In the absence of land reform, Koltas invariably find themselves working on others' fields. "I would work as a daily wage labouerer if I wasn't bonded,' Lal admits. "Many labourers have taken loans because they have accepted that they will never be able to pay back any amount anyway,' says Kripa Ram Bhatt, secretary of Prakriya, an NGO in the region.

Dilaram Bhatad, a moneylender, is a vociferous defender of the system. "On the one hand, one lends, say, Rs 80,000 and provides employment along with a monthly salary without any surety of getting any money back. One also give them food and sometimes even clothes. Who else will? It is not as if the banks don't charge interest. And this is a social custom. Outsiders can't change it,' he says.

Lenient lending by banks reinforces the debt trap, because borrowers who can't repay loans go to moneylenders. The manager of the Lakhamandal branch of the Ganga Yamuna Gramin Bank says 60-70 per cent of loans aren't repaid. Anmol Jain's report for the International Labour Organization talks of cases where middlemen helped illiterate villagers get bank loans and then kept the money for themselves.