Participatory Statistics to Measure Prevalence in Bonded Labour Hotspots in Tamil Nadu: Report of Preliminary Findings of the Baseline Study

The Freedom Fund, along with 11 partner organisations in Tamil Nadu, is focusing geographically on hotspots/locations where forms of bonded labour are more prevalent. It is working towards reducing trafficking, bonded labour and harmful child labour. The study aims to seek answers to an estimation of prevalence of bonded labour across Freedom Fund areas: on how prevalence differs among populations with different socio-economic characteristics; on the indicators that unpack whether a family is more resilient or prone to bonded labour (such as loans or alcohol consumption); and on whether the method being used for measuring bonded labour is likely to detect the expected change between baseline and endline. While individual NGO partners have monitoring and evaluation systems to measure the progress of their intervention, the aim of our work is to assess the impact of interventions across the Freedom Fund hotspot as a whole. The current baseline study was seen as the first step in providing context for the partners’ work and offering inputs to their ongoing programmes to meet the goal of decreasing the prevalence of bonded labourers during the intervention period. The aim of the prevalence work is not to show overall prevalence for the districts but to show prevalence in the intervention areas and how it changes over time.