The company asks you to pay which you should NOT because it is illegal. The company however can hold you ransom to exit letter etc. which proves that you worked for the company. However, most people do not take that route. There are smart ways to avoid that coercion.
Sorry but it is. You want to say that it is practiced - sure I agree but it is illegal. Bonded labor has long been abolished in India.
Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act clearly says one sided contracts are void. Most contracts in these companies are one sided in nature and of the type - if you quit, then you pay X but if we fire you then we do not pay anything. The Supreme Court of India has clarified this Superintendence Company Of India ... vs Krishan Murgai on 9 May, 1980 [0].
In fact, Section 383 of the Indian Penal Code even makes the illegal to use the common coercive tactics by firms (TCS in the article) to withhold documents [1]. The tactic amounts to "extortion" and carries a punishment of 3 years of prison or fine or both [2]
TL;DR - Bonds are illegal and so is the practice of withholding ANY valuable to enforce vulnerability. The latter is a criminal offense.
> India's economy is the 10th largest in the world, but millions of the country's workers are thought to be held in conditions little better than slavery. [...]
> "There are deep-rooted problems of business-related human rights abuse in India," says Peter Frankental, Economic Relations Programme Director of Amnesty International UK. "Much of that involves the way business is conducted, an unwillingness to enforce laws against companies, and fabricated charges and false imprisonment against activists who try to bring these issues to light."
> In India, our work focused on freeing the millions of men, women and children forced to work as bonded labourers. Regardless of their age, they work long hours labouring in quarries, brick kilns, agriculture and as domestics, receiving little or no pay in return for a loan needed for survival.
> In spite of the encompassing and seemingly progressive legislative framework, the use and abuse of Dalit bonded labourers in India remains endemic within a range of occupations and branches, both rural and urban, such as agriculture, forestry, fishing, domestic work, and cleaning. A report by Anti-Slavery International in 2008, revealed that dalit bonded labourers are employed to carry out the most physically straining and menial types of work in industries such as silk farms, rice mills, salt pans, fisheries, quarries and mines, tea and spice farming, brick-kilns, textile and domestic work(2).
> sure I agree but it is illegal. Constitutionally, Bonded labor has long been abolished in India.
I am aware of the prevalence of bonded labor in India. However, it is not the law but the law enforcement which is the issue. One of your links also mentions it
> In spite of the encompassing and seemingly progressive legislative framework,
My previous reply was to a comment who was trying to suggest that a bond or a one-sided contract was legal. It is a very common misconception in India and particularly in the IT workforce. The reason I took the liberty to omit the word because I thought it would be implicit that HN users would refer to bonded labor in technology companies. After all, that is what the original submission is about.
