Child trafficking is a growing problem in India
The rescue of 19 children from Guwahati Railway Station earlier this week highlights the growing problem of child trafficking not just in Assam but across the country. Earlier in the month, three minor girls from Jharkhand were rescued from Chhattisgarh en route to Delhi, around the same time that 300 children were rescued from bangle-making units in Hyderabad. Most of children saved were from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam.
That all these States are poor, and in some cases, such as Assam and other North-Eastern States which also have high rates of child trafficking, conflict-torn as well, is no coincidence. Poverty, insurgencies, political instability, social backwardness and even climate change (think of how tsunamis wipe out entire communities, displacing thousands of families), individually and collectively, create a vicious cycle that renders children particularly vulnerable.
These factors prepare the ground for child trafficking, with parents and family members willingly giving away children for a few thousand rupees. Sometimes, they are aware of wrong-doing; in other cases, they genuinely believe that the children are being taken away for a better future.
Touts and middle-men, usually working within well-organised rackets, promise poor families that the children will be educated or given jobs in the big city — the parents usually give in on the assumption that life anywhere else holds more potential for the child than back in the village.
Once trafficked, the children can end up just about anywhere in the country and even abroad. For example, many trafficked girls are forcibly married off to older men in States like Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan — where decades of unchecked female foeticide and infanticide has skewed the sex ratio to such an extent that there are entire villages without young women. In other cases, the girls are pushed into the sex trade or sold off as domestic helps.
The boys don't have it any easier either — they are equally vulnerable to physical abuse and usually used as slave labour. From hazardous industries and construction sites to the roadside dhaba, not to mention drug-running rackets and organised crime, they are ‘employed' across the spectrum. |rrespective of where the trafficked children end up, they all share a few things in common: They are all abused, violated and exploited without mercy.
Even if they manage to escape at some stage, they are usually damaged for life. In the short term, the solution lies in effective law enforcement and more support for trafficked children. However, as long as there is ample demand for and adequate supply of such children, the problem will continue. To eradicate child trafficking, systemic changes are necessary.