Generations pay off debts through slavery.

Uttar Pradesh, India - An army of workers, their faces encrusted with dust, toils beside a story-high pile of unfired bricks. They are helping build a new India that appears to be leaving them behind.

From sunup to sundown they spend their time pouring wet mud into molds, lugging them to the kiln, firing them and then pulling them out. For their backbreaking work, they do not receive wages.

They are working to pay off a debt.

In India they are known as bonded laborers, bound to those who gave them or their forefathers an advance or a loan. Human rights advocates call them modern day slaves.

"I cannot leave here unless I pay my debt," said Durgawati, a mother of three.

A contractor had approached Durgawati and her husband, offering them work in a far-off village. He had said there were plenty of opportunities and offered to pay an advance to prove it. Desperate to make a living and with no work in sight where they lived, they leapt at the chance and took the 1000-rupee ($22) advance, she said.

The contractor found them work, but now, the family said they were trapped.

"I have to make a thousand bricks per day," Durgawati said. "It's the most difficult thing. We are given big pieces of soil, then we have to break it. Then we make it into a dough. Then we knead the soil."

She and her husband aren't the only ones in the family working. Their eldest daughter is nearly as fast as the adults at molding the earth into bricks. She is just five years old.

The family said they have not received wages since arriving three months ago. None of them has any idea how much they are owed. They said they have never been shown a balance sheet and couldn't read it anyway. They are illiterate and desperate to make a living.

They do get a small food allowance but say it barely feeds them. Still, the family wouldn't dare leave the worksite that doubles as their living quarters.

"They will beat me if I try to leave," Durgawati said.

Dozens of families are in the same predicament. They are all oblivious to the fact that bonded labor is illegal in India. The legislation has been in place for decades, but enforcement is lax.

"They have to work and repay the loan. They keep working," said Arun Singh, their supervisor. "We have an agreement."

He acknowledged that children are also working on the site, which would be a breach of India's child labor laws, even though he insists otherwise.

"Kids are working here for food. They need food. If they can't fill their stomachs, they need to work," Singh said.

Singh also asked CNN to pay for the interview. "Madam I charge, you pay me something," he said to no avail.

In another village, people have lived in bonded labor for generations.

"They remain in slavery forever," said Supriya Awasthi, South Asia director of Free the Slaves, a non-governmental organization dedicated to eradicating slavery around the world. "There are 27 million people around the world who are in slavery, and [the] maximum…live in India," she said.

According to estimates by policymakers, activists and scholars, the number of modern day slaves ranges from about 10 million to 30 million.

In the village of Dhomanpur a woman applied turmeric paste on the swollen foot of her husband, who said he had injured it when trying to get a cow off a truck for the landowner he works for.

"Even when I'm hurt or sick they call me to work. You won't believe how many atrocities I have to go through in a day," said Kharban Gagai, his leg hanging over his rope bed. The couple lives in a mud hut in a village owned by the landowner.

"When my father was alive he took an 8000-rupee ($175) loan from the landowner. Since that time I am having to work day and night for him," Gagai said, adding that he has never been paid.

His father's debt changed his life. No matter who in the family borrowed money, that debt became his debt, Gagai said.

Before his work injury, Gagai said he tried to escape several times but was always found and brought back.

There are no physical signs the villagers are living in bondage: no chains, fences or armed guards, but the villagers say they are all slaves just the same.

"If I don't work, they will beat me. They will abuse my daughter," said Lalti, a mother of seven. "If you don't give in, they will sell your daughter or son."

Lalti said she had to borrow money from the landowner to treat her husband's tuberculosis years ago, and now she can't come and go as she pleases.

"I am an illiterate, so how would I know how much we owe, and what's left to pay? I don't even know how much we had taken. It's been many years."

As payment for work, she and her neighbors receive leftover food or bags of grain, Lalti said. They are beholden to the man who owns the land they live on.

None of them had heard of the Indian law that made bonded labor illegal more than 30 years ago.

"People in modern day slavery have no idea they can ever access any kind of rights," said Awasthi of Free the Slaves.

Lalti hopes she is able to work long enough so her children will be freed from the loan that binds her family to the land and a hard life.

"The day I pay my debt I will be free. We'll be prosperous," Lalti said.

Michael Moore rallies Wis. pro-union protesters.

MADISON, Wis. – Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged Wisconsin residents Saturday to fight against Republican efforts to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, telling thousands of protesters that "Madison is only the beginning."

The crowd roared in approval as Moore implored demonstrators to keep up their struggle against Republican Gov. Scott Walker's legislation, saying they've galvanized the nation against the wealthy elite and comparing their fight to Egypt's revolt. He also thanked the 14 state Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to block a vote on the bill, saying they'll go down in history books.

"We're going to do this together. Don't give up. Please don't give up," Moore told the protesters, who have swarmed the Capitol every day for close to three weeks.

Police said there were "tens of thousands" of protesters but didn't give a specific count. The vast majority of the crowd was pro-union, and no one was arrested or cited. Rallies drew huge crowds the previous two Saturdays, too: about 70,000 on Feb. 19, and an even larger one on Feb. 26.

Moore told them that the wealthy have overreached, first taking the working class' money and then taking their souls by shutting them up at the bargaining table. The crowd yelled "thank you" before Moore began to speak, and he responded: "All of America thanks you, Wisconsin."

Walker has said the legislation is needed to help ease a state deficit projected to hit $3.6 billion by mid-2013, though opponents see it as an effort to weaken unions.

Negotiations between Democrats and Republicans broke down Thursday, though communication lines remain open, Sen. Tim Cullen said Saturday. Cullen, one of the Democrats who fled the state, said it's difficult for either side to compromise since Democrats don't want to lose support from their base and Walker doesn't want to appear weak by backing down.

Walker's spokesman, Cullen Werwie, wrote in an e-mail Saturday that Walker wouldn't publicly comment on the negotiations but was focused on balancing the budget and following through on his campaign pledge to create 250,000 new jobs. Walker has said he wouldn't compromise on the collective bargaining issue or anything that saves the state money.


Playing to the hometown crowd, Moore disputed the governor's claims that Wisconsin was broke, saying the idea was as farfetched as the belief that the Green Bay Packers needed former quarterback Brett Favre to win a Super Bowl. The Packers won the title last month with Favre's replacement, Aaron Rodgers.

Activists began a sit-in at the Wisconsin Capitol on Feb. 15, and although a judge ended protestors' overnight stays late last week, several hundred were back in the rotunda Saturday chanting "Who's house? Our house!" and "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Scott Walker's got to go!"

Renee Peplinski, a fifth-grade teacher in Wisconsin Rapids, said she doesn't mind making financial concessions to help the state even though it would hurt her family. She's more concerned about losing her collective bargaining rights. Without union protections, teachers would be at the mercy of administrators who could decide to fire them for any perceived slight, she said.

"Every teacher I know is depressed," said Peplinski, 42. "Every minute of the day there's this black cloud."

Thousands more marched in the streets. They banged drums, waved flags and carrying signs with messages like "No one has ever died from overexposure to education," "Worst bill ever" and "Tree huggers for unions."

Meanwhile, two other Democratic senators who fled the state joined the Rev. Jesse Jackson in Chicago to urge Walker to negotiate with workers. Sen. Lena Taylor said Democrats left because they "needed to slow the bill down."

"I ask the governor, 'Do your job. Come to the table and speak to Wisconsin workers,'" Taylor said. "We agree that fiscally we need to do things differently. We even agree that there are some places where we need to talk about how we negotiate. ... However we refuse to accept in America that we don't believe that a voice at the table is an option. It is not an option of a leader and it surely is not the Wisconsin way."

Sen. Chris Larson urged protestors to stay strong.

"We've been here for the last 16 days we'll continue to be here until worker's rights are removed as the target in this budget repair bill by our governor," he said.

Walker has said the bill is needed to ease a deficit that could hit $137 million by July and $3.6 billion by the middle of 2013. His proposal comes up with the money for this year in part by forcing state employees to pay for half the cost of their pensions and twice their current health care premiums — concessions equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut.

With the labor bill stalled, Walker said layoffs may be necessary so the state can start to realize the $30 million savings he had assumed would come from the concessions. All state workers, except those at prisons, state hospitals and other facilities open around the clock, would be potential layoff targets.

Walker informed state employee unions Friday that he intends to issue layoff notices to 1,500 workers that would be effective on April 4.

Obama calls for common ground on budget.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is urging lawmakers to find common ground on a budget deal to avert a government shutdown and says he's willing to agree to steeper cuts to get there.

The president issued a call for compromise Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address but without offering any specifics on how to bridge the $50 billion gulf that divides the White House and Democratic budget proposal from the much steeper cuts offered by Republicans.

The competing plans are headed for test votes in the Senate in the coming week that neither is expected to survive but that will set the stage for further negotiations. The government is running on a stopgap spending bill that expires March 18, so the parties have until then to come up with a plan to pay for the remainder of the fiscal year through Sept. 30.

"We need to come together, Democrats and Republicans, around a long-term budget that sacrifices wasteful spending without sacrificing the job-creating investments in our future. My administration has already put forward specific cuts that meet congressional Republicans halfway. And I'm prepared to do more," said Obama, although the claim that Democrats are meeting Republicans halfway only stands up under the Democratic explanation of the intricate numbers game being played on Capitol Hill.

"But we'll only finish the job together — by sitting at the same table, working out our differences and finding common ground," the president said.

Facing a federal deficit of $1.6 trillion, Republican leaders are under pressure from tea partiers to stick to a deep menu of $61 billion in spending cuts for the remainder of this year that's been passed by the GOP-controlled House. But Obama has threatened to veto that plan, and a Democratic counteroffer of $6.5 billion in cuts — on top of $4 billion already signed into law — restores money the House GOP cuts from education, health and other programs.

Republicans used their weekly address to reject Obama's approach on the budget.

"You may have heard President Obama say that we need to make sure 'we're living within our means,'" freshman Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., said in the address. "He's right about that. Unfortunately, his budget doesn't match his words.

"It continues out-of-control spending, it adds to our $14 trillion debt and it adds to the uncertainty that makes it harder to create jobs. Maintaining the status quo — and refusing to offer a credible plan to cut spending — is just unacceptable and inexcusable," the lawmaker said.

"The American people want us to keep the government running while cutting its cost," Black said.