I'm Ravi Srivastava. I teach development economics in Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, and I've been working on problems related to labour, labour migration, bonded labour, and forced labour for about four decades.
Neil Howard (oD): Thank you very much Ravi, that makes you particularly well-placed to answer the first question. In your view, what structures are there particularly within Indian society that help perpetuate exploitation? I’m especially curious about how those intersect with global structures of coercive capitalism and nation states.
Ravi: At least during the last four decades, while I've been looking at the situation, there have been forms of unfreedom, forced labour, bonded labour, trafficking etc. This is primarily because the Indian economy has shifted from being more agrarian and rural to more urban. Forms of agrarian bondage have become much less as a result, but forms of non-agrarian bondage in general have increased.
