Causes of Bonded Labour:

♤ Economic: extreme poverty, inability to find work, small landholdings, lack of alternative small-scale loans for rural and urban poor, natural calamities like drought, floods etc., absence of rains, drying away of wells, meagre income from forest produce, and inflation.

♤ Social factors: high expenses on occasions like marriage, death, feast, birth of a child, etc., leading to heavy debts, caste-based discrimination, limited outreach of social welfare schemes to safeguard against hunger and illness, non- compulsory and unequal educational system, and indifference and corruption among government officials.

♤ Exploitation by powerful persons or castes in a village also compels people to migrate and seek employment under adverse conditions.

♤ Religious and caste based arguments are used to convince people of bonded labour.