>"Slavery in granite quarries is a family affair enforced by a tricky scheme based on debt. When a poor family comes looking for work, the quarry bosses are ready to help with an “advance” on wages to help the family settle in. The rice and beans they eat, the scrap stones they use to build a hut on the side of the quarry, the hammers and crowbars they need to do their work, all of it is provided by the boss and added to the family’s debt. Just when the family feels they may have finally found some security, they are being locked into hereditary slavery. This debt bondage is illegal, but illiterate workers don’t know this, and the bosses are keen to play on their sense of obligation, not alert them to the scam that’s sucking them under."

This is very much not slavery. It's terrible, it's fraud, and it's arguably some form of servitude, but it's not slavery. Calling it slavery is an insult to people who are owned and chained.

Edit: much, much later at the very end of the article there is a more in depth accounting of what's happening. It seems to be mostly fraud tied with corruption, but there are accounts of straight servitude and some of the men say they were not able to leave. If this testimony is accurate, i'd say it's slavery.