A terrible scenario stares at Odisha. When the State on an average records birth of nearly 68 girls every day, as many as 12 women are trafficked either by inducement or coercion.
This shows of every six female children born, one is later trafficked from Odisha. The result is Odisha has to live with the dubious tag of a major women ‘outsourcing’ State in the country. The chilling development is in just three years missing women reports filed by families with the State police zoomed to nearly three times - the pace yet to be unrivalled by any other State nationally.
So, when in 2013 there were nearly 4,500 missing women, the number in 2015 jumped to around 12,000. The reason behind State racing high on the fast lane is when 12 women go missing every day here, only 2 could be traced out - the poorest rate of retrieval by any State nationally.
What then cumulatively stares at the State is whereabouts of such a huge number of banished women from Odisha are still in the dark. And, the terrifying reality is every year over 4,000 new banished women get added to the list. When the number in 2013 was around 4,200, last year also over 4,215 women were banished from their homes as their parents had filed missing reports with the State police. What looks worrying is only a handful of over 715 could be retrieved by the State police in 2015.
The State police seem to have a challenging task at hand when high social inequity is triggering the syndrome of ‘missing’ women like a contagious disease in the State. A caste wise analysis reveals that most ‘missing’ cases come from most backward castes, scheduled castes and tribal households. Moreover, such ‘missing’ reports filed are mostly from the region where unemployment rules the roost.
“Kerala, which has higher unemployment rate than Odisha, records almost equivalent missing women cases. The State police there have traced many of the missing women even from gulf countries - who were induced there for jobs,” observed a senior police official on Central deputation. He further explained that such cases grow like rapid fire in Odisha as the State is deeply saddled in the web of traffickers’ network in control of local goons. An early crackdown has to start in selective districts that bear the maximum load, he added.
Since workers from Odisha move to trafficking endemic States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telengana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for work, this is proving a force multiplier in women trafficking cases here, he observed and added that touts there not only elicit information about their prospective targets but also spread their tentacles to the local network here through them. As woman trafficking has emerged as a very lucrative business where the profit is high and, unlike smuggling, the risk is low, local networks here are growing by leaps and bounds.