New Delhi: A villager in Bihar has been repaying a loan of 40 kg of rice with 27 years of bonded labour, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Jawahar Manjhi took the rice from a lender for a family wedding in exchange for him working in the lender's field. It was agreed Manjhi, 45, would pay off one kg of rice for each day he worked.
But since then, Manjhi has taken more loans of rice and now has no idea how much he has repaid.
"Originally the loan was about 40 kg," Manjhi was quoted as saying in the Times of India.
"Twenty-seven years on, I don't know how much have I repaid and how much more I owe the lender,” he added.
Living in a one-room mud house with his wife and four children, the poor labourer said he has no idea how the interest on the rice loan was calculated and does not know how he will repay the entire loan in one lifetime.
He was told he would be freed from his bond if he paid Rs 5,000 - an amount far beyond his reach.
Manjhi said there were "many more like me" in the area, but Bihar's labour minister told the newspaper that the government was not aware of any bonded labour in Bihar.
According to the government, around 20 per cent of the country’s population lives below the poverty line and while strong economic growth has made millions in the cities richer, it has bypassed many people living in rural areas.
In recent years, there has been a spate of suicides by poverty-stricken farmers unable to repay loans borrowed from village moneylenders at interest rates as high as 60 per cent a month.
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