Human Rights – Issues, Challenges and Contemporary Concerns:
Tribals, Landless, Bonded & Unorganised Labour and Peasants
(Indian Context)
The condition of tribals, landless people, bonded labourers, unorganised workers, and peasants represents one of the most serious and structural human rights challenges in India. These groups occupy the lowest rungs of the social and economic hierarchy and experience rights violations not as isolated incidents, but as systemic, everyday realities. Their marginalization highlights the limits of formal legal equality in a society marked by deep inequalities of land, labour, and power.
In the Indian context, human rights violations affecting these groups are closely tied to poverty, unequal development, land relations, displacement, and exploitative labour structures. As a result, human rights here are inseparable from questions of economic justice, livelihood, dignity, and social security.
Structural Marginalization and Human Rights
Unlike violations arising solely from state repression, the human rights concerns of tribals and labouring classes stem largely from structural violence—embedded in economic systems, social hierarchies, and development models. These groups often lack:
- Secure access to land and resources
- Stable employment and fair wages
- Legal awareness and access to justice
- Political voice and bargaining power
Human rights for them therefore go beyond civil liberties and demand redistribution, protection, and empowerment.
Tribals (Adivasis): Land, Identity, and Displacement
Tribals constitute some of the most marginalized communities in India. Their human rights concerns are deeply connected to:
- Alienation from land and forests
- Displacement due to mining, dams, and development projects
- Cultural erosion and loss of traditional livelihoods
For tribal communities, land is not merely an economic asset but the basis of identity, culture, and survival. Displacement without adequate rehabilitation violates multiple human rights—right to livelihood, culture, dignity, and self-determination.
Despite constitutional protections under the Constitution of India, tribals continue to face dispossession and administrative neglect, revealing a gap between constitutional intent and development practice.
Landless Labourers and Agrarian Inequality
Landlessness is one of the most enduring sources of human rights deprivation in rural India. Landless labourers depend on insecure, seasonal, and poorly paid work, making them vulnerable to exploitation.
Human rights challenges faced by landless groups include:
- Lack of livelihood security
- Dependence on dominant landowners
- Exposure to social humiliation and violence
- Absence of social protection
Landlessness undermines the right to dignity and equality, showing how economic dependence translates into social subordination.
Bonded Labour: Coercion and Denial of Freedom
Bonded labour represents one of the most extreme forms of human rights violation in India. It involves situations where individuals are forced to work under debt, coercion, or social obligation, often across generations.
Bonded labour violates fundamental human rights such as:
- Freedom from forced labour
- Right to liberty and dignity
- Right to fair wages and humane working conditions
Although legally abolished, bonded labour persists due to poverty, caste hierarchies, and weak enforcement. Its continued existence highlights how formal legal abolition does not automatically dismantle exploitative social relations.
Unorganised Labour and Informality
The majority of India’s workforce is employed in the unorganised sector, characterized by:
- Lack of job security
- Absence of minimum wages and social security
- Unsafe and exploitative working conditions
Unorganised workers face systematic denial of labour rights, including health protection, maternity benefits, and old-age security. Their invisibility in formal policy frameworks makes them particularly vulnerable.
From a human rights perspective, informality represents the institutionalization of precarity, where survival is prioritized over dignity.
Peasants, Agrarian Crisis, and Human Rights
Peasants face human rights challenges arising from agrarian distress, market volatility, rising costs of inputs, and declining state support. Issues such as indebtedness, land fragmentation, and environmental stress undermine their right to livelihood.
Agrarian crisis transforms economic vulnerability into psychological and social distress, raising human rights concerns related to:
- Right to life and livelihood
- Social security and welfare
- Protection from exploitative credit systems
Peasants’ struggles reveal the human rights implications of development policies that prioritize markets over rural sustainability.
Development, Displacement, and Labouring Classes
Large-scale development projects often disproportionately affect tribals, peasants, and landless labourers. While development is justified in the name of national growth, it frequently results in:
- Forced displacement
- Loss of livelihoods
- Cultural disintegration
- Long-term impoverishment
From a human rights perspective, development must be evaluated not only by economic output but by its impact on human dignity and social justice.
Access to Justice and Institutional Barriers
A major challenge across these groups is limited access to justice. Barriers include:
- Illiteracy and lack of legal awareness
- Fear of retaliation by employers or landlords
- Administrative apathy and delays
Although laws exist to protect labour and tribal rights, weak enforcement and power imbalances often render these protections ineffective.
Contemporary Challenges and New Forms of Vulnerability
In contemporary India, new dynamics have intensified vulnerabilities:
- Contractualisation of labour
- Declining agrarian employment
- Climate change and ecological stress
- Migration and urban informality
These changes demand a renewed human rights framework that recognizes livelihood, social security, and ecological sustainability as central rights.
Human Rights, Democracy, and Social Justice
The condition of tribals, labourers, and peasants raises fundamental questions about the nature of Indian democracy. A democracy that guarantees political rights but fails to ensure economic security risks becoming formally democratic but substantively unequal.
Human rights for these groups require not only legal protection but structural transformation—land reforms, labour protections, welfare guarantees, and participatory development.
Conclusion
Tribals, landless labourers, bonded workers, unorganised labour, and peasants represent the most marginalized constituencies in India’s human rights landscape. Their struggles expose the limitations of a rights framework focused solely on civil and political liberties.
The Indian experience demonstrates that human rights must include economic justice, control over resources, secure livelihoods, and dignity of labour. Addressing the rights of these groups is not a matter of charity or welfare, but a constitutional and moral imperative essential to democratic justice and human dignity.
References
- Baxi, Upendra. The Future of Human Rights
- Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom
- Breman, Jan. Footloose Labour
- Deshpande, R.S. Agrarian Distress in India
- Constitution of India