The story goes back three generations -- a gory one, laced insweat and blood from the rice mills in the northern districts of Tamil Nadu. Thehusks flew out, the grain shone, hands toiled for 19 hours, their wage: lessthan a rupee per hour. They were the bonded Scheduled tribe Irulas. Bonded forlife. To them, the unlettered, the socialist revolution was a fable. And then,in 1993, the sparks were visible.
Krishnan, a labourer, protested when his wife was made towork within three days of delivering a child. A non-Irula woman heard the cry.Two years on, she led a movement. The snake was their symbol, the Sarpam. IrularWorkers' Association charged on.
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A secret survey of 850 rice mills inThiruvallur district was undertaken. Each mill had employed up to 50 bondedlabourers -- all Irulas. Over two years, Sarpam has been able to liberate bondedworkers from over 250 mills and forced them to shut down. More than 600 releasecertificates were procured from the district administration, which, tillSarpam's intervention, denied the very problem. Today they've procured pattaland and ST certificates for hundred of Irulas. Each released worker has alsogot Rs 20,000 as stipulated under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of1976.
Says Srinivasan, till recently a worker at NRM Mills, "released"along with four others on 17 August 2005, "We were not allowed free time.We could not even visit relatives when someone died. We were prisoners who werenot let out of the mill. They sucked our blood." Irulas who do not have avillage to go back to have been resettled in S.K. Nagar in 200 huts spread over12 acres of wasteland in Oothukktottai area of Thiruvallur district. Theinitials S.K. in S.K. Nagar stand for Siddhamma and Krishnan, an Irula leader.
