Poverty & Income Inequality Remain Main Reasons for Sex Trafficking in Rural India

A major sex trade and human trafficking racket was exposed in India’s Rajasthan last month, where girls aged 8-18 were auctioned off by families on stamp papers to pay off debts. Some of these children were reportedly sent to metro cities and even foreign countries and subjected to physical abuse, torture, and sexual assault in slavery.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of similar stories in which minor girls have been either sold off by their families into sex slavery, or been kidnapped and trapped in the prostitution racket.

According to India's latest National Crime Records Bureau data report, a total of 2,189 cases of human trafficking were registered in 2021 across the country, in which some 6,533 victims were reported to have been trafficked, including 2,877 children and 3,656 adults.

Anti-trafficking activist and founder of the Impact and Dialogue Foundation, Pallabi Ghosh, who has been rescuing trafficked girls for the past 10 years, told Sputnik that the practice of families selling off their own children has become common in numerous villages.

In particular, Ghosh was referring to a shocking story from Lucknow in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, where an entire family was involved in prostitution: the eldest daughter of a family from a tribe, known as the Badiya tribe in Rajasthan, was allegedly forced to become a sex worker, while her father and brother were "pimps."

“In 2017, I [went on] a rescue operation in a village in Rajasthan where 95% of women of that village were [forced] into prostitution,” Ghosh shared, recalling one such mission.

In the past two-three years, however, many young girls have started moving out of their villages to study in metro cities and learn English, Ghosh noted.

Calling prostitution one of the oldest professions in the world and a billion-dollar industry at the same time, Ghosh explained that the main reasons for families to sell off their children, or for those who forcefully push non-family members into sex work, are poverty and an unequal distribution of wealth and income.

She said there is easy money in prostitution. Indian girls are a big target, as their families easily leave them and give them away in order to overcome the poverty crisis.

"Moreover, migration and natural calamities in the region are also the cause of human trafficking. 85% of the girls that I've rescued are from West Bengal state, which is a hot-spot for trafficking and top-ranked when it comes to poverty, natural calamity, migration,” Ghosh said.

Prostitution is Easy Money

During the pandemic, the human trafficking racket was going on in full swing, and now people with university degrees, like engineers, have become involved in it.

"I saw a lot of engineers involved in this organized racket of trafficking. When I asked them how come they were involved in trafficking, one of them said that he didn't even know it was trafficking...'I'm not in the exploitation of girls. I was just told by the people (traffickers) to talk to 10 girls and if anybody gets lured and trapped, you will be getting an amount of $120 (INR 10,000),” Ghosh said.

The engineer, who earns $1,206 (INR 100,000) per month, told Ghosh that their salary was cut to half during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to earn the other $603 (INR 50,000), they were looking for "other options."

How Criminals Lure Young Girls

The trafficking expert told Sputnik that in most cases, girls are lured through wrong numbers and are "honey-trapped" and later drugged.

“In villages, girls are very naïve. When somebody [with] a wrong number repeatedly calls them, and [becomes] their friend, he then tells her that he likes her and she falls into the trap. He convinces her to come and meet him. She consumes tea, which is drugged [and] makes her subconscious. They are in an awake state but not in control of themselves and incapable of doing anything,” Ghosh said.

Migrants Are an Easy Target

People often cross borders for the prospects of a better life and job opportunity -- but in a large number of instances, migrant girls become trapped in human trafficking and end up in a brothel.

Ghosh said that people from Bangladesh migrate to West Bengal due to the porous border: in the northeast part of the country, there are a lot of such porous borders with several countries, like Bhutan, Myanmar, as well as Bangladesh.

"There is no proper border check and no legal documentation for crossing borders. When they migrate from one country to another, there is a 100% chance that they might get trapped into sex work,” Ghosh said.

Some women also get trafficked to foreign countries due to communication barriers and end up in quite far-off places.

“They don’t know the language of the foreign country and can’t communicate with others and seek help. For instance, a lot of girls from West Bengal state are put into Delhi's red-light area in G.B. Road, or Mumbai as they don’t know [the] Hindi language,” Ghosh shared.

Many women are lured by fake job opportunities and better salaries to work abroad.

“I went to Bangladesh and got to know that people are taken from Bangladesh to European countries where people were paid in dollars. To rise above poverty and unemployment, people take up job offers. They leave South Asian countries and go to Dubai, Europe or America, or the UK and get trapped in a brothel,” Ghosh said.

Girls Get Groomed as 'Foreigners'

Girls from India's northeast states, especially Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, and others, are groomed as if they are sex workers from international countries like Malaysia, Japan, China, and such places, and are then sold at five times the rate.

For example, if traffickers try to sell a girl from Nagaland state for INR 50,000 ($610), the same girl can be sold for INR 500,000 ($6,101) by just saying that she is from Malaysia.

Then there is a huge demand for Oriental feature girls, as they have small eyes, straight hair, soft skin, and sleekness.

In the sex industry, there is massive demand for soft skin. Hence, you will find that a lot of the girls in the sex industry are from West Bengal, Nepal, some from Odisha, a few from Andhra Pradesh, as well as from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

What is Being Done to Tackle Child Prostitution?

From setting up anti-trafficking units in every state to having special police officers looking into trafficking cases, the Indian government is doing a lot to nip crime in the bud.

“We have the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA) model for traffic prevention and anti-trafficking bill 370. There are so many laws, compensations, and schemes that's been provided by the government. However, since it is an organized crime, every NGO, anti-trafficking organization, and district police cell are working in silos. We can only stop trafficking if all of us work together,” Ghosh said.

In India, private prostitution is not illegal, however, soliciting it, doing it publicly, and owning a brothel are illegal. The issue has caused a lot of debate in the country.

“An individual can do sex work. But an individual can’t live on the earnings of the body of another person," Ghosh underlined.

While some are in favor of the legalization of private prostitution, claiming it allows sex workers to live a dignified life and get certain rights, many remain strictly against it.

“I’m not [...] in favor of [making] sex work legal, because I can’t conduct raids in brothels and rescue minors. Moreover, minor girls can easily be projected as [adults], which is a big problem,” Ghosh said.

“People are kept like animals or how chickens stay in coops. It's horrible and inhuman. Some are kept in trunks, tunnels, and several other places you can’t even imagine,” Ghosh added.

Ghosh concludes that the first step to tackle the issue is advocacy at the ground level in every village and town, followed by keeping a track of those who have been rescued and properly rehabilitated so they don’t land in a brothel again.