2020年经济学人 印度契约劳工斗士斯瓦米·阿涅维什(2)（在线收听）

Almost all this labour, he discovered in Haryana—which was a hotbed of it—was indentured servitude. The workers were landless Dalits or their children, forced to borrow to pay for medicines or dowries from a local, higher-caste moneylender. The average loan was around 2,000 rupees, or $27, but at interest rates of 40% or more it could seldom be paid back. Payment was made in the form of labour from which workers could not escape, and the debt was passed down the generations. Many of these enslaved workers were therefore children, some as young as four or five.

阿涅维什在哈里亚纳发现，几乎所有的劳动都是契约劳役，而哈里亚纳是契约劳役的温床。这些工人要么是没有土地的贱民，要么是他们的子女，被迫向当地更高种姓的放债人借钱购买药品或嫁妆。平均贷款约为2000卢比(合27美元)，但在利率高达40%或以上的情况下，贷款几乎无法偿还。贷款以劳动者无法逃脱的劳动形式支付，债务代代相传。因此，许多被奴役的工人都是儿童，有些才四、五岁。

By his own estimates, of perhaps 60m bonded workers, 15m were under 14. Once he was on the watch for them he saw them everywhere: bending all day over tobacco baskets to hand-roll beedis, gathering broken cups outside teashops, picking rags. Their small, soft hands were thought ideal for delicate jobs such as knotting threads, dozens to each square centimetre, in carpet-making. But their bodies were deformed by it, and their lives shortened. There were laws against this, as against bonded labour in general. They were rarely enforced, because servitude was accepted as part of the natural order. He did not accept it. In 1981 he set up the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, raising money to buy the freedom of as many workers as possible and to teach the rest what their rights were.

根据他自己的估计，在大约6000万劳役工人中，有1500万不满14岁。一旦阿涅维什留心观察，他到处都能看到它们：整天在烟草篮前弯着腰用手卷烟，在茶馆外收集破碎的杯子，捡破布。她们小巧柔软的手被认为是做精细工作的理想人选，比如编织地毯时，比如每平方厘米打几十根线。但他们的身体却因此变了形，寿命也缩短了。这是有法律禁止的，就像一般禁止抵债性劳动一样。这些法律很少被强制执行，因为奴役被接受为自然秩序的一部分。阿涅维什没有接受它。1981年，他成立了抵债劳动解放阵线，筹集资金以购买尽可能多的工人的自由，并教育其他人这些工人的权利是什么。

Almost recklessly, because his bright robes advertised him everywhere, he and his helpers slipped into the wretched shanty-villages to encourage the labourers to organise. Eventually unions were created for stone-cutters, builders and brick-kiln workers; meanwhile, he battled employers in the courts. Those workers he managed to rescue—around 178,000 in all, roughly 26,000 of them children— were trained for new jobs or sent, for the first time, to school. Much of this, especially the shouts of “Revolution!” after some of his worker meetings, seemed more political than priestly.

他几乎是不顾一切地去做，因为他那鲜艳的长袍到处为他打着招牌，他和助手们溜进了贫困的棚户区，鼓励工人们组织起来。最终，切石工、建筑工和砖窑工人成立了工会；与此同时，他在法庭上与雇主较量。他解救的工人总共约17.8万人，其中约2.6万名是儿童，他们要么接受新工作培训，要么第一次开始上学。尤其是在他开过几次工人会议后，人们喊出的“革命！革命！”。这句话似乎更像是政治性的，而不是牧师式的。