Month: January 2019

Mumbai traffic is legendary. It gives a new meaning to the adage, “The journey itself is the destination”. You could be stuck for hours between traffic signals. The city dwellers use this time to catch up on their emails and make phone calls to friends. As a visitor, I enjoy soaking in the sights and sounds of the different areas I drive by. Mumbai is a study in contradictions—huge skyscrapers jostle for space alongside crumbling shanties and plush neighborhoods morph seamlessly into crowded tenements. The roads are packed with luxury cars but look through the tinted windows and you’ll glimpse the underbelly of the city. Each traffic signal has its own ecosystem of children selling newspapers and toys, and handicapped beggars trading blessings of prosperity for some money to feed themselves. As the sun sets, you might find young girls standing in dark corners of seedy neighborhoods, conspicuous by their garish outfits and vacuous eyes. These are the dehumanized victims of human trafficking.

 

India is one of the fastest growing economies, with a burgeoning middle class. It’s also a global hub of modern-day slavery. The country is a source, destination, and transit point for people who are trafficked for forced labor, illegal organ harvesting, and sexual exploitation. The victims belong to the most disenfranchised sections of society—tribals, lower caste communities, migrants, minorities, and the poor. Entire families could be working as bonded laborers for generations to pay off a debt. Children as young as eight years old are made to work in factories, on construction sites, and as domestic help. Some are even maimed and made to beg or peddle drugs. Unregulated employment agents lure them into metros with false promises of well-paying jobs, only to push them into a life of servitude.

Hidden behind India’s story of growth are statistics that are a cause for concern. There are around three million prostitutes in the country, out of which 40% are children, according to the Guardian. The city of Mumbai alone generates 400 million USD annually from the commercial sexual exploitation of women. Girls from Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe are also caught in this vicious web. Lured away from their poor families with promises of finding a good job or a good match, many of them are trafficked to India and the Middle East as domestic or sex workers. Their passports are taken away from them and going back home is impossible. India has also emerged as a favored travel destination for foreigners who indulge in child pornography and pedophilia, giving a boost to traffickers, especially in tourist-friendly destinations like Goa. Even though the government has strong anti-trafficking laws in place, their implementation leaves much to be desired.

 

In 2018, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) conducted an audit of 110 shelter homes across 35 districts in the Indian state of Bihar. The report details widespread physical and sexual harassment, corporal punishment, neglect, and humiliation by both privately run and government funded homes. In a shelter home in Muzaffarpur, all the girls had been sexually abused by the male staff and even trafficked to influential people, including local politicians and policemen. Underage girls were found to be pregnant and some even had their babies living with them. Many young boys had also been violated.

 

A counterbalance to these grim stories are NGOs that are doing commendable work for the prevention, upliftment, and rehabilitation of human trafficking survivors. International Justice Mission (IJM) is an organization that is at the forefront of the fight, and they have a strong presence in India with multiple branches. After speaking to Ms. Joanita Britto, an advocate working with IJM Mumbai, I learned about the organization’s successful five-pronged approach:

 

Social workers rescue victims through close collaboration with local police officers and the Anti Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU).  Since the year 2000, they have successfully rescued over 940 victims of commercial sex trafficking.

 

Counselors form a rehabilitation and social reintegration plan for each victim and continue to work with them for four years. They partner with several aftercare homes in India to ensure that survivors have a safe place to live, and provide ongoing trauma therapy and vocational and educational support. Their advocates provide legal representation to victims and facilitate the convictions of traffickers by working with the police and public prosecutors.

 

Across India, since 2012, IJM has trained more than 64,000 police officers, judges, government officials, and other people in the anti-trafficking space. IJM has also been appointed to assess government programs related to commercial sexual exploitation.

IJM assists and trains community members to be vigilant in identifying instances of trafficking. Community members are also encouraged to participate in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. IJM partners with grass-root NGOs and community based organizations to empower vulnerable community members through awareness programmes on trafficking and the legal recourse that is available to them.

 

A particular case that stood out was that of a minor girl who was trafficked from Bangladesh to Mumbai’s red light district. The team at IJM Mumbai not only helped the government rescue her and reunite her with her family, but they continued to fight for justice on her behalf. After persevering for three years, they helped convict the girl’s two traffickers to a rigorous imprisonment and a hefty fine, a major portion of which was sent for her rehabilitation. In Ms. Britto’s own words, “The police additionally requested the assistance of Rights Jessore, an anti-trafficking organization in Bangladesh to make arrangements for the victim to testify. On June 6, 2015, the minor victim deposed before the court through video conference. She identified and implicated the accused in the case as her traffickers. This testimony along with the witness testimonies were relied on as evidence against the accused. It was a good example of how the Public Justice System can work together with NGOs to bring justice to victims of sex trafficking”.

 

While I’ve focused on trafficking in India, it remains a global endemic that needs to be tackled aggressively. We need strict laws and even stricter implementation. We need better coordination between law enforcement agencies across different states and different countries. Cases related to trafficking and abuse should be tried in fast-track courts. On a more fundamental level, we need to use education and public service campaigns as tools to sensitize people to issues related to human rights, gender, and children. The objectification of women in mainstream media needs to stop, and there should be tighter controls in the area of cyber security. While most of us cannot be on the field rescuing and rehabilitating victims, we can definitely contribute in a small way to organizations working for this cause. It’s time we put an end to modern day slavery.

 

Article by Nidhi Bhatt

Nidhi Bhatt is currently a senior at Millburn High School. She is an avid reader, enjoys writing, swimming and playing the piano. Fluent in French, Hindi and Gujarati, she loves exploring history, food, and culture through travel, books, and chance encounters with people.  Nidhi is actively involved in community outreach and hopes to study Political Science, French, and Statistics in college.

 

By Shruti Sriram

 

Growing up in the capital of India, New Delhi, I was acutely aware of the gender ‘norms’ that existed in my country, especially in the northern part of India. Women had to wear ‘appropriate’ clothes in public so as to not attract lewd comments and attention from the opposite sex, there was little point in educating a girl as she was ‘paraya dhan’ – akin to wealth that would not stay within the family as she would get married, men were the breadwinners whereas the women had to take care of the household.

 

This understanding of the phenomenon that is patriarchy isn’t novel, nor are the instances put forth. It is unsurprising that such tenets form the basis of our cultural dogmas and are as common and widespread as our belief in the existence of an ideological deity. Having said that, what is indeed surprising and unanticipated is, the ubiquity and extent to which such constructs are reinforced in every aspect of life in India’s villages.

 

Working with government primary schools in rural Rajasthan, northern India, I started to notice patriarchy and gender inequality in every aspect of village life. I saw veiled women and young school-age girls busy with household chores while men and teenage boys ambled about or played cards. Arriving at the government school, I observed that the girls and boys sat in separate rows with absolutely no interaction. The girls lacked confidence and refused to speak up while the boys dominated the discussions. In the higher grades, I noticed that some of the young girls were wearing bangles, sindoor(vermillion) on their forehead and toe rings – all markers of married women. These girls at the tender age of 13 and 14 were victims of child marriage.

As I frequented the villages, I realized the intent of all the actions -women were to have no agency of their own and all decisions were to be dictated by the men of the household. This was evident from the diktat for women.Married women were always veiled in front of family elders, they were not allowed to speak in front of men. They were to always sit on a level lower than them and were not allowed to leave the village on their own. More often than not they were made to drop out of school after the 8thgrade to get married.

Unfortunately, young impressionable minds grow up observing and learning these norms and unquestioningly adopt them. I remember an incident where 6-year-old school girls refused to hold the hands of boys, as a part of an activity, as they had been instructed against it by their parents. It seemed bizarre that these children, who had no idea of gender or sex, were taught that touching a person of the opposite sex was wrong. On relaying this incident to teachers, they told me to refrain from conducting such activities as it would only enrage parents. Unfortunately, government school teachers don’t have the time, ability or will to break these norms and encourage critical thinking. They would rather respect the wishes of the community and be silent spectators to patriarchy than create a storm in trying to change gender norms, which may put their jobs in peril.

While there is no doubt that education is an essential medium through which such norms can be uprooted, there is also a need to increase awareness among the communities to support such an education. Community members believe patriarchy to be a part of their culture, which ‘western’ minds, such as mine, were trying to corrode. Unfortunately, it’s not just the men who hold this belief, it’s the women as well. As a part of my project, I worked on a construction site in order to understand the difficulties that labourers face in villages. At the end of just 2 hours, I had received calls from every important person in the community to not ‘disrespect’ the norms of the village by performing such an ‘unwomanly’ task. Oddly enough, the people who reprimanded me for my actions were women while the labourers at the construction site treated me as their equal.

 

While I came face-to-face with such extreme inequality, there were bright spots too. I stayed with Sunitaji who educated her 3 daughters against all odds and started her own sewing businesses. I also interacted with Khan sahab, who had ensured that his 2 daughters obtained their master’s degree against the wishes of his family. These stories make me believe that the village mindset will change but such examples alone will not be enough. Providing children the space to question societal norms is, without doubt, imperative to uproot gender inequality and I believe that quality education in government schools is going to be the game-changer.

 

 

About the Author:

Shruti Sriram is a first year MPA student at SIPA, Columbia University. Prior to joining, she was a Gandhi Fellow in Churu, Rajasthan (India) where she worked with upper primary government schools to improve student learning outcomes. Her experience with the education bureaucracy led to her interest in policy and public administration. She is interested in exploring how behavioral insights can inform development interventions, particularly on how it can be used in the area of bureaucratic reform.