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This year's Shalom Prize is awarded to Kiran Kamal Prasad and the Jeevika project he founded. Prasad has been campaigning against bonded labor in Karnataka, a state in southwest India, since 1988. Bonded labor is a form of forced labor and modern slavery. The project’s title, "Jeevika", stands for "Jeeta Vimukti Karnataka", which means "Life without bonded labor in Karnataka". According to estimates by international organizations, eleven million people in India live and work under conditions similar to slavery. Although bonded labor has been banned in India since 1976, regulations are often not implemented at local level.
Bonded labor is often a side effect of poverty: Wages in agriculture, quarries, brickworks and construction sites, for example, are just enough to cover the very basic costs of living. For medicines, new seeds or sometimes even food, workers have to take out loans from private money lenders. In order to pay off their debts, they are obliged to work in the lenders’ companies or households for little more than pocket money – a permanently lucrative business for the "employers". For those affected, mostly Dalits (formerly "untouchables") and Adivasis (indigenous people), this means a spiral of poverty and debt bondage from which they can hardly escape. Debt bondage is also accompanied by major interventions in health and life in general. In some sectors, debt bondage extends to entire families. Working hours range up to 22 hours a day, seven days a week. It is not uncommon for workers to be exposed to hazardous activities or harmful substances. They are often no longer allowed to leave the house and yard. If they fight back, they have to fear harassment and boycotts, often resulting in physical violence such as beatings, injuries and rape or even murder.
Jeevika supports the people in the villages of Karnataka in breaking up existing dependency structures and supports them in the release and rehabilitation processes that take several years. Jeevika's main focus is on empowering Dalits and other marginalized communities. Equality between men and women in rural areas is another focus of the project’s work. School and adult education and organizing trade unions are seen as key in the fight against poverty and for a life in dignity. With the support of Jeevika, already 30,000 people have been freed from debt bondage and 5,000 have been granted rehabilitation measures by the government.
