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For her 16-year-old daughter's wedding last year, Makhanlal Ahirwal bought Bhawani sari, bracelets and ankle bracelets, got her relatives acquired a water cooler, a bed and utensils as a dowry and organized a party for 500 people in his village in central India.
The celebrations added 200,000 rupees ($ 2,800) to an unpaid debt of about 100,000 rupees that he had already hired for the marriage of another daughter.
To repay the original debt he had traveled 800 kilometers to Delhi the previous year, where he had been attracted by a promise of good pay at a construction site.
Instead, he was held against his will and denied wages and food for three months before being saved.
His experience is not uncommon in India, which is home to an estimated total of 8 million of a total of 40 million slaves – and where many poor families accept loans to cover weddings and then fall into modern slavery as they try to repay the money.
"I worked for 12 hours and I lived in a tent, but I was not paid a penny," said Ahirwal, sitting outside his clay hut in the village of Dharampura, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
"I had taken that loan to marry my eldest daughter, she was then 14. But I was not paid, I had four more daughters to marry, so I took another loan last year," he said. "There is no way to repay the loan if I do not migrate and I look for the job again."
Without land, and basically in the hierarchy of the Indian caste system, the Ahirwal of Dharampura rely on local landowners who lend money with 4% interest.
Villagers take loans for higher expenses, which in most cases are linked to health care and marriages of their daughters.
Without jobs in the villages, many migrate to the cities and send home profits to repay the money lenders, activists say.
But in many cases, unscrupulous employers trick them to work long hours with the promise of good money, knowing they have debts to repay.
Chiefs sometimes hold wages – a practice that can trap villagers for years and is seen as a form of slavery.
Makhanlal Ahirwal was among the 22 people in Dharampura who were rescued from slavery two years ago and are entitled to government subsidies such as cash compensation and housing.
Each of them had outstanding loans when he emigrated.
"Many of us had taken loans for our children's weddings." A daughter's marriage means four years of debt, "said Nirmal Ahirwal, who was trapped in slavery along with Makhanlal.
Many parents in Dharampura are planning the debt cycles around the age of their daughters, ensuring that the older ones are married before the younger ones reach puberty to avoid grouping of loans at the wedding.
Despite being illegal, almost 27% of girls get married before they turn 18 in India, which explains the highest rates of marriages between children throughout South Asia.
The practice is particularly prevalent among the poorest and most marginalized and officials have said they are supporting advocacy initiatives to enforce the law, as actions against parents could further victimize families.
Madhya Pradesh is among the poorest states in India and in the Chattarpur district – home to the village of Dharampura – more than half of the women got married before 6pm, government figures show.
Marriages cost up to 200,000 rupees and in many cases push entire families to modern slavery even when girls are pulled out of school and pushed into adulthood.
"Both parents and their daughters are victims in these cases … they are both linked in different forms of slavery," said Nirmal Gorana, convenor of the National Committee for the Elimination of Forced Labor.
"Workers who save from slavery often cite the loans taken for the marriage of their children for starting work," he added.
Bhawani, the sixteen year old daughter of Makhanlal, looks like a shy new bride as she enters her parents' house, dressed in a pink sari and fake gold bracelets, a strip of red vermilion along the division of her hair and his eyes lined with kohl.
"I've never liked dressing up, but now I do what they (her in-laws) like," he said.
"I wanted to study, I never said I wanted to get married, but people start talking about 15-year-olds like 20".
Teenage girls from the village pick up water, cook and clean and roll up the "beedis" (traditional cigarettes) to supplement family income. Most abandon school youth and get married shortly thereafter.
Child marriage without consensus is a form of slavery as it leads children to sexual and domestic slavery, experts say.
"We do not ask our parents anything, we do as they say," said 14-year-old Rekha Ahirwal, who left after the ninth year.
Many parents do not see a future for their young daughters, so take loans to marry them, said Bhuwan Ribhu, an activist from the Kailash Satyarthi Children's Non-Profit Foundation.
"Also, the girl's marriage is a time of pride for the family in the village as they discuss with the community about what they did, about what they gave her," he said.
The drives of awareness controlled the practice, but only to a certain extent, according to activists and officials. "We explain that there are cash incentives if they marry their daughters after the age of 18, but parents believe that the right age is 12," said Ramesh Bhandari, head of the Chattarpur district.
Bhawani remembers feeling crushed when his father returned exhausted and penniless from Delhi after being saved.
"His debt rose only after my marriage," he said.
But she has another loan to worry about – that of her in-laws. You will take the risk of migrating "to some city, wherever there is work", with your husband to repay the 150,000 rupees they have borrowed for their son's holidays.
"This is not a big deal," said her husband Paras, 22.
"Marriages cost so much, we will soon find work to repay the loan." – Thomson Reuters Foundation
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