ABSTRACT
Modern slavery is constituted by extreme oppression, exploitation, and poverty. This chapter examines modern slavery in India, which has vast swathes of its population living in poverty and is home to the highest number of modern slaves in the world. The chapter attends to the role of caste-based biopolitics in furthering slavery. Caste is one of the key structures of oppression and exploitation in India. This chapter examines caste-based biopolitics through a novella—Douloti the Bountiful, written by Mahasweta Devi, a celebrated Indian writer. Based on the literary work, it explains how the apparatus of caste-based biopolitics intersects with capitalist market practices to exacerbate conditions of extreme poverty, unfreedom and exploitation.
