What Do The Slaveholders Think And How Do They See Themselves?

The author of this text has spent many years researching bonded labor – a modern form of slavery – in India. It is a form of exploitation when a person who is in debt is forced to work (often for many years) for their lender.

This text invites the reader to try and understand what the slaveholders are like – that they aren't a special breed of humans who simply like oppressing others. Or that they enjoy an unprecedented amount of privilege. But in reality, they are often not much richer than their slaves and do not see themselves as criminals. They are eager to talk about their lives – and this is where it becomes really interesting. As some of them are really charming, and some genuinely believe that they have "family-like" relationships with their slaves. The key element is their understanding of family: many believe that the head of the family deserves to control other people's lives in exchange for his care (basic food and clothes). Many of them are also great at bonding emotionally with their slaves to make them stay.

This particular form of slavery is now dying out in India – as the information becomes more accessible, workers get better at negotiating their conditions, become more mobile, and the slaveholders feel their grip loosening. But in order to really abolish slavery, the author argues, one needs to make it profitable for the slaveholders to give it up. And for this, it is important to understand their way of thinking.