Post date: Apr 14, 2013 1:35:32 PM
A Pakistani woman who was formerly a poorly-paid servant to a land owner applies to run for the general election, inspiring other workers who have escaped their landlords.
HYDERABAD, SINDH PROVINCE, PAKISTAN (REUTERS) - When Veero Kolhi made the asset declaration required of candidates inPakistan's May elections she listed the following items: two beds, five mattresses, cooking pots and a bank account holding her life savings of 2,800 rupees (28 U.S. dollars).
While she may lack the fortune that is normally the entry ticket to Pakistani politics, Kolhi can make a claim that may resonate more powerfully with poor voters than the wearily familiar promises of her rivals.Kolhi's campaign is a symbolic step. 20 years ago, she was a "bonded labourer," the term used in Pakistan for a form of contemporary serfdom in which families are made to work for years in sugar plantations, cotton fields or brick kilns to pay off debts to the owners.
"I was a bonded labourer myself. I know what kind of tyranny they face. That is why I have decided to stand in the elections. People are approving that a peasant woman who has got freedom from bonded labour is standing in the elections, they are appreciating it, " Kolhi said, speaking at her one-room home of mud and bamboo on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad in Sindh province.
She has never learned to write more than her name, but since making her escape in the mid-1990s, Kolhi has lobbied the police and courts to release thousands of others from the pool of indebted workers in her native Sindh province, the vast majority of whom are fellow Hindus.
On April 5, Kolhi crossed a new threshold in her own odyssey when she stood on the steps of a colonial-era courthouse in Hyderabad and brandished a document officials had just issued, authorising her to run for the provincial assembly.
With no rival party to back her, Kolhi's independent run may make barely a dent at the ballot box in Sindh, a stronghold of President Asif Ali Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
But her beat-the-odds bravado has lit a flame for those who adore her the most: families she has helped liberate from lives as vassals.
"Why don't we vote for Veero? She has come to us for vote. We want Veero in the office because we wish to progress. We don't have roads in our village. Our women face hardships when they are pregnant and Rickshaws refuse to come here," said Ramchand Thakur, who lives in a Hindu settlement on the edge ofHyderabad.
While Kolhi clearly enjoys meeting supporters - greeting women by placing two palms on their bowed heads in a traditional gesture of protection - she has still only reached a tiny fraction of constituency's 133,000 voters.
The favourite remains Sharjeel Memon, an influential businessman and stalwart of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which considers Sindh province its backyard, and which has long claimed to be the mantle of defender of the poor.
Despite the struggle Kolhi faces, the fact she is able to run at all has emboldened campaigners for workers' rights in Sindh.
Although Veero Kolhi works with a local organisation that says it has helped rescue some 26,000 indebted workers in the last 12 years, several estimates put the total figure of bonded labourers in Pakistan at roughly eight million.
Lakhi Bheel said he accumulated a debt of 99,405 rupees after working for three years - a sum he could never hope to pay. When the time came to divide the harvest, he said the landlords would say rain had damaged the crop or they owed more money to pay for the farm's upkeep.
Bheel said he had decided to make a break for freedom after the land owner threatened to sell the family's daughters in return for bride prices.
"We had to pay the salaries of drivers, cooks, and accountants. We lived there for three years but I don't remember having good food once in these years. We worked the whole day. They used to beat us. Sometimes four men would guard a single person. At night they would put us in a room of 50, 60 feet and lock it," he said.
Lalee Kolhi, another former bonded labourer turned activist, said it took her time to realise her rights.
"I learned this in four, five years. The landlords who beat me and my family, I used to think, may be some day I can reach them and we can sue these landlords. I have learnt this now, I go to a lawyer," said Lalee Kolhi, another former bonded labourer turned activist.
In Pakistan, campaigners say the only solution would be to enact vigorous land reforms to give destitute workers their own farms in order to prevent any oppression.