A recent set of studies for the ministry of labour testify that the forced labour is growing in industry and remains widespread in agriculture. The Agriculture Census indicates that the Sindh agriculture remains heavily contaminated with the expanding numbers of forced labour.

Over the last decade, just sharecropper families — burdened by one or another form of forced labour — have increased in Sindh from 1.8 to over 2 million persons. More intensively affected, debt-bonded sharecroppers were up to nearly 700,000 in 2000, up from 600,000 persons in 1990.

Those who escape the specially oppressive nature of bondage in agriculture don’t fare much better economically even in informal industry such as brick kilns.

Since mass poverty is steadily increasing across the country — despite self-serving claims of the finance minister — the situation of forced labour is surely being aggravated.

Forced labour persists despite commitments of the state through the Constitution, specific and general national laws, and the long-ratified international conventions of the UN and the ILO.

For the people of Sindh the situation is specially problematic because its rural and urban elites generally deny the existence of forced labour. In a deplorable version of provincial autonomy, the Sindh Tenancy Act actually legislates bondage.

The Asian Development Bank is apparently keen on law and policy reforms in Sindh. While most proposals are patently misguided as obsession with markets, others deserve sympathetic reading.

Given the enormous clout of the Bank (and its allies in Tokyo, Washington and London), these recommendations need wide public debate.

The Bank would have us believe that its assistance is anchored in rural poverty reduction. Apparently in recognition that the forced labour is at odds with Bank lending, the Bank commissioned a report by Halcrow as part of the Technical Assistance (SSTA 3725-PAK) for the Sindh Rural Development Project.

This note only discusses Bank understanding of the issues and proposals for amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act (contained in Part II: Legal Aspects, of the Report of July 2002). Space limitations require a focus on contentious proposals.

Our discussion of the ADB proposals is framed by broad goals of reforms towards realising people’s rights for the state and social protection against economic oppression:

* Protection should extend to all labour without discrimination on any basis.

* Provinces should actively support existing federal initiatives.

* Initiatives should be strengthened for rapid and adequate relief and mitigation locally.

* Efforts at prevention should have as much priority as the subsequent remedy.

Given these objectives, the federal laws, including the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act also need obvious and urgent amendments for the universal applicability — e.g., to remove irrelevant distinctions between the advances and loans, or between the employees and piece rate workers, or between the workers and sharecroppers.

However, the ADB thought better of proposing amendments to the federal legislation despite the fact that the Sindh government is reluctant to include tenants in the ambit of the Bonded Labour Act.

Legal Issues: The ADB notes that the grounds for tenant eviction under the MLR 115 include the non-payment of rent. Surprisingly, its report fails to comment upon the widespread misuse of this provision since records are generally not maintained by the officials. For debt-bonded haris, receipt of rent could also be denied by the landlord simply by deducting other, often inflated, debts or expenses first from the already inequitable crop share of tenant.

The report is correct in observing the general exclusion of agriculture from benefits of labour legislation. However, it bolsters the retrogressive approach of employers and the government by ignoring a High Court ruling of 1989 which by implication definitely covers agricultural wage labour, and can also be held to cover at least sharecroppers in Sindh who work “at the behest of their masters.”

In its review of labour legislation, the report contains a curious omission of legislation related to child labour. The bank is hesitant to stress that the children are generally part of the family labour extorted from haris, since the intensification of labour services is the objective of all capital.

The overview of the background to the Sindh Tenancy Legislation finds no mention of the dissenting comments of Masud Khadarposh in the prior Inquiry Commission of 1950. Had these comments been taken into account, the Bank would, perhaps, have addressed the presence of forced labour among vast numbers of permanent and casual field labour.

Obviously, enforcement of the law (such as the MLR115) in the matter of output and input shares for tenants will help prevent or mitigate bondage. But the Bank fails to acknowledge that the shares themselves are unlikely to even provide hari incomes equal to minimum wages of all hari labour once families are included, or even equal the official poverty line. If extreme poverty persists, then so will bonded labour.

Amendments towards conformity with the subsequent federal legislation is a good thing.

But strangely the Bank does not propose that in the interim all officials in the executive and judiciary need to accept that federal law — such as the MLR 115 and the Bonded Labour Act — is binding whenever there are any contradictions between the provincial and federal law, and the constitution is binding if there are lacunas in the law.

In its review of bonded labour legislation, the report mentions only selected sections of the Penal Code. It is not obvious why the Bank chose to omit other very relevant protective sections such as 337, 339, 361, 370, 371, 374, and 503, or the oppressive use of sections 406, 420 by landlords in complicity with the local state.

The report also does not mention the ominous implications of the Offence of Zina Ordinance that is a potent tool to first abuse the female members of the tenant family and then deny them redress through subsequent charges of illegal sexual behaviour and its very harsh penalties.

Amendments to Sindh Tenancy Act: The contentious recommendations are presented in a format of the Bank proposed amendments (or omissions) versus the needed amendments for prevention, as well as the mitigation of forced labour.

In passing we need to mention that the Bank is unduly optimistic about the implementation — e.g., through actual operations of the District Vigilance Committees or the Provincial Home Department.