Jeffrey Pankratz, the president of JVI, met with a group of bonded laborers who work in a rock quarry in the state of Uddar Pradesh, the most populous state in India.

These men are from destitute families who, due to a financial crisis of one sort or another, sell themselves and sometimes their children to provide labor in exchange for a loan. The moneylenders force the borrowers to work only for them, charge interest rates well over 100 percent, and pay wages barely high enough to support daily survival. These illegal loans serve as a coercive means to enslave men, women and children for years, and sometimes for generations.

The caste system does not make their lives any easier. In this village, people from a higher caste prevented these bonded laborers from accessing water by walling off a local well, an Indian, caste-based, version of segregation of public facilities.

JVI is assisting justice ventures that help bonded laborers break from this illegal arrangement. Bonded slavery is the most prevalent form of human trafficking in South Asia, and is one of JVI's priority issue areas. JVI partners with a number of groups in northern India, and has recently facilitated the hiring of a number of lawyers on site to help with the case work involved. The challenges are not small, and a lot of patience will be needed as we work to free these bonded laborers from such illegal, oppressive arrangements.