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Causes of Human Trafficking in India

causes of human trafficking in India
Human trafficking, defined as the illegal trade of humans most commonly for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced labor, currently claims an estimated 24.9 million victims worldwide, and the Global Slavery Index estimates that 8 million trafficking victims live within India’s borders. In 2016, there were 8,132 human trafficking cases reported in India, a 20 percent increase from 2015, and there were 23,117 people rescued from the human trafficking system.

Of the people rescued, 60 percent were children, women and girls accounted for 55 percent, 33 percent were trafficked for sexual services, and 45 percent were trafficked for forced labor. While much of the global pervasiveness of human trafficking can be explained only by extreme poverty, political instability and war, the causes of human trafficking in India are more nuanced.

Causes of Human Trafficking in India

The causes of human trafficking in India can be explained in part by gender-based discrimination, responsible for the deaths of approximately 239,000 girls under the age of five in India each year. Gender-based discrimination is a cultural norm in India, as sons are considered more useful to the family than daughters. This heavily patriarchal society leaves girls with limited access to education, leading to gender gaps in both literacy rates and financial earning potentials.

According to the 2011 census, the literacy rate was 82 percent for men and 65 percent for women, and according to the 2013 census, men were paid 25 percent more than women. As a result of gender-based discrimination, the sex ratio in India is greatly skewed.

Because there are far more men in India than young women, bride trafficking, or the illegal sale of women for the purpose of marriage, is becoming more prevalent in India. In the more rural Northern states, where the sex ratio is worse than the national average, bride trafficking has become a norm. More than 90 percent of married women in these Northern states have been sold from other states, some as many as three times, often first becoming brides as preteens. Gender-based discrimination in India has perpetuated a societal structure that strongly favors males over females to the point of self-destruction, as men are unable to find wives, thus driving demand for the human trafficking of women in India for the purpose of marriage.

Sex Trafficking

Another cause of human trafficking in India is a lack of opportunity in India’s poor communities, especially for uneducated women, to provide for their families. In 2012, only 43 percent of women in India worked regular wage or salaried positions. Victims of sex trafficking in India are predominantly young, illiterate girls from impoverished families in rural states. Although poverty is decreasing in India, 28 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line.

Poor communities are especially vulnerable to human traffickers, as they often offer better job opportunities or debt relief to lure victims. With limited opportunities to make money, offers like these are hard to decline for young women. Sex trafficking victims average 10 to 14 years of age, down from its previous average of 14 to 16, because younger girls are thought to be less likely to carry sexually-transmitted diseases.

Forced Labor

The causes of male trafficking in India is primarily tied with forced or bonded labor. Bonded labor, defined as a system of forced or partly forced labor under which a debtor accepts an advance of cash for a pledge of labor, by the debtor or any member of the debtor’s family, for the benefit of a creditor, is deeply entrenched in India’s social structure. While bonded labor was abolished in India in 1976, many industries who rely on bonded labor schemes for their workforces have turned to the human trafficking trade for workers in their spinning mills, granite quarries and brick kilns.

Like the bride and sex trafficking trade, forced labor traffickers recruit victims from poor, rural areas of India, promising lump-sum payments at the end of their contracts. Workers are meagerly compensated for their labor, and terrible working conditions provoke illnesses that lead to wage advances and loans that keep the worker in lifelong debt to their contractors.

Solutions

The Government of India has been making strides to address its human trafficking problem by heightening its border security, increasing its budget for aid to trafficking victims and drafting an anti-trafficking bill. In February 2018, the Union Cabinet passed the Trafficking in Persons Bill to be voted on by Parliament. If passed, the bill would criminalize aggravated forms of trafficking and establish a national anti-trafficking bureau, along with locally stationed anti-trafficking units. This bill also includes methods to rehabilitate victims, addresses physical and mental trauma and promoted education, health and skill development.

Additionally, the Rescue Foundation, established in 2000, helps to investigate, rescue and rehabilitate victims of human trafficking in India. Rehabilitation programs include education, computer training, legal aid and counseling. As a result of the Rescue Foundation, more than 5,000 victims have been rescued and more than 15,000 have been rehabilitated and repatriated.

The causes of human trafficking in India include gender discrimination, a vulnerability of the impoverished population and the desperation of the impoverished to support their families. Trafficking industries in India are taking advantage of the plight of India’s disadvantaged and impoverished population for the benefit of others, as trafficking victims are rarely paid as they’re promised.

However, human trafficking in India seems to be endangered as the government progresses in reducing human trafficking in the nation by increasing its border security, aid for trafficking victims and passing the Trafficking in Persons Bill to Parliament. Moreover, nongovernmental organizations like the Rescue Foundation have been successful in rescuing, rehabilitating, and repatriating victims of trafficking back to their families.

– Jillian Baxter
Photo: Flickr

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Modern Day Bonded Labor in India

Bonded labor in India
Millions of people living below the poverty line in South Asia are desperate for the chance to make money and find a way to support their families. Individuals and families are easily seduced into a life of abuse by the promise of making enough money to pay off debts through bonded labor.

Unfortunately the stories workers are told are usually untruthful and deceptive, and laborers are immediately exploited upon hire.

In 1976 an abolition act was passed, known as the Indian Bonded Labor System Abolition Act, which bans forced labor, bonded labor and any “service arising out of debt.” Despite this law, workers in Dalit, India, are still falling prey to cheap labor and physically-abusive work conditions.

Recently in Nuagada, Nilambar Majhi and Dialu Nial where offered a $225 payment in order to work for a man. They were given money in advance and were told that they would pay it back in exchange for their labor at a brick kiln, but once on a train headed to the South India state, they tried to escape with a group of people.

Their escape attempt was unsuccessful.

In response, they were asked to return the cost of their advance money as well as the rest of the group’s money. Unable to return the money, they were “held captive for days, where they were tortured.”

Nilambar and Dialu, the only two captured, were told they had to make a choice: their hands, their legs, or their life. The captors proceeded to amputate their hands.

“Three men held us down and cut our hands off, one by one, like you cut a chicken. Then they picked up our hands and threw them away,” Nilambar said.
Sadly this is not out of the ordinary for bonded labor conditions. Abuse is common: days are long, payment is minimal, two meals are offered a day, and sometimes workers have only one pair of clothes for a year.

Women and children typically have no choice but to work in bonded labor occupations. Patriarchal social hierarchies restrict women’s options forcing them to work as silk farmers, weavers and in other stereotypical household positions.

Children also face long days of work in a spectrum of occupation – some days they are subject to working 14 hours every day because they are seen as “cheap labor.” These long days and the poor work conditions expose the children to disease and health issues.

The one unique aspect of Nilambar and Dialu’s situation is that they were able to escape their captors. Andy Griffiths, who works for International Justice Mission, believes that by exposing Nilambar and Dialu’s story, more attention will be focused on modern-day slavery and the brutalities of bonded labor, and hopefully bring Nilambar and Dialu’s captors to justice.

– Becka Felcon

Sources: CNN, IDSN, CNN (2)
Photo: Khaama Press

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Women and Modern Day Slavery in Pakistan

Pakistan

According to The Nation, women in Pakistan are forced to make bricks in order to pay off the debt their families have incurred.

“Living without running water, and often trapped by their employers for the rest of their lives, these women are forced to work in brick kilns, agricultural fields and other hard labour industries to clear debts which overshadow their families’ lives,” said the Pakistani news agency.

There is no reliable statistic regarding the number of Pakistanis who are currently enslaved as bonded laborers. However, according to the National Coalition Against Bonded Labour, these individuals exist throughout the country not only in the brick industry, but also the agriculture and carpet industries.

Moreover, the Associated Press estimates that “tens of thousands” of poor Pakistanis work within these industries.

“Bonded labor is the most widely used method of enslaving people around the world,” The Nation said. “The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week.”

In many instances, the amount of work that debt slaves put throughout their lives far exceeds the amount of money they initially borrowed. But instead of quitting, the victims continue to work because they are constantly threatened with physical violence.

 

Facts on Modern Slavery

 

The Pakistani government, along with the world community, prohibits the practice of debt slavery. However, it is highly inefficient when it comes to enforcing the laws and punishing the people who profit from slavery.

Developed countries and humanitarian organizations are highly critical of modern day slavery. Human Rights Watch (HRW) argues that bonded labor is more common in the southern Punjab and Sindh regions of Pakistan.

“Bondage in agrarian regions involves the purchase and sale of peasants among landlords, the maintenance of private jails to discipline and punish peasants, the forcible transference of teachers who train peasants to maintain proper financial accounts and a patter of rape of peasant women by landlords and the police,” said the organization.

HRW also ties this issue into poverty by explaining that bonded laborers either work in the agricultural industry or the “informal economy.”

This is a vicious circle in which the landless poor “are denied access to institutional forms of credit and must therefore rely on landlords, moneylenders and employers.”

To end debt slavery in Pakistan, the government can work harder to enforce the laws already banning the practice. With debt slavery, individuals are fooled into working in horrible conditions for the rest of their lives.

– Juan Campos

Sources: AP, The Nation, Human Rights Watch