and environment 8212; was being violated.

The facts moved several benches of judges to give grand lectures from the judicial podium about human rights. On this basis some of these judges entered international human rights shops and were proclaimed India8217;s voice of human rights without bothering to see that their judicial power had not made a whit of a difference to the cruel misery of the bonded.

Supreme Court lawyers, especially senior advocates, jumped on this judicial bandwagon to acquire international profiles. Geneva, London Bangkok or the United Nations at New York became their human rights hunting grounds.

However when others inthe profession, outraged at this chastising lesson on human rights lawyering, started pressing sharply for quick remedial action, they were met with a judicial rebuff. Under the Bonded Labour Act the collector, the district supremo of the elite IAS, was specifically responsible for identifying and rehabilitating bonded labour.

A centrally funded scheme for rehabilitation was available. Read with the Supreme Court8217;s own judgement that even payment below the minimum wage constituted the offence of bonded labour, the collector was guilty of a cognisable offence. Hence the district supremo of the elite Indian Police Service, the superintendent of police, was bound to register criminal cases against such erring collectors and have them tried swiftly.

The denial of the negative charter of freedoms was a national problem and a message was required to be sent to collectors and SPs that the apex court would not tolerate their shirking of their statutory duties. The answer was a judicial rebuff in the form of asmile. A new date was set and there was an adjournment of suffering. Meanwhile in a case on the trafficking of women, an SP8217;s affidavit cried out for help. It said that in the Dholpur area there was a regular market where women were put on sale and he could do nothing about it by himself. As in the Faridabad case, no effective judical help came.

Concerned lawyers and commissioners changed strategy. They started pointing to the human face of the tragedy 8212; living bodies maimed by the explosives used for blasting the rock, the absence of medical care, the total lack of drinking water, children scarred by disease, terrorised women living in hovels where no human being could stand erect.

The argument now was, don8217;t send any official to jail but at least implement judicially the detailed environmentally integrated rehabilitation programme on the site, since under the Bonded Labour Act the bonded labourers were entitled to their homesteads. No one from the Central government was called to account for thenon-implementation of Central laws. An encouraged Haryana government filed an affidavit that mocked at the demand for legal rights by stating that ice boxes had been provided for clean and pure drinking water supplied through tankers. Judges laughed at the affidavit, threatened to visit the site themselves, but nothing happened. The sun continued to beat down on the bonded labourer.

There was the spark of Parliament-funded legal aid run by judges from the apex court to the district court. The constitutional charter floated on the hope of spiritual judges heading legal aid initiatives to deal with the problems facing the families of bonded labour and maybe even implementing the positive charter of freedom. But the living gods of the spiritual never called their faithful to account in terms of the use of judicial and legal aid power. The gods had indeed forsaken the poor.

Time, of course, is a great healer of uncomfortable legal problems faced by the apex court. Many of the bonded families at Faridabad justdisappeared 8212; claimed either by death or desperation. The case is still pending before the apex court, even as one of its committees secretly cogitates on how to spend the crores of public money given to the Supreme Court by the government for its golden jubilee celebrations. If the constitutional order breaks down in the apex court itself what is there to celebrate after all? Ironically, for the bonded, the Supreme Court is still the last court of hope for justice.