Child Labor & Human Trafficking In India: A Relook

                  Human trafficking is a serious concern the world over, and its impact is particularly high in countries like Nepal and India. Women and children are some of the worst affected from this practice, with many ending up in the flesh trade. Every year, over one and a half lakh girls and women are trafficked from Nepal, a big percentage of who end up in brothels in Mumbai. To make matters worse, the average age of a sex worker has fallen from 14-16 years to 10-12 years in the past decade.

These women are in most cases deceived by loved ones and families and have had their dreams and aspirations shattered by their families' greed for money. 

Extreme poverty, lack of education and employment, and poor implementation of the government’s minimum wage system in rural India make girls more vulnerable to being trafficked. The 2013 Global Slavery Index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, an organization that works to end modern slavery, found that almost half of the 30 million “modern slaves” in the world are from the India subcontinent(India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan etc).

In the western part of India’s capital city, New Delhi, more than 5,000 ‘domestic worker placement’ agencies operate out of a nondescript neighborhood called Shakurpur Basti. For years, the agencies have flourished by indulging in the business of trafficking minor girls and selling them as domestic slaves in the cities. Unfortunately even though the mainstream media and the Government is aware of it, yet no one seems to bother. A major cause behind is simply that in most cases these minor children are not reported missing, have no documents of their existence and in a majority of cases, are illegal immigrants. They are not voters or consumers. In the eyes of successive Governments, they don’t exist.

The agencies liaise with natives of remote villages, mostly from the eastern part of India, who, as “local agents,” carry out the first step in the trafficking process. The agents identify underage girls from extremely poor families and lure them to the city with the promise of a good job. Once the girls are in the city, the agents sell them for about US$120 each to a domestic worker placement agency. The agency then re-sells her to a family as domestic labor, charging between US$600 and US$700.

The girls are made to work 14 to 16 hours per day and do all of the household chores, from cooking and cleaning to baby-sitting. They are paid almost nothing. Often their monthly wage is paid to the agencies—not to them.

Most of the girls get trapped in this vicious cycle forever. Unaware and often illiterate, they have little knowledge of their rights and no clue of how to return home. The traffickers and agencies make the most of their vulnerability and, for years, move them from one household to another. Many are sexually exploited.

A 2013 report by the Geneva-based International Labour Organization found that the number of domestic workers in India ranges from 2.5 million to 90 million. And despite being the largest workforce in the country, the workers are unrecognized and unprotected by Indian law.

What is even worse in this case is that this heinous crime does not happen in the shadows, it happens all around us in the open. It is not a secret, a majority of the India population is aware of this, and even many educated families still have children working as domestic helps. In some cases these children are routinely tortured.  

The Ministry of Labour and Employment had formulated a national policy, which is still awaiting cabinet approval. The policy draft, which includes recommendations by the National Advisory Council, an advisory body set up to advise the Prime Minister, entitles domestic workers to benefits of defined normal hours of work with weekly rest, paid annual and sick leave, maternity benefits, and, most important, entitlement of minimum wages under the Minimum Wages Act of 1948. Unfortunately even though some individual states have taken action to prevent these incidents, the Center has mostly stayed quite.

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