DISGRACE: INDIANS IN CHAINS

The Global Slavery Index 2013 has revealed that about 14 million people are trapped in some form of slavery in India. A look at some of the lives scarred by that experience

Young girls sold into slavery, their salaries paid to their handlers; boys promised jobs in factories and pushed into low-paying or no-paying menial tasks; families indebted and then forced into bonded manual labour: This is the picture of modern slavery in India.

RAJ K RAJ/HTPreeti at a transitory rehabilitation centre. She was brought here after being rescued three months ago from her employer’s house in Delhi.

Krishna*, for instance, left his home in a UP village for a factory job in the city and ended up an unpaid domestic help in Gurgaon. He is 17. Preeti*, 18, was hired as a maid and forced to work from dawn to midnight in Delhi and made to sleep outside the house.

Last month, when Australia-based human rights group Walk Free released its Global Slavery Index 2013, the random incidents emerged as tabulated data. And the facts thrown up are shameful for the world in general, and for India in particular.

About 30 million people are enslaved worldwide — half of them are in India.

States such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar emerge as major culprits, with high levels of hereditary forms of debt bondage in rural areas, and of human trafficking.

In terms of the prevalence of slavery (as a proportion of the population), India ranks fourth, behind Mauritania, Haiti and Pakistan, in that order.

Modern slavery is defined as the denial of freedom and the exploitation of a person for profit or for sex, usually through violence, coercion or deception.

‘Slaves’ could be entire generations of families working in marble quarries or brick kilns to pay off debts, young girls brought from the north-eastern states to serve in brothels in big cities, or boys put to work in sweat shops.

A common response to the findings is the question ‘How can people be treated like slaves in this age?’. Yet, in Delhi alone, three recent instances of the torture of domestic help have left many fumbling for answers.

According to the Walk Free report, “Poverty and India’s caste system are significant contributing factors to its modern slavery problem”.

Despite being banned by the Supreme Court in 2006, child labour continues to be widespread due to weak enforcement. India has 12.26 million working children, aged 5-14, according to the 2001 Census, with the majority of those children coming from Uttar Pradesh.

Child marriage and forced marriage are another grave form of exploitation, one that is prevalent in Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes’ (UNODC) 2013 India Assessment Report. “With skewed sex ratios, it is impossible to find a bride for each man and ‘importing a bride’ has become the only solution,” said the UNODC report. Punjab (893 females per 1,000 males) and Haryana (877 females per 1,000 males) have the lowest sex ratios in the country.

Ruchira Gupta, president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an NGO that fights sex trafficking, is not surprised by the findings. “South Asia is the epicentre of bonded labour and slavery. But the issue does not get attention because its victims are considered disposable,” she says. “Stricter laws are the need of the hour.”

* Some names have been changed to protect identities

GRIM REALITY

Modern slavery includes debt bondage, forced marriage, exploitation of children and human trafficking 72.14% of the world’s 29.8 million modern-day slaves are in Asia 3 mn sex workers exist in India, according to the UNDP Many of India’s enslaved have not been moved from one place to another. They are enslaved in their own villages.

Source:::: Hindustan Times (Mumbai), 10 Nov 2013, p. 07,  http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

‘India has 50% of world’s modern slaves’

Largest Proportion Of Victims Made Up Of Indians Exploited By Indians: Study

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

    Sixty-six years after independence, India has the dubious distinction of being home to half of the world’s modern day slaves. The first Global Slavery Index has estimated that 13.3 million to 14.7 million people — roughly equal to the population of Kolkata — live like slaves in the country. 
    The index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, ranked 162 countries based on three factors that include estimated prevalence of modern slavery, a measure of child marriage and a measure of human trafficking in and out of a country. Modern slavery includes slavery, practices such as debt bondage, forced marriage and sale or exploitation of children as well as human trafficking and forced labour. 
    According to the index, there are 29.6 million people in modern slavery globally. India leads the world, followed by China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh. 
    These 10 countries account for 76% of the world’s modern slaves. India ranks fourth in terms of modern-day slaves as a percentage of the population, just after Mauritania, Haiti and Pakistan. In Mauritania, 4% of people are regarded as slaves largely because they inherit the status from their ancestors. 
    The study says that in India there’s some exploitation of foreign nationals, but by far the largest proportion of slaves are Indians exploited by other Indians within the country, particularly through debt bondage and bonded labour. India is one of the few countries that has not ratified the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. 
    The country with the second highest number of enslaved is China, with an estimated 2.8 to 3.1 million in modern slavery. This includes forced labour in many parts of the economy, including domestic servitude and forced begging, commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, says the study. Pakistan is estimated to have 2 to 2.2 million in slavery. 
    Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom are tied with the lowest rankings in the index. These countries are not slavery-free, with the UK alone estimated to have 4,200-4,600 such people. Iceland has the lowest numbers — less than 100. While Asia and Africa are home to the vast majority of modern slaves, no continent is free from modern slavery. 
    “It would be comforting to think that slavery is a relic of history, but it remains a scar on humanity on every continent. This is the first slavery index but it can already shape national and global efforts to root out modern slavery across the world,” said Nick Grono, CEO of Walk Free Foundation. 
    The index was created in consultation with an international panel of experts and has been endorsed by former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former British prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, former Australian PM Julia Gillard, and philanthropists Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson and Mo Ibrahim. WFF was founded by Andrew Forrest, the chairman of Fortescue Metals Group, and his wife Nicola in May this year.

Source:::: The Times of India, 18-10-2013, .p.15,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/18&PageLabel=16&EntityId=Ar01501&ViewMode=HTML 

Internal migrants make up 1/3rd of India’s population

50% Of Global Figure, Twice That Of China

TIMES INSIGHT GROUP 

    Internal migrants in India are expected to touch 400 million in the 2011 census, over half the global figure of 740 million and almost twice as much as China’s estimated 221 million. These migrants, comprising a third of the population in India, are estimated to account for remittances anywhere between Rs70,000 crore and Rs120,000 crore. 
    The estimate of 400 million internal migrants, of course, far exceeds the total estimated Indian migrants to other countries, which is estimated at just 11.4 million. While there is more attention and policies for emigrants, internal migrants are accorded very low priority by the government whose existing policies have failed to provide legal or social protection to them. 

‘Half of world’s 30 million slaves in India’ Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide—trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labour, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude—and India accounts for almost half of them, a global index on modern slavery showed on Thursday. In India, slavery takes the form of forced labour in quarries and kilns, besides trafficking for prostitution. After India, China has the most slaves, at 2.9 million. 

‘80% of all migrants in India are women’ 
    The UNESCO report —“Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India” — was released by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on Thursday. 
    According toNSSO2007-08 women constitute 80% of total internal migrants. “There isn’t enough data on women migrant labour because of the assumption that most women migrate because of marriage. This assumption blocks further analysis of the women migrants engaged in paid labour and an understanding of how their vulnerabilities are being compounded by contemporary economic practices and not just because of historicalor culturalbaggage.Thisleads to the “invisibilisation” and undermining of women in policies too,” said Indu Agnihotri of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies. 
    The report estimated that about 30% of the migrants are youth aged 15-29 years and another 15 million are children. The intensity of migration is likely to increase in future. 
    Internal migrants constitute a floating population, which is put at anywhere at 15-100 million by different estimates. These migrants often lose social protection benefits as most benefits are linked to the place of residence, pointed out the report. 
    The report says internal migrants faced discrimination as ‘outsiders’, which excluded them from access to legal rights, public services and social protection programmes accorded to residents. This is despite the migrants providing cheap labour and typically doing the mostdirty,dangerous and degrading jobs that locals do not want to do. Far from being a burden on society, migrants’ cheap labour contributes to the national GDP, stated the report. 
    Jairam Ramesh, who provided the estimates of remittances, pointed out that migrants constitute a significant share of a state’s gross domestic product, about 10% in the case of Bihar and 3-4% in the case of Uttar Pradesh. “Portability of legal entitlements could make a huge difference to the lives of internal migrants. The UID number could be the single most important intervention which could ensure portability of legal entitlements as well as financial inclusion. Legal entitlements should not be location specific,only individualor household specific and UID number could make this possible,” said Ramesh. 
    Financial inclusion, he said, was important also because barely 30% of the remittances currently flow throughformalchannels,the remaining 70% being dependent on informal channels.

Source:::: The Times of India, 18-10-2013, .p.01,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/18&PageLabel=3&EntityId=Ar00302&ViewMode=HTML