The bulk of the Indian indentured migrants to Francophone Islands and Western Indian Ocean Islands came from the Indo Gangetic plains of North India, initially from the districts of Bihar and then from the depressed eastern regions of Uttar Pradesh (UP). From the 1880s to the end of indentured, emigration in 1916 Uttar Pradesh provided 80% of the migrants and Bihar and Bengal thirteen percent, the rest coming from Madhya Pradesh, the Punjab and elsewhere.
In Francophone Islands and Western Indian Ocean Islands, the law stipulated that Indian indentured laborers would be engaged in the cultivation of the soil or the manufacture of produce on any plantation, every day except Sundays and authorized holidays. She/he was required to work for nine hours in each working day and was attached to the specific plantation for five years from the date of allotment.
At the end of the five years the laborers were to be given a certificate of exemption from labor and were permitted to return to India at their own cost after ten years residence in the colony.