NATIONAL7Spotlight Weekly)]

Bondage To Freedom: Making It Work

By ASHUTOSH TIWARI

Debt bondage as it existed in Kamaiya system had been going on in the Far Western Nepal until last Monday. In its meeting on July 17, the Cabinet voted to declare debt bondage illegal. In doing so, it set in motion an immediate release of about 200,000 Kamaiya bonded laborers.

For years, human rights activists in Kathmandu had been arguing that new laws were needed to eradicate Kamaiya bonded labor. Others thought running projects on literacy, health care and skill development were important, and ran those for years. Missing was the focus on using the existing laws to push first for Kamaiays' freedom and freedom alone. From May 1st till July 16 of this year, what the Kamaiyas themselves, through the assistance of organizations such as the Backward Society Education (BASE), and others, did in Dhangadi, Mahendra Nagar and other Far Western cities was to demand their basic freedom - first from their landlords; and when that went nowhere, then, in Kathmandu, in front of the Singha Durbar, from the central government.

Now that the Kamaiyas are declared free from bondage, the long road to establishing their dignity as Nepali citizens with all the concomitant rights and privileges begins. As such, in coming days and weeks, what are two of the immediate key issues that need to be taken into account as the "Kamaiya Bill" becomes ready to be debated in the Parliament? The rest of this piece sets out to provide some thoughts.

Immediate emergency relief: News coming from the Far Western Nepal these days paint a bleak picture for the just released Kamaiyas. Angry landlords (jamindaars) have driven many of their former Kamaiyas out of their estates. Cases of physical and emotional torture, including kidnapping, of the Kamaiyas have been reported. Many Kamaiyas, with nowhere to go, are turning up at the offices of BASE for relief. Against this backdrop, the government should exercise its moral responsibility, at least for the next six months, to speedily allocate its resources to ease the pains of transition from bondage to freedom for the Kamaiyas.

One way of doing so would be to set up an independent Kamiaya Relief Committee (KRC) -- with knowledgeable ex-bureaucrats, activists, scholars and Kamaiya representatives as members - and help them divert the money previously (and, in retrospect, rather naively) set aside to pay off the Kamaiyas' debts to provide immediate relief to the Kamaiyas. The KRC, with a clear mandate from the government, could soon start mobilizing other social, medical, financial, legal and human rights organizations to provide help in cash and in kind to the released Kamaiyas.

Through its actions, the KRC, on behalf of the government, could also communicate the gravity of the issue to the public at large, and also to the offending jamindaars. As such, the sooner the government forms such a committee and lets it operate, the sooner the needless suffering of the just realeased Kamaiyas will lessen. Else, critics of Kamaiyas freedom will have an enervating weapon in their hands to sneer at the efforts of the government and at all the hard work of the 'Kamaiya Mukti Sangharsa' (Struggle for the Emancipation of Bonded Laborers).

Distribution of release certificates: Who were the real Kamaiyas? And how many were they? These questions will come up soon as the government goes about, as it must, making long-term plans for the rehabilitation of the Kamaiyas. In a survey completed in 1995, the government acknowledged there being more than 15,000 Kamaiya households in the Far Western Nepal. Surveys conducted by NGOs such as BASE and INSEC give much higher numbers, with the total number of Kamaiya family members hovering at around 200,000 -- most being Dangaura Tharus.

To make its long-term plans for the Kamaiyas procedurally easier, what the government must do now is start issuing certificates to all the just released bonded laborers, including each member of their families. Using the local administrative apparatus (such as the Chief District Officers' offices), the government could simultaneously collect relevant statistics on each and every Kamaiya household while signaling to all its seriousness regarding the long-term interests of the Kamaiyas. For the Kamaiyas, a certificate for each one, would not only be an official acknowledgement of the distances they have collectively traveled to freedom, but also a document through which they can claim special rights and privileges when it comes to the issues of land distribution, employment, training and other such opportunities tomorrow. Moreover, a room, with assigned officers, could be set aside in each Far Western CDO's office complex, to look after the Kamaiya affairs.

The above two measures are good to provide immediate short-term relief, and that is what the Kamaiyas need most right now. What those measures help do is renew the government's seriousness to the cause of the Kamaiyas, take care of their present needs, and conduct the crucial groundwork for future detailed work for rehabilitation.

Granted, critics who say that they have been working on the Kamaiya issue for decades may be tempted to point out the larger, abstract problems of the released Kamaiyas and dismiss these immediate, short-term measures for being grossly inadequate. As far as abstraction goes, they would surely be right. But in terms of getting concrete results - results that one can claim to be one's own, such as the Kamaiya freedom that a former Kamaiya can now rightfully claim to be his/her own-setting small achievable goals, one at a time, seems to be an effective way to make the released Kamaiyas free and dignified Nepali citizens.

(Tiwari is affiliated with Martin Chautari in Kathmandu).