8 Mar 2009, 0209 hrs IST, Himanshi Dhawan, TNN

This may hardly be the time to ‘celebrate’ International Women’s Day. Just recently, women were beaten for sitting in a pub; one was forced to  strip naked for an FIR to be lodged against her husband, and socio-economic indices overall for Indian women continue to be lower than in the developed world.

Studies show that a woman is raped every 35 minutes in India; female child mortality is higher than male by 25%-50% in India 

, Bangladesh and Nepal; about 60% of women all over the world have complained about sexual harassment and that the average South Asian woman’s risk of dying in childbirth is a hundred times greater than for a woman in an industrialised country (1 in 43 for South Asia and 1 in 4,000 for the developed world).
India may have made some positive gains when it comes to infant mortality but the maternal mortality ratio is rising, as is discrimination and violence against women.
Experts say that things cannot change much unless women are empowered. Socio-economic independence is one way to do this, as well as allowing women to participate in governance.
Anne F Stenhammer, UNIFEM regional programme director, says,”There is lack of coordination and understanding in the government. Issues like trafficking and prostitution are a global challenge and require global legislation to tackle the problem. Political leadership needs to connect better as trafficking is also linked to crime, drugs and health (HIV/AIDS).”
One of the biggest reasons that little or nothing seems to change for the better for Indian women is the lack of strong and good law. Legislation is still awaited on anti-trafficking, the indecent representation of women, sexual harassment at theworkplace and the compulsory registration of marriages.
They have been on the anvil for several years but are yet to go on the statute book. “Strengthening of legislations are an ongoing process but my biggest regret is the fact that we could not bring the Bill for 33% reservation of women in Parliament,” women and child development minister Renuka Choudhary said.

It may be relevant to point out that though women’s representation at the panchayat level is high, representation in Parliament has barely improved from 4.4% at Independence to about 9% today.
Civil society activists suggest that bringing in legislation is inadequate if not backed by sufficient resources. “We need to train protection officers and sensitise police officers to be able to handle cases related to crimes against women,” says Rishi kant, whose NGO Shakti Vahini works with trafficked women.
He adds that there is no political will to act on issues related to discrimination and violence against women.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Sunday-TOI/India-has-little-to-celebrate-on-Womens-Day/articleshow/4240147.cms

28 Feb 2009, 0114 hrs IST, Abantika Ghosh, TNN

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee on Friday sought Haryana government’s clarification on the fact that it was holding an auction for the mines of Khori Jamalpur and Sirohi when the apex court had asked for status quo to be maintained. The committee was forwarding a complaint it had received from an NGO citing the SC order and appealing to the district administration to deploy a special team for ensuring that the court order is complied with.
On February 13, the Supreme Court had in a brief order said: “List the Aravali Hills and Haryana Mining matters on board today on 18.3.2009 and 19.3.2009 (whole day) and 20.03.2009 at 2 pm (if necessary). Status quo as on today shall be maintained till then.”
Just four days later, on February 17, the state government issued the auction notice for 109.77 hectares of land at Khori Jamalpur and Sirohi where, according to official estimates, about 2 lakh metric tonnes of stones is likely to be mined over the next two years.
CEC sources said, following the letter by NGO Shakti Vahini, the government has been asked how it can hold the auction when it would violate the SC order.

While Haryana’s director (mining and geology), Arun Kumar, was not available for comment, senior officials of the department denied receiving any communication from the CEC.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, an official said: “The Khori and Sirohi mines are not part of the Haryana mining matters in the court. This relates to the other mines in the area which have already been closed down. But Khori and Sirohi mines were functioning by the orders of the Supreme Court and therefore there is no problem with the auction. At least that is what the state counsel has told us. That is why we are doing the auction.” On being told that Khori and Sirohi were not functioning when the order was given, he said that did not matter.

Legal experts, however, point out that the government may be treading on dangerous ground. “It’s very simple. The mining lease got over on February 5 and they stopped functioning. So on February 13, when the order was passed, they were closed and as per the `status quo’ order, they have to stay closed,” a senior lawyer

said.
Sources point out that in the event of the auction happening on March 3 and the lease being awarded, the Haryana government could even be charged with contempt of court. But till the awarding actually happens, the state is “theoretically safe as it may argue that is only holding an auction and had no intention of awarding the contract before the court hearing”. Interestingly, the auction process is for awarding a mining contract till March 31, 2011, though state mining officials admit that Sirohi is unlikely to be able to take mining for more than “three months at the most”.
Meanwhile, Haryana’s conservator of forests (south circle), R P Balwan, was transferred on Friday. Balwan was a member of the committee formed under the chairmanship of the DG Forest Survey of India which, under the aegis of the CEC, is preparing maps of the Aravali.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/SC-panel-asks-Haryana-to-clarify-mining-auction-issue/articleshow/4203130.cms

Gurgaon Gurgaon forest conservator Balwan was transferred to ‘headquarters’, without posting, on Friday

Less than 24 hours after he was transferred out, Conservator of Forests (south circle), Gurgaon, R P Balwan was reinstated on Saturday morning. The transfer order was revoked by Saturday morning - Balwan got a fax of the order maintaining status quo, signed by Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary (forests department) P K Gupta, around 11.30 am.

Newsline had reported Friday evening’s sudden transfer order, brought in bypassing Haryana’s environment and forest minister Kiran Chaudhary. Balwan is in the thick of action at present as the issue of illegal mining on the foothills of Aravallis rages on, with several waterbodies in Faridabad and Gurgaon districts already sucked dry or on their way to extinction.

As per Friday evening’s transfer order from the office of Principal Secretary to the Haryana Chief Minister M L Tayal, Balwan was transferred to the “headquarters”, in Chandigarh, though without any immediate posting. According to the order (Newsline has a copy), Indian Forest Service officer M M Joshi was to take charge from Balwan.

Having backed Balwan on Friday, Haryana environment and forest minister Kiran Chaudhary today said this is the third time he was transferred out. “His transfer order was issued twice in the past three years,” she said, “and I refused to transfer him on each occasion. So this time I was not consulted (before the order was issued).”

She added that the Aravallis are an ecologically fragile zone and the damage done to these areas by illegal mining will be “irreparable”. The Supreme Court had on September 9, 2008 ordered the Conservator of Forests to prepare maps of Aravallis in Haryana, and Balwan is part of the panel constituted by a special committee of the apex court. He is tasked with mapping violation in forest areas of the affected districts among other tasks. Having submitted its report on Faridabad district on January 15, the committee is now preparing the maps and report on Gurgaon, to be submitted on March 15.

Balwan, who retires in 2018, had earlier applied for voluntary retirement from May 30. He had told Newsline on Friday, “I was not due for any transfer, because as per rules an official cannot be transferred in the last two years of his service.” On Saturday, he said, “Different fronts - starting from developers to government officials - are putting pressure to derail me from the task I have been assigned.”

Balwan had earlier registered an FIR at Sadar police station in Gurgaon on September 17, 2007 when workers of Lakshmi Stone Crushing Company allegedly attacked him and his driver during an inquiry into illegal mining in the district.

Ravikant, an advocate with the NGO Shakti Vahini that works in the region, said, “Friday’s transfer order clearly brings out the government’s malafide intentions.”

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/conservator-stays-as-haryana-revokes-transfer-order-in-24-hrs/429367/

21 Feb 2009, 0414 hrs IST,

Abantika Ghosh & Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN

NEW DELHI: Disregarding the fact that the Punjab and Haryana High Court is yet to determine whether the mining lease of Sirohi and Khori Jamalpur

in Faridabad district should be extended or not, the Haryana government is going ahead with their auction for two more years.
Accordingly, the Haryana department of mines and geology issued auction notice on February 17 - eight days before the issue is taken up by the HC on February 25. This seemingly brazen move would indicate a presumption of the court decision as well as the officials’ determination to carry on with mining which, according to experts, is wrecking the ecosystem of the Aravalis.
It’s not known whether Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda has acquiesced in the auction move or not, although certain reports in local papers claim that he has. Speaking to TOI on Friday about the dried up lakes in Faridabad, Hooda said he was worried about the adverse affects of mining.
A number of expert teams, including a Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC), have recommended that the entire Faridabad district should be declared a prohibited zone for mining. They have specifically asked for discontinuing mining in Sirohi and Khori Jamalpur as reckless extraction there has made the area virtually impossible to salvage.
According to the notice issued by the mining department, the auction would take place on March 3. Already the current lease holder Som Sethi has claimed that mining would begin next month at these two mines. According to local activists, his men are claiming that “money can buy anyone” and no one can stop mining from resuming.
The notice for “extraction of stones” in these two mining areas has reduced the total area for mining from 267 hectares to about 110 hectares. This is despite senior mining officials admitting that in some places - in fact in “almost all of Sirohi” mining has already reached the sea level, the maximum permissible depth.

Apart from the HC, the Supreme Court too is taking up the Aravali mining case in the second half of March. Asked what the hurry was for issuing the auction notice, M P Sharma, mining engineer said: “There is no stay of the court in this.” This is contrary to the court’s order for a status-quo after the expiry of lease on these two mines.
The base price for Khori has been fixed as Rs 109.68 crore and that for Sirohi is Rs 8.96 crore. Asked how Sirohi, when it has already touched sea level could take another two years of mining Sharma said: “We don’t expect Sirohi to last more than three months.” It’s another matter, the CEC has observed that these mines were already “over-exploited”.
Director of mines and geology Arun Kumar, who has issued the auction notice admitted to TOI over phone from Chandigarh, “In the past, the mining has happened below the ground level. But now we are allowing the quarrying in only those areas where there is more stone to be extracted from above ground level.” According to official estimates, over 2 lakh metric tonnes of stones would be taken out in next two years “subject to court directions”.
The extent of exploitation in the twin mines has been underlined time and again. On June 23, 2006, a committee comprising Bhure lal, Valmik Thapar and A K Biswas visited the mines and submitted a report with 10 pictures of the devastation. TOI has accessed that report that unambiguously recommended stopping all mining activity since it was “not being carried out in a scientific manner” and “reclamation of the area from environmental degradation is a very difficult task.”
The report had recommended that an impartial natural expert should evaluate the impact and should be asked to create a scientific plan. Till such time it is done, “court should consider to stop all mining activity”. The committee had reported that the “contours and elevation of the Aravali had almost disappeared” as the “excavation was done in a merciless manner” which resulted in “overexploitation of the mining site”.
It also charges the state government officials and the local monitoring committee of portraying a “rosy picture” that has “no relation with the ground realities”. According to the report, in 2001 when the lease was given, 6 lakh ton mineral was removed; in 2006 the figure stood at 55 lakh.
CPCB too had submitted a report listing disturbance of air quality, land degradation, depletion of ground water due to alteration of drainage pattern, road degradation and noise and vibration problem as some of the major concerns in the area.
“State government is playing to the hands of only powerful few and to benefit them ignoring large interest of locals and twin cities of Faridabad and Gurgaon. We are moving an application in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to stay this auction,” said Ravi Kant of Shakti Vahini, an NGO.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Haryana_sets_auction_dates_for_mining_in_Aravalis/articleshow/4164135.cms

24 Feb 2009, 0507 hrs IST, Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN

NEW DELHI: The Haryana government may have announced it will revive the Badkhal and Surajkund lakes in time for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, but  the fact remains that it neglected the two prominent water bodies for well over two decades.

Way back in 1985, lawyer

and activist M C Mehta’s PIL against mining and stone crushing in the region had underlined the fact that the lakes were drying up. Mehta, along with other organizations connected with protecting the Aravalis, now say had the government taken necessary steps then and complied with later Supreme Court directives, the water bodies could have been saved.
According to Mehta, “mining, construction, political and bureaucratic nexus” had killed the two water bodies and Damdama would soon meet a similar fate. Incidentally, when Mehta’s PIL to save the water bodies was being heard in 1995, Haryana Tourism was operating motor boats on Badkhal lake. A 2004 Supreme Court judgment clearly states that it had directed the Haryana Pollution Control Board (HPCB) to “inspect and ascertain the impact of mining operation on Badkhal Lake and Surajkund”.
Next year, NEERI was directed to prepare a report on whether mining operations in the said area should be stopped in the interest of environmental protection, pollution control and “tourism development”. On consideration of the reports, the apex court had concluded that mining activities in the vicinity of tourist resorts were bound to have serious impact on the local ecology.
“Mining alters the natural land profile of the area. Mine pits and unattended dumps are the irreversible consequences of mining operations. Rock blasting, movement of heavy vehicles, movement and operation of mining equipment and machinery cause considerable pollution in the shape of noise and vibration,” the apex court had said.
Mehta said rampant mining in Faridabad had done greater damage to the lakes and hence it was necessary to take corrective steps. “Badkhal and Surajkund lakes are not just tourist spots. These are our cultural symbols and are of mythological importance. Once mining and stone crushing were stopped, construction activity around the lakes started, which also contributed to the drying up of water bodies. The government should have taken measures as soon as indications of the falling water level of the lakes was brought to its notice,” Mehta added.
Ravi Kant of Shakti Vahini, an NGO which has joined movement against mining in Faridabad, said the government was only making claims of reviving the lakes even 24 years after concern about them drying up was raised in the apex court.
The supreme court had earlier directed the government to develop a 200 metre wide green belt along Surajkund and Badkhal. But the team found only shrubs and wild growth. There was no real evidence of good afforestation.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delhi/Lakes-neglected-for-2-decades/articleshow/4179309.cms

7 Feb 2009, 0332 hrs IST, Himanshi Dhawan, TNN

NEW DELHI: A question mark hangs over the fate of National Commission for Women (NCW) member Nirmala Venkatesh after the commission rejected her report on the Mangalore pub attack. Venkatesh, a former member of the Karnataka legislative council, stood by her report and remained adamant on not resigning from her position.

Venkatesh was issued a showcause notice by the women and child development (WCD) ministry on Thursday for dereliction of duty and acting against public interest. She is expected to reply to the notice by Monday.
It is reliably learnt that WCD minister Renuka Choudhary will weigh various options including dismissing Venkatesh. According to the NCW Act, a member can only be removed if she has acted against public interest. In such a case, acting on the WCD minister’s recommendation, the PM can ask for the member’s resignation.

According to sources, the ministry notice came after NCW chairperson Girija Vyas submitted a report on its member to the WCD ministry. Vyas, in her letter, has reportedly expressed dissatisfaction over Venkatesh’s conduct in Mangalore and her general conduct with the staff.
Vyas on Friday clarified that since the report was found “inadequate” on certain parameters, it would not be accepted by the commission and will instead be considered as an individual’s opinion. She said Venkatesh had not spoken to the victims and had involved herself in the pub’s licensing issues, a matter that was not part of the terms of reference of the inquiry. Vyas said, “The commission has always fought for women’s rights. We have found the member’s report lacking in certain aspects and so we have not accepted it.”
Venkatesh, who led a two-member team that inquired last week into the January 24 attack on girls and boys at a pub in Mangalore by a self-styled moral brigade of Hindu outfit Sri Ram Sene, had blamed the pub owners for the incident saying they had not provided enough security.
Apparently unhappy with Venkatesh’s comments, the WCD minister had dispatched another enquiry team while the ministry issued a showcause notice to the NCW member for not submitting her report on time.

A defiant Venkatesh stuck to her guns. When asked if she would resign after the adverse remarks from the NCW chairperson and WCD ministry, Venkatesh said, “Why should I resign? If there is a notice, I will explain my stand.”
Meanwhile, All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has condemned Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik’s threats against couples celebrating Valentine’s Day. “The fascist threats that are being issued (couples found going out together would be forced to tie the mangalsutra, women wearing particular type of clothes would be assaulted, and so on), are a gross violation of fundamental rights, and pose a grave threat to our democratic polity. The Karnataka state government must act immediately and make sure that the lives and rights of the citizens of our country are safeguarded,” Suhasini Ali, AIDWA president, said in a statement.
Choudhary’s remarks on organising a “pub bharo” andolan to defy the moral brigade has come under fire from NGOs. Rishi kant from Shakti Vahini said, “As a man working for women’s rights, I am deeply offended by the union minister’s attempt to trivialise a serious issue. The solution for women being beaten up in full public gaze is not to rush to pubs. This will turn more men against the women’s cause.”

Spl correspondent

ASSAM TRIBUNE NOVEMBER 8, 2008

http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/details.asp?id=nov0908/at06

NEW DELHI, Nov 8 - A couple hailing from Assam has been detained by Haryana Police for allegedly torturing their minor maid, following a complaint lodged by National Commission for Women and a NGO, Shakti Vahini. When the NCW team led by its member Manju Hembrom accompanied by the NGO and local Police raided the Sector 56 house of Debok Das, they were shocked to discover that the 13-year-old girl had been often subjected to scalding with hot tawa and her mouth smashed against the wall. They landed at the couples’ flat following a tip off by a neighbour.

Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini, who was part of the raiding team, told this newspaper that the girl’s body bore marks of severe torture by the couple, who hail from Guwahati. The girl has been sent to Rescue Home and the couple’s arrested by Haryana Police on the basis of the complaint by NCW, he added.

They have been charged under Juvenile Justice Act, Bonded Labour Abolition Act and various provisions of the Indian Penal Code.

Das and his wife Paramita are a working couple, while the husband works for a reputed BPO company, based in Gurgaon, the wife is working for a biological company. Both were mid-level management executives. The couple also has two children.

Ravi Kant said they were still trying to figure out the girl’s address. She told the Police that she hails from ‘No Man’s Land’ area in Karimganj district in Barak Valley. She has disclosed that she is actually a Bangladeshi national.

The girl was brought to Haryana some four-five months back by the couple’s maternal uncle, who is a resident of Assam.

Devesh K. Pandey

http://www.hindu.com/2005/06/20/stories/2005062017700300.htm

NEW DELHI: After the recent crackdown on human trafficking networks, minor girls who were being pushed into prostitution and dance bars across Maharashtra are now being trafficked to the Capital. They are being brought here to be forced into the flesh trade.

Studies have revealed that Latur has become one of the major sources for trafficking of girls. To investigate the trend, a team of the non-government organisation, Shakti Vahini, recently visited Latur. It was informed by the local administration that several girls from poor economic background were being sent to different parts of the State.

Investigations revealed that the trafficking agents used to take these girls first to Nagpur on board the Sachkhand Express, after which they were sent to different parts of Maharashtra. However, when the State Government began cracking down on dance bars and initiating action against trafficking agents, they began sending the girls to the Capital. During the study, Shakti Vahini managed to gather information on about 100 girls who are suspected to be in Delhi, probably in the clutches of pimps.

“Senior police officers of Latur gave us valuable inputs on trafficking of girls on which we are working. We have also formed an alliance with NGOs working in this area in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan,” said Rishikant of Shakti Vahini. He added that once the team returns to the Capital with the list of trafficked victims, the organisation would try to rescue them with the assistance of the local police.

With a spurt in human trafficking in the Capital, the police have also stepped up efforts to smash such gangs. In one case, the North-West Delhi arrested five people, including the woman who was running the network, and rescued four girls from a Rohini flat. Three of the girls were trafficked from Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam.

Monday, Jun 20, 2005

From Bengal, enslaved trio can’t recall address

Two of the children rescued from Delhi. Picture by Shakti Vahini

New Delhi, Nov. 20: Bruises on their bodies and trauma on their faces, the three children stare vacantly out of a dimly-lit room in a Faridabad police station. All from Bengal, they don’t remember their exact addresses, except that their village is somewhere in Midnapore.

Rescued on Saturday from the house of a local businessman, Sujata, 6, Santoshi, 8, and Sita, 12, will be shifted to Nari Niketan, a home for women and kids, in nearby Karnal.

“The medical report hasn’t come in yet, but there is no doubt that these children were subjected to inhuman behaviour,” Mahipal Singh, the officer investigating the case, said.

After being rescued from the businessman’s Indra- prastha Colony home in Faridabad by Shakti Vahini, an NGO, the children were handed over to the local police station.

While Sujata and Santoshi had apparently been kept in the house for “domestic work” for two years, Sita, the oldest among them, had been brought about a year back.

“These are the trafficked children from Bengal. The investigation must go beyond the National Capital Region, right up to Bengal, to ascertain how and by whom, these children were trafficked,” said Jagdip Rawat of Shakti Vahini.

The case not only exposes child labour and cruelty, but also involves bonded labour as these children were kept in illegal confinement and forced to work without wages, Rawat said.

In his statement to the police, the businessman claimed he brought the children from a placement agency for domestic help in Delhi. He said he initially paid their wages to the agency, which, he claimed, stopped contacting him later. He didn’t recall its name or address.

Equally unexplained are the bruises on the bodies of the kids.

In his statement, the businessman said the injuries were caused by infighting among them, but the wounds are far too serious to lend credence to his version. The medical report is expected to throw more light.

Meanwhile, Shakti Vahini has alleged that police are showing leniency to the businessman. “The accused has not yet been arrested. Even the sections that have been levelled against him relate only to the juvenile justice act and the IPC. The laws on prevention of child and bonded labour must also be used against him,” said Rawat.

By Michael Parker

http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2006/issue2/0206p14.htm

News Update received by email from the author.
On Monday, 21 August, Seelu (main character in story) was at New Delhi station and walked right into the very woman who had trafficked her. She immediately rang Shakti Vahini (an NGO active in anti-trafficking, HIV prevention and health outreach) and managed to keep the woman (Rukmani) distracted for an hour by feigning interest in buying girls herself, before Shakti Vahini arrived and an arrest was made. Shakti Vahini told me she handled the situation with great presence of mind. The incident was on that night’s TV news and in the next day’s newspapers.

http://www.hindu.com/2006/08/22/stories/2006082222330300.htm

The case against Rukmani and the brothel to which the girl was sold is very strong as Shakti Vahini has a lot of supporting evidence.
But the girl’s nayika (controller inside the brothel) has apparently since
died, so action will probably be taken against the brothel owner. But the big scoop is that a diary was found on Rukmani with details of all sorts of contacts in Delhi’s and Mumbai’s red light areas to whom she has allegedly confessed selling girls. Because the Indian Home Minister’s constituency includes the district in Maharastra where this woman operates, Shakti Vahini is now writing to urge him to launch a full scale investigation of all the girls that have disappeared from that area, on the strength of this find. So this chance encounter may come to have very big ramifications.

Beginning of original article

India’s looming HIV disaster terrifies the rest of the world, and its potential to outpace Africa as the world’s largest reservoir of the virus has brought out the big money to contain it. World Bank funds are flowing into HIV-prevention programmes. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $200 million to galvanize leadership at the institutional level and change behaviour among high-risk groups. The Clinton Foundation is assisting India’s National AIDS Control Organization to train large numbers of doctors in the basics of HIV medicine and broaden access to treatment.

And change is happening. Programmes to distribute free antiretroviral (ARV) drugs have been established and safe sex campaigns are gradually entrenching condom use in Delhi’s GB Road and Mumbai’s Kamatipura red-light districts-notorious epicentres of infection. But the spread of HIV is not merely a practical problem that enough condoms, drugs and doctors can bring under control. For underlying this epidemic is a phenomenon of greater magnitude and complexity which threatens to overwhelm the impact the Clinton and Gates Foundations’ combined expenditures might make. This is India’s vast, murky, semi-criminalized, semi-tolerated trafficking of girls from economically marginalized States into coerced marriages, forced labour and prostitution.

Trafficking is an issue that struggles for attention in India’s overburdened social policy arena. While HIV/AIDS funding is becoming something of a “cash cow” for better positioned agencies in the field, according to a Times of India article, trafficking is an area of under-resourcing and government inertia. Yet, to the extent that trafficking is a direct contributor to the pattern of infection, HIV-control strategies require a distinct set of policy measures targeting its underpinning organizational structures. Identifying those targets and how to act on them has relevance for curbing the link between HIV and trafficking, not just in India but elsewhere in the Asian region, particularly in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, where there are substantial movements of young women from circumstances of poverty into prostitution. How this transfer is effected may vary from country to country, but the mechanisms at work in India are far more widespread, recurring in neighbouring countries as well.

Take the case of Seelu, a girl in her early twenties who had been trafficked four years earlier to Delhi from Maharashtra. She had fallen ill with tuberculosis and was being monitored by Shakti Vahini, a non-governmental organization (NGO) active in anti-trafficking, HIV prevention and health outreach on GB Road. A seemingly unremarkable business precinct specializing in machine tools, pumps and presses, up to 3,000 prostitutes live in overwhelming monotony in this small area, with little hope of a future once they can no longer compete with younger recruits to the cycle of sexual super-exploitation and infection. The Delhi Government’s latest survey puts the HIV-infection rate on GB Road at 12 per cent, considered to be an underestimate by many.

The girls are highly controlled through fear. “They are told these NGO people who come to the brothels can’t be trusted, that if they go away with them they will just be sold again”, Shakti Vahini’s Director Ravi Kant explained the reluctance of trafficking victims to seek help. Outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion, the police, with outright apprehension. “They know the police take bribes from the brothel owners. They are told if they complain they will be taken to the thana police station and raped as punishment for making trouble.” Seelu was particularly well placed to doubt the police: her brothel owner had had a long-standing affair with a local police commander.

“Once the girls enter the brothels, they are sold several times over”, Ravi is talking about their udhar debt, which increases exponentially as ownership changes hands-it’s a contrived inflation. With little prospect of paying off, the girls are locked into years of servitude. To unravel the money nexus is to begin to comprehend the vested interests feeding off this system that block effective control of trafficking. After haggling down the starting price, a customer finds himself importuned over again for baksheesh, but the baksheesh is about all the girl will keep for herself. The rest of the money is entered into meticulously kept chits held against each girl’s name: half will go to the owner, who has accounts to settle with building owners and hafta to buy off police and other officials to disregard the illegalities of the trade; the other half goes to the nayika.

It took Shakti Vahini a long time to identify Shobha, Seelu’s nayika. Seelu kept her connection to Shobha well concealed for good reason: she was a figure of real power. A short, fat woman with gold jewellery and palpable air of command, fussed over by half a dozen girls, she took Seelu’s money, beat her and never allowed her unaccompanied outside the brothel. Shobha was the key to understanding what Seelu was up against. The nayika, a term equivalent to boss lady, occupies a role absolutely pivotal to the brothel system. Usually older ex-prostitutes, they have survived by saving money and gradually acquiring girls of their own. Several nayikas might rent space in one brothel; the organizational effect of this is akin to cell structures used in spy networks to isolate individual operatives and frustrate outside penetration. The girls are not only physically and psychologically cut off from the outside world, but they are also divided amongst themselves by the pressure of competition with girls working for other nayikas.

Nayikas are also instigators and the end point behind the flow of trafficked girls, employing their connections to bring girls from their home regions. Both Seelu and Shobha were from the same town in the border region between Maharastra and Andrah Pradesh, a major supply zone for trafficked girls. Nayikas pay the go-betweens, the dalaals who know where the vulnerable families are-whose crops have failed, whose breadwinner has died-and inveigle daughters away from gullible parents and arrange transport to Delhi. Little room for compassion exists in the relation of a nayika to the girls she controls. A veteran of a brutalizing system, she knows all their motives and evasions; her livelihood depends on working the girls relentlessly. It is a relationship that mocks calls to legalize prostitution in order to regularize their rights. Few of the attributes of a regular employment relationship can exist in this environment. As Seelu put it, “our lives are like of animals”.

“If a girl stops earning, she won’t last long in there.” Ravi heard of one girl, who after breaking a leg was simply dumped on the street until well enough to resume work. Asked if she felt any obligation for the costs of her tuberculosis treatment, Seelu was scathing: “Shobha paid that money only because I made money for her. Girls who get sick and are not making money are left in a back room to die.” This callousness is responsible for much of the HIV problem. “Meeri majboori”, Seelu answered flatly when asked about her inconsistent use of condoms-an expression that conveys compulsion, having no option and by which she meant that Shobha would not tolerate displeasing customers who wanted to dispense with them. And if their nayikas won’t educate them and back them up, where else are intimidated, barely literate young girls going to find the capacity to insist on safe sex with ignorant or uncaring customers?

Seelu had an even more compelling reason to obey Shobha. “A Nayika will work a girl for a few years when she is young and making a lot of money, then let her get pregnant and take the child and keep it. Once she has control of the child, the mother cannot run away.” Seelu’s two children were born before she was trafficked, in a young marriage that failed because her husband drank and beat her. Going against the tradition of arranged marriages had alienated her family, who were too poor anyway to be much support when her love-marriage foundered. So when Seelu was approached for a job as a domestic servant in Delhi, she had already fulfilled three of the disposing conditions for trafficking. “There are four main reasons girls get drawn into prostitution”, Ravi explained, “poverty, domestic violence, divorce and desire for easy money. Poverty is by far the biggest cause of vulnerability.” Within moments of arriving at New Delhi station, Seelu was driven straight to GB Road and her children taken from her. For a long time she held out, but alone in a vast impersonal city, speaking little Hindi, with no money and no way of finding her children, Seelu was utterly trapped.

The Government’s stance against trafficking is ineffectual and confused at the highest levels. The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA)-India’s principal legal response dating back to 1956-prohibits trafficking in persons, criminalizes sexual exploitation and enhances penalties for offences involving minors. Prosecutions of traffickers are rare, however. In the assessment of the United States State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, the administrative machinery to support ITPA languishes. Police simply do not utilize all the ITPA provisions, diminishing the penalties against traffickers and brothel owners.

Trafficking is inherently an interstate phenomenon, but efforts to investigate trafficking across State borders are encumbered by lack of coordination among States’ police departments. But where the subversion of government anti-trafficking measures particularly occurs is with the endemic complicity of lower-level law enforcement officials-the local police’s accommodations with dalaals, border guards facilitating the interstate movement of victims, and police officers tipping off nayikas to impending raids for underage girls.

Investigations by Shakti Vahini, the anti-trafficking NGO, into the disappearance of an underage Assamese girl trafficked to Haryana reveals why the local police steadfastly declined to take action against the dalaal despite evidence of at least 11 girls trafficked by her. Lured herself from Assam on a pretext of marriage to a rich Haryana landowner, but sold instead to a landless pauper, she had turned this dismal experience into a skill of sorts, enticing other poor girls from her home region. The acceptance of bride-buying in Haryana and the large numbers of men ready to pay for brides made her services as a dalaal an avenue to social acceptability and income. However, her customers complained she was blackmailing them with threats to expose underage marriages-money she insisted was being siphoned by the police threatening to arrest her. This dalaal was effectively an agent of rent-seeking behaviour by the police.

Shakti Vahini’s tactic was to work on Seelu’s awareness. “Sometimes girls rebel against their nayikas. Once they find out about their rights, they begin to realize they can fight back.” It was a confrontation with Shobha over seeing her children more often that pushed her over the edge. Seelu one day slipped away to one of GB Road’s ubiquitous phone stalls and called Ravi: “I have left that place.” It took Shakti Vahini another month to track down her children through their contacts. Girls like Seelu enter the world of trafficking through an act of casual deceit and, because of their social marginality and tenuous formal identification, exist in a zone of structural invisibility to the authorities, an indifference compounded by lax law enforcement that permits the trafficking market to flourish.

Constraining the market makers is essential to limit HIV propagating through the pathways of the human trafficking trade. What Seelu’s story illustrates is the urgency for incisive action aimed specifically at breaking the nayika system in the brothels, the nexus between nayikas and dalaals, and the complicity of local authorities. This needs to be made the focus of intervention right across the Asian region wherever naïve girls like Seelu take that fateful first step.

Postscript: Had Seelu not called Ravi, she would probably now be dead. Seelu was subsequently diagnosed as HIV-positive. Her tuberculosis-the biggest killer of HIV-positive people in India-was resurgent because of the drug-resistant strains and insalubrious living conditions on GB Road. She is receiving free ARV drugs through the Delhi State AIDS Control programme and TB treatment through NGO Shakti Vahini, where Seelu is being trained to work on its sex worker outreach programmes as an HIV-role model and educator.

Biography

Michael Parker is a policy analyst working in labour welfare regulation in Australia. With a background in applied economics and anthropology, he has had a long-standing interest in issues of development and social change in India and is researching Australia’s increasing business expansion there.

The Times of India

22 June, 2006

NEW DELHI: India has become a key destination and transit hub for human trafficking from East Europe and other places, says a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sponsored study released on Thursday.

Delhi and Mumbai are the favourite destinations for human trafficking from various regions, says the study conducted by NGO Shakti Vahini as part of its project on prevention of Trafficking, HIV and AIDS (TAHA) in women and girls. The NGO works under UNDP India.
“Trafficking occurs from Egypt, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Russia and several other Eastern European countries,” said the TAHA study. Lots of women are brought from these places to India from where they are trafficked to other places, it said.

Shakti Vahini director Ravi Kant painted a gloomy picture of human trafficking in the country.

The study said 72 per cent of human trafficking is for commercial sex, 80.26 per cent of trafficking of women takes place in Bihar - most of it happening during migration for labour - and 12.36 per cent of the total trafficking is due to family traditions.

“Madhya Pradesh is prominent among the states where women get into sex work and thus get trafficked because of family traditions. Ninety five per cent of the women in Madhya Pradesh in commercial sex are due to family traditions. So are 51.79 per cent in Bihar,” said the study.
“Although Mumbai and Goa are the favourite destinations for paedophilic activity, where children are trafficked, tourist destinations in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Orissa are also not far behind,” Kant said.

Out of the 593 districts in India, 378 or 62.5 per cent are affected by human trafficking. The study found that domestic violence, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, unsafe migration and child marriage are the major reasons for the increasing rate of illegal human trafficking.

While 43 per cent of the total women trafficked are minors, 44 per cent of the women are into flesh trade due to poverty.
Interestingly, in Kerala, which claims the highest rate of literacy and has a matriarchal tradition, violence is often used to push women into flesh trade.

Of the total women who are into sex work in the country, 60 per cent are from the lower and backward class, which indicates the pathetic living condition of the communities. In Madhya Pradesh, 96.7 per cent of the women sex workers are from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

Although the rate of increase in human trafficking is alarming, Kant said only 7.7 per cent of police officials in the country consider it an issue of high priority. “More than half (54.8 per cent) of police officials think that it is not an issue at all,” he said.
While Kant pointed out that the country did not have any effective legislation in place on human trafficking, Manjula Krishnan, economic advisor to the women and child development ministry, said the government would focus on prevention, rescue, rehabilitation and sensitisation to fight the menace.

Sensing the seriousness of the issue, Femina Miss India World Natasha Suri and Femina Miss India Earth Amruta Patki, who attended the function, said they would make efforts to create awareness about the issue.

“I can represent the youth,” Suri said.
TAHA has initiated efforts with local communities in 300 districts across 11 states to create awareness among the people that trafficking is closely linked to the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Press Trust of India Washington,

June 4 2005:

An Indian NGO has come in for praise by the US government for producing an informative report on trafficking in persons that rates “anti-slavery” efforts in various states of the country.

While criticising some governments of the world for their indifference to trafficking in human beings, senior US advisor on trafficking in persons, John R Miller, praised some NGOs, including India’s Shakti Vahini.

“The Indian NGO Shakti Vahini,” Miller said, produces an informative ‘India trafficking in persons report’ that rates “anti-slavery” efforts in Indian states.

He also praised a Pakistani human rights activist, among others.

The US State Department yesterday released it annual report on global human trafficking in which India was included among the countries in the ‘watch list’.

“The anti-slavery heroes cited in the report, a few out of thousands, range from Ansar Burney, the Pakistani human rights activist who has sought to help Asian and African children who have been trafficked to the Arabian Gulf countries for exploitation, as camel jockeys, to Somaly Mam and Pierre Legros of the French NGO AFESIP who braved personal threats from traffickers to rescue victims of sex slavery in southeast Asia,” Miller said.

He pointed out that the US contributed in excess of USD 80 million abroad for all kinds of anti-trafficking programmes last year.

“Trafficking in persons,” Miller said, “relies on coercion and exploitation.

It thrives on converting hope to fear. It is maintained through violence and it is highly profitable.

“In that sense, while there are differences, there are also similarities to the slavery of earlier centuries. The US government is committed to taking action in cooperation with other nations to end modern-day slavery.”

In Saudi Arabia, he said, “we have domestic workers being brought in from many countries into domestic servitude.”

He noted that four countries are placed on tier 3 for their failure to make significant efforts to combat forced labour trafficking –Saudi Arabia,

Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Daughters aren’t wanted in India. So many female foetuses are illegally aborted that baby boys now hugely outnumber baby girls, while a government minister has begged parents to abandon their children rather than kill them. What does this mean for the country’s future, ask Raekha Prasad and Randeep Ramesh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/28/india.raekhaprasad

A young girl looks on during a rally against female foeticide in New Delhi. Photograph: Gurinder Osan/AP

Bhavia is sleeping swaddled in a woolly peach cardigan amid the wailing and flailing limbs of 20 other babies. Nurses in lilac saris and face masks scoop the bundles from rockers and jig them under the wintry Delhi sun. Two days ago, the baby girl became the newest arrival at Palna, an orphanage in the capital’s Civil Lines district. But Bhavia is not an orphan. She is what used to be known as “a foundling”, abandoned by her mother in a local hospital.

When Bhavia came to Palna she was nameless, with no date of birth. What is certain, from a cursory glance at the line of babies, is that an orphanage is one of the few places in India where males are outnumbered. For every boy lying in the sunny courtyard, there are four girls. Some have been dumped outside police stations, some in railway toilets, crowded fairgrounds, or the dark corners of bus stations. Others were left outside the orphanage in a wicker cradle, in a specially built alcove by a busy road. The weight of a child here will set off an alarm, alerting Palna’s staff to a new arrival.

Almost always, it is girls who are left in the cradle. Healthy boys are only deserted in India if born to single mothers; boys left by a married couple are the disabled ones. Not all abandoned girls come from families too poor to feed them, however. Some have been found with a neatly packed bag containing a change of clothes, milk formula and disposable nappies.

Girls such as Bhavia are survivors in an India where it has never been more dangerous to be conceived female. A preference for boys, who carry on the family bloodline and inherit wealth, has always existed in Indian society. But what has made being a girl so risky now, is the lethal cocktail of new money mixed with medical technology that makes it possible to tell the sex of a baby while it is still in the womb.

Although gender-based abortion is illegal, parents are choosing to abort female foetuses in such large numbers that experts estimate India has lost 10 million girls in the past two decades. In the 12 years since selective abortion was outlawed, only one doctor has been convicted of carrying out the crime.

This hidden tragedy surfaces not only in the statistics of skewed sex ratios, but also in the back yards of clinics that hoped to bury the evidence. Earlier this month police arrested two people after the discovery of 400 pieces of bones believed to be of female foetuses in the town of Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh. Last September, the remains of dozens of babies were exhumed from a pit outside an abortion clinic in Punjab. According to investigators, that clinic was run by an untrained, unqualified retired soldier and his wife. To dispose of the evidence, acid was use to melt the flesh and then the bones were hammered to smithereens.

Last year, in a series of reports entitled Kokh Me Katl, or Murder in the Womb, two journalists working for India’s Sahara Samay television channel found 100 doctors, in both private and government hospitals, who were prepared to perform illegal terminations of girl foetuses. In the grainy TV pictures, doctors from four states and 36 cities talked with chilling casualness about how to dump the remains. Many weren’t bothered about the foetus’s age, just that it was a girl that could be got rid off. The average cost of the procedure was a few thousand rupees (around £30).

In Agra, one doctor told the reporters to get rid of the dead foetus in the Yamuna river, which curves past the Taj Mahal. “That is not a problem. Take a rickshaw and throw it in the river,” he said. In Dholpur, a town in Rajasthan, a female medic said the fields were pitted with the unmarked graves of unborn girls. She told the undercover couple that if their foetus was too big to easily be disposed of, they should pay a street sweeper to get rid of the body.

The latest estimate of India’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) can be gleamed from a sample registration system that covers 1.3m households. For the two years up to 2004, India had just 882 girls per 1,000 boys. Only China is worse. Beijing’s harsh, yet effective, family-planning policy limited urban couples to a single child -which was usually a boy. China’s sex ratio stands at just 832:1,000. Sabu George, a Delhi-based researcher who has worked for two decades on female foeticide, describes the first few months in the womb as “the riskiest part of a woman’s life cycle in India”. The sex ratios in the country, he says, are getting worse “day by day”. India, he says, now has 930,000 missing girls every year. “What we are talking about is a massive, hidden number of deaths.”

Although ministers in India have woken up to “a national crisis”, the response has been to condone the abandonment of female babies. “lf you don’t want a girl, leave her to us,” Renuka Chowdhury, India’s minister of state for women and child development, said recently. The government “will bring up your children. Don’t kill them”. The announcement was a desperate response to stem India’s dramatic deficit of women. In the west, women outnumber men by at least 3%. India has almost 8% more men than women. The question for India is what sort of future it faces without enough women. One dystopian answer, given by academics Valerie M Hudson and Andrea den Boer, is that a generation of men unable to find wives has already emerged. In their book, Bare Branches, they write of men who will never marry and have children. It is these men, they say, who are already largely responsible for social unrest in those areas where women are in short supply.

Indian scholars, they say, have noted a growing relationship between sex ratios and violent crime in Indian states. When potential wives are scarce, it is the least-skilled and educated men who are left on the shelf. Hudson and Den Boer put forward a scenario where large areas of India could be overrun by this under-class, with marauding groups of under-educated testosterone-high youths wreaking havoc. “It will mean a stronger masculine and macho culture,” says Den Boer, co-author and lecturer in International Politics at the University of Kent. “Men do change their behaviour when they settle down. Those growing pools of men that don’t are more likely to congregate to take part in stealing, gangs, bootlegging and terrorism.”

In villages across the flat plains of north India, two decades of widespread female foeticide is already felt by thousands of families who cannot find brides for their sons. One local leader in the state of Haryana likened the lack of marriageable women to the shortage of grain in a famine.

It is an apt simile, given that the response to the catastrophe has seen women from poorer states being traded like a commodity by bride traffickers. As little as 10,000 rupees (£125) is paid to impoverished families in Bihar, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh for a daughter who will supposedly be found a job in a more prosperous part of India. The reality is that she will be sold into a forced marriage to a family in a richer state.

So significant has the lack of brides become in Punjab and Haryana that the issue has seeped into its politics, engulfing local elections. Candidates standing for office pledge that they will “help provide girls” if elected. Village leaders are accosted by unmarried men and asked to find them brides. Meanwhile, activists say that trafficked girls - who are often underage - are treated as bonded labour and sex slaves once married. The groups supporting trafficked brides are overwhelmed by the extent of the problem. “We’re losing the battle,” says Ravi Kant, executive director of Shakti Vahini, an organisation working on the ramifications of female foeticide. “It is in every village. The police are saying these families are doing nothing wrong. There’s collusion between the law and the politicians, and it’s destroying the whole social fabric.”

India’s paradox is that prosperity has not meant progress. Development has not erased traditional values: in fact, selective abortion has been accelerated in a globalising India. On the one hand there has been new money and an awareness of family planning - so family sizes get smaller. But wealthier - and better- educated - Indians still want sons. A recent survey revealed that female foeticide was highest among women with university degrees.

The demographic consequences of mass female foeticide are most pronounced in the most developed parts of India. In Delhi, one of the richest cities in India, there are just 827 girls per 1,000 boys being born. Not far away, in the wealthy farming belt of Kurukshetra, there are only 770.

At the heart of the matter lies the most sacred institution in Indian life: marriage. New money has raised the price of wedlock, a ritual still governed by the past. Not only do most Indians believe in arranged marriage, in which dowry payments are made; there is also a widespread acceptance of the inequality between bride-givers and bride-takers.

The bride’s side, according to convention, is supposed to give but never take from the groom’s family. In today’s India that translates into an evermore expensive gift list of consumer goods. Decades ago, a wealthy bride’s father would have been expected to give gold bracelets. Today it is jewellery, fridges, cars and foreign holidays - and the bride’s family may end up paying the bill for the rest of their lives.

A son, by contrast, is an asset to his family. Even leaving aside the wealth his bride will bring, a boy will retain the family - and the caste - name. He will also inherit the property, and is seen as a way of securing parent-care in old age.

Indians, therefore, have come to view the girl child as a burden, an investment without return. A favourite Hindi saying translates as: “Having a girl is to plant a seed in someone else’s garden.” One of the results is that women themselves face immense family pressure to get rid of the girl in their womb. Feminists in India argue that criminalising women who have done so is to ignore how fiercely patriarchal the value system is. As some see it, a woman who participates in the killing of her own child is actually denying her own self-value and should not be punished but be treated with concern.

Some of India’s traditional attitudes are changing, with women fighting to choose partners and different lifestyles. In some urban parts of the country, live-in relationships are tolerated. Parents accept boyfriends in a manner unthinkable even a decade ago. “There’s no obvious sexual revolution, but things clearly are changing,” says Mary E John, director for India’s Centre for Women’s Development Studies. But technology is spreading faster than such western values. Clinics spring up daily offering amniocentesis and ultrasound, scientific advances that are capable of predicting the sex of a foetus.

The trickle down of cash means that even lower middle-class families can afford a few thousands rupees on the technology. Before sex-selective abortion was outlawed in 1994, clinics would advertise terminating girls as “spend 3,000 now and save 300,000 later”.

Multinational companies began to sense a huge market opportunity in the mid-90s in India. Every three years the market doubles, and sales of scanners are thought to be running at 10,000 a year.

First American, then Korean and now Chinese companies have pitched up to make and sell scanners. Some campaigners claim that the American giant General Electric’s early arrival in the market indirectly led to millions of aborted girls.

Although there is a law forbidding sales of scanners to unregistered clinics and quack doctors, the campaigner Sabu George talks of a widespread “indifference of ethics”. He says 16m illegal ultrasound scans have been conducted since India’s law was introduced. “How many more millions of girls will have to disappear from India before companies such as GE will recognise their responsibility?” he adds.

General Electric counters that such accusations are like blaming car manufacturers for road accidents. “We support efforts to strengthen protection against sex determination and misuse of diagnostic equipment,” the company says in a statement.

The diffusion of medical technology and India’s traditions are not the only reason for the country’s endangered daughters. India’s medical profession, which works in one of the most privatised systems in the world, is certainly culpable. Some doctors, it seems, will do anything for a fee.

Many of those caught on camera in the Murder in the Womb operation were open about using high-quality ultrasound machines to determine the sex of the foetus. Under Indian law, however, doctors who use “sonography” are forbidden to tell mothers the sex of the child. The penalty is prison and a fine of up to 100,000 rupees (£1,200). They were also undeterred by performing late abortions - in some cases happily willing to terminate pregnancies months after India’s 20-week limit.

Despite being caught red-handed and on tape, a year later just seven doctors have been suspended. Two dozen are under police investigation, but no charges have, so far, been brought. Many of the clinics continue to operate despite campaigners staging sit-ins in waiting rooms. The journalists have received death threats.

“Doctors are millionaires in India. They are politically and socially well-connected. Powerful people can slow and stop investigations,” says Shripal Shaktawat, one of the reporters who conducted the exposé.

India’s labyrinthine laws and its antiquated judicial system have also created mixed messages regarding abortion rights. The banning of selective abortion has led to many women thinking they no longer have a right to a legal abortion. Some feminists are concerned that the campaigns against female foeticide have inadvertently driven women to seek backstreet abortions.

No one has any quick-fix answers to deeply held and pervasive prejudices against women. The question for India is whether girls like Bhavia, that abandoned and unwanted bundle lying in a Delhi orphanage, will have choices that her own mother never did.

Juhan Samuel

http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit02252008/culture.asp

The wrinkles on Sumari’s face betray her troubled past, making her look far older than the nearly 40 years she believes she is.

Indian woman Sumari
© AFP Anna Zieminski

Widowed young, she was brought from her native village to northern India and sold to a man who abused her sexually and physically, and imprisoned her and her daughter in his house.

“It went on for three or four months, until he sold us off to another man,” says Mumtaz, Sumari’s daughter, who is now about 20.

Sumari is one of the luckier women, having eventually found a good husband after being sold repeatedly in a thriving human trade in northern India that is blamed on local customs and a shortage of women.

More than 10,000 women like her are believed to have been bought or lured with the promise of a job from poorer Indian states in recent years to be married to men who cannot find wives.

“There aren’t enough girls here. Locals won’t give their girls to widowers, ageing and handicapped men,” said Fatima, Sumari’s neighbour in Mewat, a district of Haryana state where there are 820 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six.

This compares to a national average of 927 to 1,000, and the worldwide average of 1,050 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Experts say abortion of female foetuses because of the traditional Hindu preference for sons in this male-dominated society has led to a severe shortage of women in Haryana, and upset the sex balance nationwide.

Indian woman Hameedan sits on a charpoy at the home of a neighbour
© AFP/File Anna Zieminski

Mewat, just 50 kilometres (30 miles) from New Delhi, was carved out as a separate administrative zone from Gurgaon district — which boasts high-rise offices and upmarket malls — and stands in stark contrast to India’s impressive growth story.

Bride trafficking has been well-documented here and while the impact on the region’s sex ratio is a major concern, the problem is complicated by other factors such as acute poverty and early marriage.

“Many women die during childbirth here, leaving a large number of widowers who can’t find local girls. They have to buy them,” said Manmohan Sharma of the non-profit Voluntary Health Association of Punjab, which campaigns against female foeticide.

Trafficking in India takes place largely for commercial sexual exploitation, as well as for labour, organ transplant and forced marriage, says the UN office on Drugs and Crime, though it adds there are no reliable statistics on victims.

There are historical reasons as well for the trade.

“Women used to be a part of the loot of the local warrior tribe and have always been treated as objects,” said researcher Shafiqur Rahman, who interviewed scores of Mewat women for a research paper for advocacy group Jagori.

A woman brought from outside the region is called a “paro” which roughly translates as outsider, but has become a pejorative, locals say.

“Every paro here has been sold an average of two to five times,” said Gaushiya, the chief of a local woman’s group who herself was brought for marriage from southern Hyderabad city several years ago.

© AFP/File Anna Zieminski

“People here still call me a paro. Other women in the household would chide me, calling me dark and fat when I first came here,” she said.

Most men pay 5,000-20,000 rupees (120-510 dollars) for a bride, said Ravi Kant, executive director of anti-trafficking group Shakti Vahini, which says it has rescued some 250 paro women in the past five years.

“Many women are first brought to Mewat where the practice goes back a long way, and are sold later all over the state,” Ravi Kant said.

“I married at 17 as there is immense pressure here to marry by 20. Those older than 20 have to pay for a bride,” said 24-year-old activist Mohammed Qasim, who works for the non-profit group Empower People.

Hameedan, in her 30s, remembers waking up in Mewat about 16 years ago after an acquaintance knocked her out by lacing her food in her native Assam state in northeast India.

“I didn’t know anyone here. I didn’t know the language. It took me 10 years to establish contact with my family,” she says.

She was in her early teens then, while her husband was in his mid-50s.

“He is old but still beats me up. A woman can’t hit back at her children’s father, can she?” she says.

Many women are treated as domestic and sexual slaves, working for both the master and often for his wife, if he is still married.

Most are reluctant to talk about the humiliation they endure.

A few non-profit organisations such as Empower People have done research and documentation on the plight of trafficked women. A few others say they do rescue women from time to time.

For most women there is little help at hand and the authorities say they cannot take action if the women do not report any crime or harassment.

“There are many truck drivers here. They travel all over the country and bring brides,” said C.R Rana, Mewat deputy commissioner, the region’s top administrative official.

“If they are legally wedded, what can we do.”

Tea plantation workers in West Bengal have been dying by the hundreds since 2002, but the state is turning a blind eye

LATHA JISHNU (Business World)

Tea garden worker Bikram Lohar, right, carries his five-and- half- year- old blind son Anup as his emaciated wife Champa Lohar looks on at a tea garden in Kathalguri, some 150 km from Siliguri. Anup is said to have lost his vision after an undernourished Champa was unable to breast-feed him after the closure of the garden in July 2002 which left the family destitute. (AP Photo/Tamal Roy)

Starvation is death in slow motion. There is no drama about it, just an agonising decline as the body wastes away and turns into an unaesthetic replica of the starving Buddha statue. It is the kind of tragedy that rarely brings its victims official succour. It’s the government’s view that no one ever dies of starvation; deaths are always due to ‘other causes’ - and even malnutrition is a disputed condition. To officialdom, it seldom matters that the evidence is hard to refute: the highly emaciated bodies of the dead and living, and the reports of doctors.

For the tea estate workers of West Bengal, it is a double tragedy. Not only have they been losing their jobs without any compensation, but the Marxist-ruled state has also proved to be more callous than other states where starvation deaths have been reported. They have simply turned a blind eye to the problem for the past six years. Despite screaming newspaper headlines that periodically announce a new set of fatalities, despite the intervention of the Supreme Court, despite the best efforts of workers’ unions and human rights organisations, little has been done to help the most hopeless of the workforce.

The genesis of the problem is 1998, when the first wave of closures began. That’s when the tea garden workers started to fall off the map. Some of the plantations reopened subsequently, only to close down again in 2002. Since then, 3,000 to 4,000 tea estate workers and their dependents are estimated to have died of starvation. That’s a shocking figure by any yardstick and a blot on any civilised society. But the CPM-ruled state has proved a hard nut to crack, impervious to both judicial interventions and public outrage.

Early this month (June 2007) however, the government admitted that 571 people had died in 15 months -from January 1, 2006, to March 31, this year. It was a stunning disclosure, the first time that West Bengal had admitted there had indeed been tea garden deaths without, of course, admitting that these were due to starvation. It cited coronary diseases, TB, high fever, septicaemia, meningitis, cancer, malaria, hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver as the causes of death. It is, of course, commonsense that lack of food and malnutrition lowers the body’s immunity and leaves people vulnerable to a host of infections and diseases.

The casualty figures were put together by the health department after it undertook a survey of 16 closed gardens in Jalpaiguri, a region bordering Sikkim and Bhutan. There were some grisly revelations in the report. Among those who had died were 46 children below the age of 10. Most of the victims (465 of the 571) had died at home, unable to make the trek to primary health centres or the district hospitals.

But it turns out that the state government has been grudging in its admission. A Supreme Court-ordered survey says at least -and this is the operative word -700 people had died in the same period. A news agency report quoted Anuradha Talwar, the West Bengal adviser to the Supreme Court on the people’s right to food case, as saying that although the state may choose to portray the deaths as disease-related, “the fact remains that workers have starved to death and many are waiting to die”.

The problem is serious and a conservative estimate puts the figure of those out of work at 10,000. However, a survey by the Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samiti, a farm workers’ union, says 21,000 permanent workers and 95,000 people have been affected by the distress in tea plantations. The union found people were surviving on as little as 200 calories per person per day compared with 1,000-2,900 before the estates closed down. The minimum prescribed is 850 calories.

With no alternative employment available for these workers, the situation has been grim for them, specially children who are grossly malnourished and suffering from a host of ailments. Although the sector is generally believed to have some of the best regulations for worker protection, the survey found that employers had defaulted on wages and supply of rations - tea estate workers are entitled to foodgrains at a concessional rate along with free water and electricity - for months before they abandoned the plantations.

But how have things come to such a sorry pass? First, the electricity to the closed or abandoned tea estate was cut. This meant the water supply, too, went. So workers began using water from the streams from Bhutan. These are highly polluted by the presence of dolomite waste from cement factories and unfit for drinking.

Then the healthcare just disappeared. Once the gardens shut down, the estate hospitals, too, stopped functioning for all practical purposes although a few are reported to be providing basic care sans medicines.

Left without any support system, it is not surprising that the illiterate and unskilled tea garden workers have found themselves in such desperate straits. The gardens are usually in remote areas, cut off from both villages and towns. Their primary source of sustenance, say voluntary groups, have been the surrounding forests. All the families that the survey teams met reported they were surviving on tea flowers, wild tubers and leaves, and bamboo shoots. The entire snake and rat population in the vicinity had been killed and eaten by the starving workers.

None of this has stirred the state government, which has been sitting on this information for the past four years. On the monetary front, too, the workers had been left high and dry. Provident fund payments had not been deposited with the state commissioner and there were large revenue arrears to the state government, the report alleges. In many instances, the owners had stripped whatever assets they could before abandoning the workers to their fate.

Other fact-finding surveys, such as the report of the Centre for Education and Communication, Delhi, and United Trades Union Congress validate these charges.

One of the underlying reasons is that of the tea workers in these regions are Adivasis or Dalits.

They are not a priority group for anyone - not even for unions whose focus has been on bringing employers to book and getting the gardens reopened. The plight of the wretched of the estates has been left to human rights activists whose reports to the Supreme Court have not had much impact so far.

Largely invisible, the workers emerge from the undergrowth only when they become part of the statistics of death. For a country that prides itself on being the new economic superpower, this is a great shame.

A depressing flavour
Globalization has hit the Indian tea industry’s fortunes hard. With brokers and buyers in apparent collusion workers bear the brunt, reports Ranjit Devraj.

Date:

02/09/2008

Assam Tribune (Guwahati)

Tags

• Bamboo,
• Bamboo Workers,
• Churachandpur (T),
• Manipur,
• Mizoram

“The problem is compounded by the numerous landslide at various places along National Highway 150 and Guite road,” K Moi, secretary of Zomi Economic Planning and Development Agency said.

Tipaimukh and Thanlon sub-division have been cut off since the last one week due to numerous landslides, he added.

The famine hit villagers in these areas want the government to gear up the relief activities apart from opening the existing roads leading to their villages.

According to Co-ordinating Mautam Famine Aid quoting a district administration report said a total of 16,050.13 hectares of cultivated land was damaged and 1,03,558 persons from 14,307 families in 264 villages in the district bordering Myanmar and Mizoram affected.

When bamboo flowers, famine, death and destruction follow. Rats multiply at a very rapid pace after eating the protein-rich seeds that appear soon after bamboo flowering.When the seeds are exhausted, armies of rats chomp their way through other food grains, causing a famine.Bamboo grows wild in 3691.77 sq.km of Manipur’s total geographical area of 22,327 sq km. Locally known as Mautam,the bamboo flowering is concurrently affecting the contiguous areas of Mizoram as well.

Though Mizoram Government has taken up precautionary measures, Manipur is yet to do the needful. So far they’ve released only about 4,500 quintals of rice to the affected village against the requirement of over 10,000 quintals.

DC Churachandpur Sumant Singh was trying to control the situation by implementing the National Rural Employment Guarantee schemes in the affected villages. “We are yet to get the relief materials though the Centre has sanctioned a sum of Rs 16.9 crore for the State”, the secretary lamented.

In a move to help the affected villagers, a musical concert is scheduled on September 5 next under the joint initiative of the Mizo Zaimi Inzamkhawn and Zogam Artists Association.

With the theme “Concert for Hungry”, the Co-ordinating Mautaam Famine-Aid (Mautaam Puuktaw) is organizing the concert which is aimed at raising funds for helping the affected people of the four sub-divisions of Tipaimukh, Thanlon, Henglep and Singngat.

In a telephonic conversation with The Assam Tribune, the secretary said “whatever contribution received from the concert would be converted into food grain for it’s distribution to the affected areas”.

Workers starving due to closure of tea estates in North Bengal MAUREEN NANDINI MITRA

Kalavati Barai of Raipur Tea Estate in Jalpaiguri has been watching the consistent deterioration of her family of six over the past four years. In March this year, her husband succumbed to severe anaemia and related complications. “I couldn’t feed him, so he died,” she states simply. Since the tea garden was abandoned by its owners in 2003, they have been subsisting largely on one meal of rice a day. Kalavati’s youngest son, 13-year-old Kartik, is now severely ill but she can’t afford his medicines. “He hasn’t been to school for three years now. The doctor says his kidney is damaged. What do I give him? I have nothing.” There are several others like her who are suffering because of closure of 14 tea gardens in North Bengal in 2003-04.

Most of the gardens closed after production fell and profits plummeted due to low yields from ageing tea bushes. Several gardens were abandoned by their owners, leaving behind large debts and dues of Rs 18. 69 crore in workers’ provident funds. More than 17,000 workers at these tea estates have been struggling; there are no other means of livelihood. An estimated 1,000 people-workers and family members-have died of malnutrition and related diseases since 2003 in the Dooars region.

The governor of the state, Gopal Gandhi, expressed shock four months ago at the dire situation of tea estate workers. The media in the state has regularly covered the workers’ plight, leading to red faces in the Left Front government of West Bengal as well as the Centre. The much-awaited response came on July 7 from the Tea Board of India, the Union ministry of commerce’s regulatory body on tea trade: an ultimatum to the 14 estate owners to reopen the plantations within a month, failing which the Centre would take over their estates and hand them over to new owners. The estate owners have until mid-August to respond to this ultimatum. Talks between government and tea industry officials also produced a package of Rs 119 crore to revive the tea industry. A senior tea board official said the package in June 2007, includes:
- a five-year moratorium on damages for defaulting on provident fund and gratuity payments
- waiver of all loans from the tea board and soft loans for five or six year terms to help with replantation
- rejuvenation of old tea bushes

Surviving on rats
“No other organised sector has seen so many deaths from chronic malnutrition before,” says Anuradha Talwar of the West Bengal Network for Right to Food and Work, which has estimated the death count of 1,000 in its study. It found workers were eating wild grass, leaves and rats to survive. A survey by Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samiti, a farm workers’ union, found the workers surviving on as little as 200 calories per day, compared to 1,000-2,900 calories before the estates closed down. An average adult is believed to require at least 850 calories per day.

The state government denies that food scarcity is responsible for the deaths; it did acknowledge in June that 571 people had died at the gardens between January 2006 and March 2007. The state health department had a long cause list for the deaths. It included tuberculosis, meningitis, cancer, malaria, hepatitis and septicaemia. It did not mention what is common knowledge: lack of nutrition makes the sick more vulnerable. Forty-six of those who died were children below the age of 10, and 465 died at home, unable to afford trips to a healthcare facility.

The media outcry led to the administration and several ngos distributing food and medicines, and conducting health camps in badly hit estates like Ramjhora and Bharnobari in Siliguri. Debashis Chakrobarty of Siliguri Welfare Organisation, a voluntary health service outfit, said the efforts are vastly inadequate.

In April, the state had announced a special interim grant of Rs 16 crore for the closed gardens as a stopgap solution while negotiations were going on. Media reports claimed little of this has reached the workers.

Most of the affected gardens are far from towns and villages, limiting employment options and healthcare services for the unskilled workers. Public transport to towns is infrequent and expensive-it costs Rs 60 for a 30-km bus trip to Jalpaiguri town from Raipur. The Plantation Labour Act of 1951 makes it the estate owners’ responsibility to provide the workers basic needs-food, education, healthcare. With the tea estates becoming unprofitable after the late 1990s, the owners abandoned their responsibility.

Ownership crises
Most estates are now run by ad hoc management committees set up by local trade unions. “We depend entirely on nature now,” says Kajal Ghosh, a former supervisor at Raipur tea estate, now helping out the committee. “December-March is the lean period when plucking is stopped, to start again in April. Things are a little better during the monsoon, and we can pay regular wages.”

The committees lack the expertise to run the processing plants, which can’t run anyway after the water and power connections were cut due to unpaid dues. So, the picked tea leaves are sold to the processing factories that have cropped up in the region. The day’s earnings are divided up among the workers. With no resources to spend on protection of the tea bushes, output is low. Workers pick about 3-4 kg of leaves per person per day, which was 10-12 kg earlier. The daily earnings vary from Rs 5-10 to nothing a day. Then, there are allegations against the committees, too. At the Kalchini Tea Estate in Jalpaiguri, the committee members have been accused of embezzling funds.

Compromised from all sides, workers are forced to sell household items, or crush stones in nearby riverbeds for daily wages. There are also occasional jobs of digging drains and widening roads under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (nrega). Officials claim the state government is carrying out several work-for-food schemes and distributing food for the children and the aged.

But the effectiveness of these schemes is questioned. A National Legal Services Authority report submitted to the prime minister and the chief justice says there is “rank mismanagement in distribution of job cards, pensions and the 100-day work scheme”. It says the workers’ are going hungry because of unemployment, absence of alternative income opportunities and limited access to social justice schemes.

Estate employees such as Ghosh have repeatedly suggested nrega funds would be better utilised to on running the gardens instead of peripheral development work. At Dehklapara Tea Estate near the Indo-Bhutanese border, also closed since 2003, an emaciated Rita Sonal has been given a job under nrega: cutting hard mud with a spade and loading it on to trucks. Though glad to have a job, Sonal has a hard time. “We don’t have strength left in our bodies for this kind of heavy work,” she says.

A troubled brew
The first wave of tea garden closures in North Bengal began in the late 1990s after managements shut down operations citing poor economic viability. There are an estimated 160 tea plantations in North Bengal, which account for about 30 per cent of India’s annual tea production of about 823 million kg. India is the world’s largest tea producer, but industry insiders say its us $1.5 billion a year tea business has been suffering over the past decade following a crash in tea auction prices and a slump in leaf exports.

According to a status paper by the Tea Association of India, declining productivity, rising input costs, low level of labour output and age profile of tea bushes contributed most to the decline of the industry. The North Bengal gardens, whose leaves were once considered among the best in the country, have been the worst hit.

Some garden owners, like Robin Pal of the Redbank group in Jalpaiguri, blame trade unions for the crisis, saying they made impossible demands regarding wages and benefits at a time when business was suffering. But others, like Sanjay Bansal of the Ambootia group point to other reasons: bad management practices, owners siphoning off money instead of investing it in the gardens, overuse of pesticides and indisciplined workers.

The other cause for decline is the proliferation of small growers and ‘bought leaf’ factories since the 1980s, says Naba Dutta of Nagrik Mancha, a Kolkata-based citizen’s group that investigates labour issues. According to government records, there are 6,000 small tea growers in Bengal (though the United Forum of Small Tea Growers’ Association pegs it at 15,000). These gardens, industry watchers say, has done more harm than good for the local tea business. They are run by businessmen interested only in quick profits, who don’t know the specifics of tea growing and don’t concern themselves much with quality control. As a result, the industry’s reputation has suffered. Both Dutta and Bansal believe the situation can be corrected by recognising that the bought leaf sector is the nemesis of the tea industry, work on making the soil healthy again, and by treating workers as assets.

Dutta goes a step further and insists that though there’s a general idea that the entire tea industry in the country is ailing, nothing could be further from the truth. “A simple example - the price of tea hasn’t reduced in the domestic market,” he says. “Tea garden owners say that the market is fallen, consumption is decreasing, that young generation is drinking cold drinks, but a recent Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, study has projected total domestic consumption of tea has increased from 737.13 million kg in 2006 to 789.49 million kg in 2007,” he says. The study projects consumption will increase further to 867 million kg by 2009. Also, only 30 per cent of tea produced comes to auction houses on which accounting of a garden’s profit is measured, so can never really know the actual profit/loss margin, he says. Dutta believes the current crisis developed because many garden owners are using their estates to take out huge loans and invest the money in other businesses rather than in the upkeep of the gardens and the workforce. Nagrik Mancha and several civil and labour rights’ groups are conducting an independent study into the “real cause” of the garden closures.

Ethnicity of the workers has also been a crucial reason why this abysmal situation has been allowed to drag on for so long, human rights activists allege. More than 85 per cent of the workers are tribals-fourth generation immigrants of migrants brought in by the British from Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh or low-caste refugees from Bangladesh’s Jassore, Khulna and Barishal regions. A largely marginalised group, they lack the education or organisation to fight for their rights. Even when the estates are open, their daily cash wage is about Rs 48 and their standard of living is pathetically low. The trade unions, that purport to fight for their rights, have been so busy fighting among themselves and with the management, that they’ve paid scant attention to ensuring relief measures for workers at the closed gardens.

But anger at the injustice done to them is slowly building up among workers. At Dehklapara Tea Estate, Dharamveer Bikuda, a young worker, threatens that if no action is taken soon, he and his friends will start blocking roads and robbing rich people driving by in cars. “We can’t go hungry for ever,” he says.

INTRODUCTION
The Government of Mizoram is gearing up to prepare a comprehensive multi-sectoral action plan to meet the requirements of all aspects of the bamboo flowering phenomenon in the State. There is a State Level BAFFACOS Committee and Working Group under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary respectively.

From past experiences, bamboo flowering in Mizoram is usually accompanied by considerable increase of rodent population. The destruction of food crops results in food scarcity and famine. The epidemiological imbalance also leads to increased risk of infection or outbreaks of rodent borne diseases.

The modes of transmission of these diseases are through rat bite, fleas and other ecto-parasites or contamination of food, water and air by rodent urine or excreta. It is a cause for concern that gastroenteritis is still the second leading cause of morbidity despite other high socio-economic indicators indicating the unsafe eating and drinking practices. The risk of infection by these diseases is very high since people in Mizoram come in close contact with rodents including handling or consumption of their flesh. Some of these diseases are epidemic prone requiring immediate control and some are highly fatal. Rabies is 100% fatal.

An outbreak of plague can be disastrous to the national economy. This grim lesson was learnt in the Surat outbreak (1994), the economic loss for which was estimated to be 1.7 billion US dollars and should not be overlooked in the present context. Our country was boycotted internationally disrupting international trade. Mass panic reaction was also observed all over the country, including the national capital of Delhi. Plague, transmitted by rodent fleas, is an internationally notifiable disease.
The national plague expert, Dr Shyamal Biswas of the Plague Surveillance Unit, National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Bangalore expressed his concern over the lack of plague surveillance infrastructure in the State during his recent visit to Mizoram regarding the impending bamboo flowering. His report stated that sylvatic plague infections were detected in Myanmar till recently and there is potential for plague outbreak in the neighbouring state of Mizoram for which appropriate preventive measures need to be taken.
A Government of India report stated that plague outbreak was reported in Himachal Pradesh (2002) and Uttaranchal(2004) but was contained following immediate appropriate actions which were efficient surveillance, chemoprophylaxis, case investigation and management.

Diagnostic facilities for the majority of these diseases are currently absent in Mizoram and need to be set up. Reagents, field test kits and medicine for treatment will need to be procured. It may thus be emphasized that appropriate preventive actions, immediate investigation, diagnosis and management, capacity building and awareness generation, etc are the key strategies to the successful control of rodent borne diseases.
Health Department has prepared an action plan to address the most critical aspect of the whole issue, that is, to prevent, manage or control the corresponding rodent borne diseases, malnutrition and its related diseases.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES
1. To prevent, manage and control rodent associated diseases in Mizoram.
2. To prevent and manage malnutrition due to food scarcity during bamboo flowering.
3. To develop the capacity of health services and community.
4. To prevent economic loss of the country and disruption of local and international trade by preventing or controlling plague epidemic.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
1. To set up an organized surveillance system for rodent borne diseases.
2. To organize efficient State and District Rapid Response Teams for managing outbreaks of rodent borne diseases
3. Improve diagnostic and clinical management facilities of rodent borne diseases
4. To conduct training in surveillance, investigation, diagnosis and management of rodent borne diseases
5. To increase public awareness regarding risk factors, prevention and personal protection, signs and symptoms and management of rodent borne diseases.
6. To prevent and manage any associated malnutrition cases.

COMPONENTS
1. Surveillance
a. Human
b. Rodents
c. Vector
d. Carnivore

2. Laboratory strengthening
3. Establishment of State & District BAFFACOS Cells
4. Recruitment of contractual staff
5. Training
6. Clinical management
7. Formation of Rapid Response Teams
8. Information, Education & Communication (IEC)
9. Border Survey
10. Inter-sectoral Coordination
11. Community participation
12. Research

BAFFACOS- Status report

Bamboo Flowering in Mizoram:
The ill effect of previous flowering of bamboo may be seen from the sad incident as

-      In 1991-12, many people moved away from their native village to settle as far as Tripura, Manipur and Western Burma. A man of Lalhrima’s village fetched rice from 35 kms away and a night before he reached home, he developed a cholera symptoms. The poor man was dragged out of the village before he was dead and buried there by his family. The family even did not return to the village and stayed in a thlam. That night, all people from his veng ran away of the village in all directions to the jungle and to make thing worse a dangerous thunderstorm assaulted them.

-      In 1959-60, a sever famine followed bamboo flowering. There was severe starvation and the common mass had  general feeling of neglect by the Indian Government. This led to rebellion and MNF gone underground which lasted for 20 years costing numerous dear lives and heavy casualties.

Sporadic flowering of m.beciferra and d.hamiltonii started in 2001 and seeds of m.baciferra are available every year during late May to early August.  

From the initial observation of m.baciferra seeds falling on the ground in the forest, juice and seed part in the interior of the seed are eaten away by rats. In the earlier flowering of bamboo in Mizoram, it is said that rodent population are feasting on these bamboo seeds and multiple themselves in terms of ten thousands in a year and once, the bamboo seeds are no longer available to them, they finished away all agriculture products in a day migrating from place to place in thousands and thousands numbers. Henceforth, severe famine is the unavoidable circumstances.

November 11, 2007

Namita Kohli,

Hindustan Times
Just over 100 kms from the Capital, a curious waiting game is on at the nondescript village of Bamla. Men here have gotten used to waiting for a bride - sometimes, for years on end. With at least 70 per cent of the ‘eligible’ bachelors unable to find a girl, it could well be a scene straight out of Manish Jha’s 2003 film Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women.

Azad Singh, 40, a shopowner at Bamla, says, “Fot the last ten years, the problem has been acute. Earlier boys here used to get married at 18-20. Now even at 30, many are unable to find a girl.” At least 500 boys are desperately looking. There are even families with four or five unmarried sons. “This is leading to great tension within the village,” adds Singh. With age, the single men become the subject of ridicule amongst friends who have “settled down”.

Curiously, while bride buying is de rigueur all over the state, in this village ‘single’ men are still living in denial. “Get a truckload of girls here and you will see a queue of boys in no time. But we don’t want to badmouth the village. We will try to hide the fault till we can for our honour,” says ex-sarpanch Sudhir Pehelwan. Sudhir says that after the local media reported this trend sometime back, the then sarpanch was forced to take his statement back, due to local pressure.
Ajay Grewal, who’s in his late 20s, has almost given up on getting himself a bride - even though he owns a sizeable portion of land and is a “state-level” wrestling player. Ditto for Sanjay Kumar Grewal, 28, a local farmer.
With a low female population and consequently more ‘single’ males, the fallout has been a rise in sexual violence against women. Says Ram Chander, a schoolteacher from the neighbouring village of Bhalli Anandpur, “Earlier, we could send our women to the fields alone, but now men around can’t be trusted. Rapes and violence are rising due to their desperation. It will take a lot of time for the situation to change.”
While Bamla village takes great pride in its male wrestlers, women here are still supposed to cover their heads and faces completely. “We don’t allow girls to roam freely outside, nor do we send them to work. That’s why you can’t see them around. They stay indoors mostly,” says Pradeep Kumar Grewal, a resident. Women, he says, are a “liability” for the middle class families like him and perhaps, that’s the reason behind the scarcity of brides.

Many like Pradeep have no qualms in accepting that female foeticide is happening on the sly, and that no one registers for government incentives for the girl child. “Schemes don’t work. The procedures to avail the benefits are too tedious. Sex determination is easy. Families decide on their own about their children.”
But with a scarcity of women, how do they intend to have ‘families’? “That’s the way our society is. We can’t really help it,” says father Anil Kumar Grewal.

Namita Kohli, Hindustan Times

Haryana/New Delhi, November 10, 2007

Faced with a crisis, even local elections have candidates promising brides in return for votes.

“My kismet brought me here,” says 14-year-old Heena, who’s come to ‘sasural’ in Malabnuhu - a sleepy village in Haryana’s Mewat region - from Kolkata. Originally from Bangladesh, the teenager can only blame destiny now. Last year, after a sum of Rs 6,000 changed hands, the ‘bahu’ found herself in an alien landscape: where Bengali is replaced by Haryanvi, rice by roti - and where cattle costs more than women like her, who are referred to as paros by the locals.
In the prosperous districts of Haryana and Punjab - where son preference has resulted in a skewed sex ratio - girls from economically weaker backgrounds in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal are being openly bought in droves for ‘marriages’ that are more often than not without the consent of the girl. The legal status of such wedlock, of course, remains questionable. According to data compiled by Shaktivahini, a Faridabad-based NGO that takes up anti-trafficking issues, there are up to 50,000 paros in Haryana alone, including a huge proportion of minors.
Census 2001 shows that the child sex ratio in Haryana and Punjab stands at 820 and 793 per 1,000 boys respectively. But according to the latest health survey by the Punjab government, villages like Sansarwal in Patiala have touched an alarming 438 girls per 1,000 boys.

Ergo, girls are fast turning into a vanishing tribe. A recent United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report warns that female deficit in the marriageable age (20-49) is set to touch 25 million by the year 2030.
The impact, however, is already being felt here. Says Dr Madhav Mohan Godbole, the director of Balgrah, a rehabilitation centre in Rai, Sonepat, “Villagers come to us and plead for brides. They say if we can’t fix them up, they will be forced to buy girls.” Faced with a crisis, even local elections have candidates promising brides in return for votes. Ram Prasad of Seoti village in Sonepat, concedes, “frequent trips are being made from all over Haryana to hunt for girls in Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and even Maharashtra.”
In a typical ‘buying’ scenario, someone with ‘contacts’ in source states facilitates such arrangements in return for kharcha-paani, explains Rishikant of Shativahini. The ‘going rate’ ranges from Rs 6,000 -10,000, depending on the age and virginity. Forced by poverty, many a time the paros also have to ‘accept’ polyandry.
Interestingly, parents of local girls are now spoilt for choice. No one wants a poor or unemployed groom, says Akbar Ahmed of Malabnuhu. Neither are they willing to send their girls to the land of paros.
Post-Marital Blues
Gradually, the cultural impact of these forced marriages is surfacing. Meena, 30, a paro from West Bengal bemoans, “Men here don’t know how to behave. Their language, attitude are very brash.” The women’s movements are kept under ‘close watch’ and they aren’t allowed to visit home for fear that they might escape. “But at least there’s food to eat here, else why would we come so far,” sighs Mamta, a ‘bride’ from Bihar.

Even so, there are ample stories of abuse. Ameena, 13, was sold to a 35-year-old widower Ashok in Seoti, who was desperate for a bride. It didn’t matter even if she was a minor. “Ashok would lock me up in a room, beat me up and sexually abuse me. He wouldn’t let me talk to my mother,” recalls Ameena, who tried to escape a couple of times, before being rescued by Delhi-based NGO Prayas just last month. “He was so much older, and there was a lot of communication problem. So I was just supposed to say yes to whatever he demanded.”

Ameena’s was the first case of trafficking registered in Haryana, as women seldom register complaints due to social pressures. “There’s no complainant, no accused,” laments Sibhash Kaviraj, SP of Mewat. A local police official in Seoti says, “How can we go about breaking homes? Unless villagers inform us of such incidents, our hands are tied… it is their personal matter.” While many like Chandigarh-based Professor Pam Rajput, vice president National Alliance for Women (NAWO), have been advocating frequent compiling of relevant statistics and sensitising both men and women, the administration has clearly, been slow to deal with the issue.
Meanwhile, the chain continues to grow. As the UNFPA report states, it is the poor and landless men who will be most affected by this bridal crisis. Evidently then, 35-year-old Anwari who was, many years ago, married to a man 20 years older than her in Malabnuhu, is worried for her four boys. “They don’t study. Maybe, I will have to buy brides for them also.” Already, across Haryana and Punjab, it’s a common refrain, “Who wants to give girls to poor men like us?” To which, one Ram Dulari of Seoti chides them: “Who will, when you foolish people kill your own girls?”

Ruchika M. Khanna The Tribune Chandigarh
The brutal murder of 14-year-old Tripta (name changed) from Jharkhand, in a non- descript village of Jind, hit the national headlines recently. Her “owner” beheaded her when she refused to bow before his lustful desires.
Last year, the girl had been sold by her poverty-stricken mother in Ranchi, to Ajmer Singh of Dahola village in Jind for Rs 13,000. The latter had then claimed that he was ‘buying’ her as a bride for his brother. After having been kept captive in shanties in Noida and Delhi, she was brought to Dahola and kept locked in Ajmer’s farmhouse.
Braving threats and starvation, she spurned Ajmer’s advances, till one day this February, Ajmer decided it was enough and in a single stroke, beheaded the girl. He has been arrested and is presently under judicial custody.
Surprisingly, despite the national outrage and demands by various human rights groups and NGOs, he has been booked only on charges of murder and not for human trafficking.
This is not just the story of Tripta. The declining sex ratio in the states of Punjab and Haryana, has led to increased trafficking of girls from Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Assam and West Bengal as “made-to-order-brides”, or for sexual exploitation to get a male child, before being deserted.
Sexual and economic exploitation (they are often not given enough money and food) of girls and boys being brought as domestic helps in affluent homes of Punjab and Haryana, could mean many more Triptas in the making. And not just in the two above mentioned states - trafficking of women, children and boys is an offence being committed all over the country.
In fact, after the trade in arms and drugs, human trafficking is the third largest organised crime in the world. It is estimated that over two million women and children are trafficked across the world each year. Of these, 25 per cent are children.
In 2002, the UN reported that seven lakh women and children were being trafficked in Asia each year. Of these, one lakh were in India. Human trafficking has been a part of our history. The socio-economic divide enshrined in our culture has made the deprived sections of society vulnerable to trafficking. However, over the last few years, the increased cases of human trafficking and the myriad forms it has taken, call for much attention.
Girls are being trafficked and pushed into prostitution in Delhi and Mumbai. Boys from the country are sent as camel jockeys (they are tied on the legs of the camel and the louder the child cries, the faster the camel runs) for camel races in West Asia or to serve paedophiles on prowl, at the exotic beaches of Goa and other tourist destinations.
Trafficked boys and girls are also used as drug peddlers or beggars or even as actors in the porn industry. Instances of children being used in pornographic movies, especially related to catasexuality (having sex with animals) and in gray films (sex with dead bodies), have also been reported.
“It’s a harsh reality that as a nation we have failed to protect the basic human rights of the most vulnerable sections in our society - women and children,” says Dr Sunitha Krishnan of Prajwala, an NGO involved in rescuing girls trafficked from Andhra Pradesh.
“India may be a booming economy, but failure of successive governments to secure the basic human rights of its women and children puts a big question mark on the holistic development of the country,” she said.
“India is slowly emerging as a major hub for trafficking. This organised trade operates across borders. Not just are the women and children being trafficked from the poor states to the affluent states within the country and abroad, but a large number of trafficking from neighbouring countries of Nepal and Bangladesh is being routed through India,” says Ms Archana Tamang of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
With the Central and state governments yet to formulate an action plan to deal with the problem, members of the media, NGOs, women’s groups, aided by government agencies, have now decided to act by building effective partnerships.
At a seminar organised by UNIFEM and Shakti Vahini (an NGO working against trafficking) at Goa very recently, members from these groups declared a “war” against trafficking and gender violence.
It has been decided to end the era of working in isolation, and bring about a multi-partner national coalition to monitor and highlight issues related to trafficking and violence with a gender sensitive and rights based perspective.
It remains to be seen to what extent this coalition will succeed in tackling the problem. What is important is that a beginning has finally been made to stir the consciousness of the nation against this crime, to sit up and take action.

Carla Power
Monday 24th April 2006

Modern technology is helping parents in Asia indulge in a hideous practice - killing off their girl children. It’s never been easier to identify a female foetus and abort it.

Grey hair pulled into a tidy bun, blood-orange sari crisp, Sangam Satyavathi marches into the hospital, her team scurrying after her. She is on a raid. As district health officer for Hyderabad, Dr Satyavathi is on a “sting operation” - a surprise visit to a maternity hospital to check its ultrasound records. A nervous knot of doctors and nurses forms around her, under a portrait of the baby Krishna and an advertisement for a General Electric ultrasound machine. This features a pregnant belly and the slogan “We bring good things to life”. Satyavathi and her team frown over ledgers and a pile of Form Fs, required whenever a pregnant woman has an ultrasound scan. Like all the other hospitals in Hyderabad District, this one has been ordered, as part of a local campaign against female foeticide, to present detailed records of any such procedures. “No reports,” says Satyavathi, frowning. “And no consent forms.” “Consent form we are not taking, madam,” ventures a doctor. More poring over ledgers. “You haven’t submitted your forms on time.” “Next time, madam.” “Next time?” she asks. “Now we are going to seize the machine.” Dr Satyavathi’s men go to work. They shroud the ultrasound machine in a sheet, then wrap it in lashings of surgical gauze. They drip red molten wax on the knots. Satyavathi whips out a five-rupee coin and presses it to the wax, sealing the suspect machine with the design of the three-headed lion, symbol of the Indian government. “You see,” she says grimly. “The act is so powerful.” The Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act is powerful indeed, but rarely enforced. Passed after India realised that modern medical techniques such as ultrasound scans and amniocenteses were frequently being used to identify female foetuses - which are then aborted - the PNDT Act requires the registration of all ultrasound machines, and bans doctors from revealing the sex of the foetus to expectant parents.
The 1994 law was an attempt to reverse India’s rampant use of sex-selective abortion, and the lopsided sex ratio this has produced. India’s 2001 census showed that there were 927 girls to every 1,000 boys, down from 945:1,000 in 1991 and 962:1,000 in 1981. Until recently, no doctors had been put in prison under the PNDT Act. But late last month a doctor was jailed for three years after telling an undercover investigator that her foetus was female, and hinting that she could abort it. Arvind Kumar, Hyderabad district collector and Satyavathi’s boss, sees the law as the only practical tool for tackling India’s female foeticide epidemic. Doctors who practise sex-selective abortion, he says, “like any other criminals, should be treated like criminals”. It is uncertain how many such crimes have been committed. A January study in the Lancet estimated that ten million female foeticides had occurred in India over the past two decades. Both the Indian Medical Association and anti-sex-selection activists disputed the findings, saying the numbers were too high.

While the numbers may be a matter of debate, the general trend is not: the ratio of girls to boys in India has been dwindling over the past two decades. In 1991, not a single district in India had a child sex ratio of less than 800:1,000. By 2001, there were 14. “What we’re dealing with,” says Sabu George, India’s leading activist, “is a genocide.” The prospects are even bleaker elsewhere in Asia. In South Korea and China, official numbers suggest that there are 855 girls for every 1,000 boys. In the case of China, independent experts put it even lower, at 826:1,000. Whichever is correct, the Chinese demographic picture is more unbalanced than back in 1990, when the statistics showed 901 girls for every 1,000 boys. Today, in parts of Hainan and Guangdong Prov inces, the ratio is 769:1,000. The Chinese scenario has already produced a glut of bachelors, which experts say will only get worse. A 2002 article in International Security magazine estimated that by 2020 there will be up to 33 million guang guan (”bare branches”), as these young, unmarried men are known. Some demographers have put the figure even higher, at 40 million.

The unwanted girl has a long history in Asia. The first written record of female infanticide dates back to Japan’s Tokugawa period, between 1600 and 1868, when there were nine times as many boys born as girls. A British colonial official in India recorded cases of female infanticide as long ago as the 1780s. In rural India today, there are dais, traditional birth attendants, who still know how to get rid of unwanted baby girls. Classic methods include feeding the newborn rice or salt, or smothering the baby with a pillow. In recent decades, female infanticide has been eclipsed by modern methods of sex determination, including amniocentesis or ultrasound scan, followed by abortion. Activists say female foeticide is merely the first assault on Indian women, and cannot be seen as separate from the whole life cycle of anti-girl practices in India: girl-child neglect, early marriage, the dowry system, domestic violence and honour killings. “Being a girl,” says Sabu George, “is considered a congenital defect.” It is tempting to dismiss Asia’s female foeticide problem as a product of the sexism of “backward” societies. To be sure, the problem stems from traditional belief systems favouring boys, but the prevalence of sex selection is an unexpected side effect of modernity. Female foeticide has been boosted by precisely the trends that make China and India the great success stories of the Noughties: economic liberalisation, growing affluence, increased access to technology, and controlled population explosions. Asia’s dearth of girls, say researchers, is partly a function of official reproductive health policies. In the late 20th century, both China and India embarked on population-control programmes.

In China, from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the government needed female workers, female infanticide dropped to the lowest levels the country had ever known, a 2004 study in the Journal of Population Research reported. After 1979, however, when the infamous one-child policy was introduced, female infanticide and foeticide became more common. In India, the muscular public health campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s drummed home the official line: happy families were small ones. Abortion, legalised in 1970, “was pursued with an almost patriotic zeal”, recalls Dr Puneet Bedi, a Delhi obstetrician and anti-sex-selection activist. Tellingly, the Indian states that did particularly well in curbing population growth - the Punjab, Delhi and Haryana among them - are today those with the most skewed sex ratios. “A large part of the small-family ideal is achieved by eliminating girls,” says George. Pressurised by the government to keep their families small, and by society to produce boys, Indian women turned to modern technology to ensure that they got their treasured sons. India’s new open markets have made it easier. Economic liberalisation in the early 1990s brought not just foreign cars and the outsourcing boom, but the rise of what Bedi calls “medical entrepreneurship”. Easy credit and aggressive marketing by foreign companies made it possible for thousands of clinics to buy ultrasound machines. “The ultrasound machine was marketed like Coca-Cola,” Bedi says.
Between 1988 and 2003, there was a 33-fold increase in the annual manufacture of ultrasound equipment in India. Doctors advertised their possibilities widely. “Boy or girl?” asked adverts, before the PNDT Act outlawed them. A 2005 report by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces noted that sex selection had become “a booming business” not only in India, but also in China and South Korea. In India, the recent Lancet study found sex-selective abortion was far more prevalent among the urban middle classes than the illiterate poor: the more educated the mother, the less likely she was to give birth to a second child who was a girl. Though the practice has recently begun to spread to remote areas and to the south, it has been most widely practised in cities, particularly in the north. It is rare among Dalits and remote tribes and common among Sikhs and Jains, historically wealthy business communities. In Delhi, the leafiest suburbs have the worst sex ratios. Shailaja Chandra, a top-tier civil servant, says that preference for boys is common among the capital’s elites. “They want to keep property in the family,” she says. “Because boys traditionally inherit the wealth, people want boys.” For many activists, India’s female foeticide problem is entwined with the consumer society the country has become over the past 15 years. If one can order a BMW, goes the mindset, one can order a boy. Mira Shiva, a member of both the National Commission for Women and the National Commission on Population, sees the issue of female foeticide as just one example of the rise in violent crime against women, created by India’s quicksilver modernisation. “We’re going through a time of increasing consumerism and materialism, where our values are changing,” she says. “Market-wise, things that are deemed not of value are expendable.” Other traditions have helped make girls seem expendable in Asia. Usually boys, not girls, carry on the family name. In Hinduism, it is the son who lights the funeral pyre when his parents die. In China and South Korea, ancestor-worship rituals are performed by sons and grandsons. In both China and India, boys are viewed as pension schemes, supporting their parents in old age. If boys are a boon, girls are a liability. In India, the birth of a girl eventually entails a dowry, an increasingly expensive proposition. Where the grandmothers of today recall going to their husbands’ homes with a pot or two and a few rupees, a modern dowry can cost hundreds of thousands of rupees. Girls are viewed as both an economic drain and a hassle. The protection of their virginity - central to family honour - creates further stress for parents. Boy-preference is so ingrained in the Indian family system that many women don’t feel they have done their wifely duty until they produce a son. “They want to bend their heads, like sheep being slaughtered,” observes Dr Soubhagya Bhat, an obstetrician-gynaecologist in Belgaum, Karnataka. “The only way they feel their life is fulfilled is if they produce a son.” Governments are trying to change the conventional mindset. In 2003, India’s national government launched a policy of paying homeless women money to help with their newborn babies: girls get double the rupees boys do. In Delhi, the Directorate of Family Welfare has recently come out with a clutch of “Respect the Girls” advertisements, with slogans such as: “If you kill daughters, you will keep searching for mothers, daughters and wives” and “Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa: your daughter can be one of them!” They haven’t worked. The latest statistics suggest that Delhi’s sex ratio stands at roughly 814 girls to 1,000 boys. This is down from 845:1,000 in 2003. If such trends continue, the future could be nightmarish. In their 2004 book Bare Branches: the security implications of Asia’s surplus male population, the political scientists Andrea den Boer and Valerie Hudson argue that the existence of all these millions of frustrated Asian bachelors will boost crime and lawlessness. They speculate that, to find an outlet for the continent’s sex-starved males, Asian governments might even need to resort to fomenting wars. Indian activists also fear that the girl shortage will create a hyper-macho society. Spiralling numbers of rapes and rates of violence will lead to the increasing sequestration of women. Men with money will be able to afford wives, who will quickly become a status symbol. “Powerful men would maintain zanankhanas [harems] to demonstrate their power and influence,” writes the activist R P Ravindra. Poorer men, “finding no companions, might resort to any means to force a woman into a sexual/ marital relationship”. In pockets of India, this has already begun. In Haryana and the Punjab, home to India’s most unbalanced sex ratios, trafficking in women has skyrocketed. Men from these wealthy areas are purchasing wives from impoverished eastern states such as East Bengal and Bihar. This trend of “killing girls in the womb in western states is hurting girls in eastern states who have survived in the womb”, argues Kamal Kumar Pandey, a lawyer with the Shakti Vahini network, an anti-trafficking NGO. Rishi Kant, the network’s founder, brandishes a recent snap-shot showing a bloody, decapitated corpse: a 12-year-old bride wearing a yellow dress. The girl was murdered by the man who bought her for 25,000 rupees, says Kant, because she had refused to sleep with his brother. Tales of violence against bought women, and of brothers sharing wives, are increasingly common in parts of northern India. The spectre of millions of lawless bachelors seems a far cry from the bureaucratic world-view of Arvind Kumar in Hyderabad. If India’s officials could just implement the PNDT Act, he believes, the demographic tide could be reversed. He is just 18 months into the campaign, and so he sounds cautious, but the latest figures suggest that Hyderabad’s sex ratio might be tilting back into balance. He tells of a letter he received recently from a 13-year-old girl who was being belittled by her family for not being a son. Just hearing of his work, she had written, had given her strength enough not to be ashamed of being a girl.

Carla Power is a London-based writer

The Telegraph Kolkatta,

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Ranchi, April 5: A Delhi-based NGO recommended that the government form a committee to check trafficking of tribal girls and women from the state.

Action against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) concluded a two-day workshop on media, inter-religious forum and government sensitisation today.

A Jharkhand declaration with the theme Bandhan Todo, Sambandh Jodo (break bonds and make relations) was formed to pressurise the state government to form the co-ordination committee.

Sanjay Mishra, state coordinator of ATSEC, said it was important to keep a record on migration from the state and encouraged the media and religious leaders to take part.

Participants suggested that NGOs find a way to gather information about girls in bus stands and railway stations they thought may be trafficked.

“There are chances that the middlemen may create a scene in public and the girls will deny that they are being trafficked,” said a NGO representative at the seminar.

The government said it was working on rehabilitation arrangements for rescued girls.

Suman Kumar, assistant director welfare department, said the state government was planning to form Swadhar homes in Ranchi, Palamau and Bokaro where rescued girls would be given counselling and medical treatment.

NGOs said they were not satisfied as Swadhar Yojna is a Union government proposal and has been pending for five years.

“The Jharkhand government has shown no interest in Swadhar Yojna,” said Rishi Kant founder member of Shakti Vahini a Delhi-based NGO.

“Rescued girls are kept at a remand home in Hatia where they are not allowed to meet anyone, not even the people who rescued them,” said Kant.

04.04.06

By Justin Huggler

New Zealand

INDIA - Haryana Tripla’s parents sold her for US$295 ($480) to a man who had come looking for a wife. He took her away with him, hundreds of kilometres across India, to the villages outside New Delhi. It was the last time she would ever see her home. For six months she lived with him in the village, although there was never any formal marriage. Then, two weeks ago, her husband, Ajmer Singh, ordered her to sleep with his brother, who could not find a wife. When Tripla refused, he took her out into the fields and beheaded her with a sickle. When Rishi Kant, an Indian human rights campaigner, tracked down Tripla’s parents in the state of Jharkhand and told them the news, her mother broke down in tears. “But what could we do?” she asked him. “We are facing so much poverty we had no choice but to sell her.” Tripla was a victim of the common practice in India of aborting baby girls, because parents only want boys. Although she was born and lived into early adulthood, it was the abortions that caused her death. In the villages of Haryana, just outside New Delhi, abortions of baby girls have become so common that there is a drastic shortage of women. Unable to find wives locally, the men have resorted to buying women from poorer parts of India. Just 40km from the glitzy shopping centres and apartment complexes of New Delhi, there is a slave market for women. Last week, an Indian doctor became the first to be jailed for telling a woman the sex of her unborn baby and offering to arrange an abortion. India is trying to stamp out the scourge of female feticide. But in the villages of Haryana, the damage has already been done. Indian parents want boys because girls are seen as a financial burden: the parents have to provide an expensive dowry for their weddings, while sons will bring money into the family when they marry, and have better employment prospects. But in Haryana, so many female fetuses have been aborted that there aren’t women for the men to marry. The result is a thriving market in women known in local slang as baros, who have been trafficked from poorer parts of India. Anyone in the villages can tell you the going rates. The price ranges from 3000 rupees ($109) to 30,000 rupees for a particularly beautiful woman. Skin colour and age are important pricing criteria. So is whether the woman is a virgin. When the police arrested Tripla’s husband, he could not provide a marriage certificate. Generally, there is no real marriage. The women are sexual brides only. Sometimes, brothers share one woman between them. Often, men who think they have got a good deal on a beautiful “bride” will sell her on at a profit. Munnia was sold when she was only 17. Considered particularly beautiful, she was sold on three times, to different men, in the space of a few weeks. Like Tripla, she came from Jharkhand, but she was lucky: she escaped. Today she is in a Government shelter for women. “My father sold me to a man called Dharma,” she says. “I don’t know if he paid for me or not. I came to New Delhi with my mother, and then Dharma took me to his village. He used to beat me very badly. He used to hit me until I allowed him to sleep with me.” She was with Dharma just 20 days before he sold her on. Her route criss-crossed northern India: Dharma took her to his home in Rajasthan, before selling her to a man in Haryana. “He told me, ‘I have sold you to a man for 30,000 rupees’,” she says, “but when we got there I realised that man wanted to sell me on as well.” She found a social worker who helped her escape. She was fortunate: few of the women who run away from the villages where she was ever make it out alive. Government medical tests found she had been raped by two different men. She was 17 at the time, and the age of consent in India is 18. Nevertheless, she is lucky. In the villages from which she escaped, there are hundreds of women still trapped in similar slave “marriages”. The village of Ghasera is just 40km from New Delhi, but it is another world. It is still walled, like a fortress from centuries ago. The roads are dirt and the houses ramshackle huts. There are more than 100 imported “brides” in this village alone, according to locals. The people are hostile and even the police don’t risk coming into these villages unarmed. Locals have attacked police who tried to rescue “brides”. Anwari Katun was sold for $366 and brought here from Jharkhand. Katun wants to tell her story, but the villagers crowd into her house and stand by menacingly as she tries to speak. Her fear is evident. Cowed by the crowd she says: “I accept what happened to me. I’m not happy but I accept it. This is a woman’s life. The only thing I want is that this doesn’t happen to my sisters … ” With that she sits in silence. Rishi Kant has spent the last four years rescuing women like Katun. His organisation, Shakti Vahini, has rescued more than 150. But he says he can do nothing for Katun at the moment. The Government shelter in Haryana state has places for only 25 women and it is full. As soon as a place opens up, he says, he will go back for Katun. To get the women out of the villages, he has to enlist the help of the police. In villages like Ghasera, the police raid only in numbers, and only in the middle of the night, when they can take villagers by surprise. But the police are co-operative, and do get the women out. Then the long process of tracking down their parents, and trying to get them home if possible, begins. Many of the trafficked women in the villages are minors. Shabila came to Ghasera from Assam, 1000km away. She says she is 25, but she doesn’t look a day over 15. There is no psychiatric counselling for the women. Some become reconciled to their lives. Afsana speaks openly of her unhappiness in front of her husband: she is not afraid of him. Although there was no formal marriage, they have stayed together and he has not sold her on. “There are several girls who do not want to stay, but what can they do? They are in a helpless situation.” Her husband, Dawood, could not get a wife locally and travelled to Afsana’s native Bihar where he paid $112 for her. He complains that there aren’t enough women in Haryana, but he does not see the link between aborting female fetuses and the shortage. In a village a short drive away, Asouti, you can find the reason behind the suffering of the slave brides. Lakhmi Devi had five abortions, all because the child she was carrying was a girl. She is still tortured by guilt. “It is better for a mother to die than to kill her daughters,” she says. “I was under immense pressure from my husband’s family to provide him with a son.” Eventually, she gave birth to a son, Praveen, and her agony was over. Meanwhile the trafficked women keep coming, from across India, to fill the places of the unborn females.

Pavitra JayaramanSunday, March 5, 2006 (New Delhi):
Villagers in Haryana are trying to tackle the problem of the skewed sex ratio by buying brides from poorer states like Jharkand and Uttaranchal.With an unfavourable sex ratio of 270 boys per 132 girls, 15 girls have been brought into the villages of Haryana from other states in just the last year.”There are very few girls in the village. Otherwise why would we go so far away to get brides?” a local resident said.Minor girls are trafficked and brought into the state for as little as Rs 7000.”My daughter-in-law was from Jharkhand. Her father said we could do whatever we want and that if we want to kill her we should go ahead,” said Om Prakash, the father-in-law of a young girl who was recently hacked to death by her husband in a fit of rage. Social evilLocal NGOs point out that the current situation clearly indicates the prevalence of female foeticide and infanticide in area.”This has not happened in a few days, it is obviously a result of many years of female infanticide and foeticide,” said Rishikant, a member of the NGO Shakti Vahini. Over the last few years, Jharkhand has become one of the main supplier of young brides to Haryana. Last week an NGO rescued three girls from Jharkhand while on their way to Haryana to meet the men they were sold to. However, the girls said they did not want to go back home.”If I go back home I might just be sold all over again. I would rather work and support myself,” said Muniya, one of the victims of trafficking.Official stand Local officials plead helplessness in the matter, saying they can take no action as no formal complaints are registered with them. “Somebody has to file a complaint. We cannot be at the spot all the time. The police have other things to do,” said Mahendra Singh, District Commissioner.However, NGOs say the truth is that nobody wants to get involved and take on villages which don’t take kindly to of interference. Meanwhile, there is no respite for the young girls, who just end up being traded like cattle.

K. Venkateshwarlu

  Middlemen lure them into trade promising jobs as domestic helps

“I was shocked to see 13 women from Andhra Pradesh in Haryana serving as paros, virtually `sexual brides.’

The women-to-men ratio has fallen drastically to as low as 700 to 1000 in that State, especially in places like Soneput,” Rishi Kant, a social activist from Delhi, told The Hindu .

Mr. Kant, credited with rescuing many Andhra women from the flesh trade, narrated tales of how some Haryana men used these women to bear boys and “sold them to others” if they delivered female babies.

The activist, who heads Shakti Vahini, a civil society group with a strength of over 10,000 volunteers in north India, said that despite taking efforts to curb the trend, women from Andhra Pradesh continued to top the list in the brothels of New Delhi’s G.B. Road, followed by those from Nepal.

Concerted approach

“I am puzzled by the trend as Andhra Pradesh is counted as one among the well-developed States. There is something wrong and the Government, police and the community need to ponder,” he said.

The demand for women from Andhra Pradesh could be linked to the increase in migrant labour from Bihar and other northern States, Mr. Kant suggested. Mr. Kant, who is here to form a network of NGOs who could check trafficking in women and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, said he was on the lookout for organisations and community workers who could motivate poor parents in rural areas to stop “donating” their daughters to the flesh trade. “We need to match the traffickers who are united in carrying out their nefarious activities, if we want to checkmate them.”

During Mr. Kant’s interactions with such women in Delhi, they said middlemen and women lured them with jobs as domestic helps.

http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/04/stories/2006110404511300.htm

Ghaziabad: In a shocking revelation, many of the 65 girls living in an orphanage were found to have been sexually and physically abused by the man running the establishment here.

The incident came to light in a joint operation carried out on Thursday by the National Commission for Women (NCW), along with NGOs Shakti Vahini and Stop and a private TV channel.

“The TV channel approached the Commission, seeking our help in cracking down on the abuse of children in the orphanage . We have spoken to the girls and gathered evidence ,” NCW Member Malini Bhattacharya said.

The help of the CISF was taken in the operation, but the children could not be rescued due to administrative hurdles.

Ms. Bhattacharya, however, said she has spoken to the Additional District Magistrate of the district, who assured her that he was posting officials at the ashram to ensure the safety of the girls through the night and that they would be taken to a safe place on Friday.

She said the Commission has written to the Director-General of Police asking for immediate action.

“A majority of the girls were five or six years old and some were in the 17-19 age group,” Ms. Bhattacharya said. She said the NCW was investigating the matter and would prepare a report on it. The owner of the ashram was detained, SSP, Ghaziabad, Piyush Moria said.

Six girls who were rescued by the police refused to leave the ashram and denied flesh trade in the ashram, the SSP said.

PTI

http://www.thehindu.com/2006/12/01/stories/2006120113691700.htm

By Renu Agal
BBC News, Delhi

Shanta looks like any other six-year-old, except there is an open wound on her head, her hands are swollen, chapped and grey and she can barely walk.

She is the youngest of the three little girls aged six to 13 years who were rescued last month from Faridabad in the state of Haryana.

Badly beaten and bruised, the girls all worked as domestic helps just a few miles away from India’s capital, Delhi.

In October, the government enacted a law banning children under 14 from working as domestic servants, at teashops, food stalls, restaurants, hotels or in the hospitality industry.

Beatings

What has baffled many is the reluctance of local police to prosecute the family that employed the children for violating the new legislation.

The sentence for breaking the new child labour law carries a prison sentence of up to two years and a fine of up to 20,000 rupees ($450).

Shanta says she had been working with the family for the past year after her brother left her there.

“I used to work in water the whole day. She [the employer] beat me up regularly with a stick for not finishing my work on time. I was woken at four in the morning and then I had to wash the clothes, sweep and mop the floor,” she told the BBC.

According to Shanta, she was given rice only twice a day - served on the floor - and was made to sleep in the bathroom.

She said that she never complained about her plight as that would have meant more beatings. Two other girls, Rita and Sunita, say they were also abused and locked up like Shanta.

They were rescued by a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) after a neighbour watched them being beaten up and informed the police.

The police filed a complaint against the employers but only under the less severe Juvenile Justice Act rather than the tougher new law.

“These girls were trafficked from West Bengal and then they were illegally confined as bonded labour, they were abused and made to work. Still their employers were not booked under the Child Labour Act,” said Rishi Kant of the Shakti Vahini NGO which rescued the girls.

Worst fears

The employers have already been given bail. Police say they could not have brought a prosecution against Shanta’s employers under the Child Labour Act because the girls were being paid for their work.

“The Child Labour Act is applied only when children under 14 are not paid for their work and when they are trafficked, and since this did not happen, this law was not applied to them, says Faridabad police superintendent Mahinder Singh Sheoran.

Experts say the Child Labour Act does not make that distinction. They say that it bans all children under 14 working as domestic labour and in roadside eateries and hotels.

Haryana Labour Minister Birender Singh supports the district administration’s stand but following pressure from the local media has now ordered that the employers be charged under the Child Labour Act.

Social activists were largely sceptical about the efficacy of the new law when it was brought into force in October. They say cases like Shanta’s confirm their worst fears.

NGOs say that as children continue to work in inhuman conditions, many in the political and administrative establishment continue to remain indifferent to their plight.

Shanta, Rita and Sunita are not the girls’ real names.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6207494.stm

Tarannum Manjul ,Indian Express 23.08.2007

Lucknow, August 22: Is there a connection between the number of missing children in Uttar Pradesh and the child labourers working in various industries across the state? Based on reports from discussions in the Parliament and Supreme Court orders in the last six months, a Delhi- based NGO Shakti Vahini is all set to ask this question from the state government. The NGO will be be filing an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act soon.

According to the NGO, the state fares third in the entire country in the number of missing children and also, identified child labourers. Rishikant of Shakti Vahini said, “Some two months ago, the Supreme Court had asked all the states about the number of missing children in their state and also the number of child labourers rescued. Just three days ago, the question whether the number of missing children can be interlinked with The NGO states that, so far, whatever reports UP has given are only about missing children. The action taken to find them, how many child labourers have been identified and what has been done to rescue them has still not be stated by the government, said the NGO. “We had recently rescued children of Barabanki district from Karnal in Haryana where they were working as child labourers. But the state government has done nothing to rehabilitate them. In fact, they have not even been sent back to their homes,” said Rishikant.

Labour department officials said they were all set to launch a drive to identify the number of child labourers in the state. “The numbers keep changing as we conduct rescues quite regularly. But we will launch a drive to confirm the numbers,” said Labour Secretary Dharam Singh. the number of child labourers was raised in Parliament.”

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=252324

GAJINDER SINGH Chandigarh, Oct. 15: A hunt is on for the parents of a 15-year-old Bengal girl who sold her for Rs 30,000 to a Haryana farmer in a case that highlights trafficking from the eastern state.

“We have arrested Ashok (the farmer) from Sonepat’s Seoti village. We are on the lookout for her parents,” a senior police officer said.

The arrest of Ashok, 30, followed a complaint from the girl - possibly the first in Haryana where such incidents are rare - that he had raped her after she was sold to him about three months ago.

According to the police, when the girl told Ashok she wanted to go home, he refused and, instead, demanded his money back. “It was then that she mustered the courage to ask us for help. She is now in the care of a social organisation in Delhi,” the officer said.

A police team will soon be sent to Nathanpur, her village in Bengal, and to Delhi, where the girl has claimed she was brought by her mother before being sold.

Haryana’s skewed sex ratio (861 girls to 1,000 boys) has fuelled trafficking from states like Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. They are brought for marriage but allegations abound that they are pushed into flesh trade.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071016/asp/nation/story_8439127.asp

Gurgaon, December 8 Abandoned at the Gurgaon bus stand on Thursday, a 14-year-old victim of human trafficking is left in the lurch with no one willing to offer her a solution, or a long-term shelter. Neither the local police stations nor NGOs are ready to take care of her.

First the police handed over the girl to NGO Childline; the latter in turn tried to get her admitted to a nari niketan at Karnal. But the authorities there refused to take her, saying that there was no place.

For the past two days, the victim has been kept at the Gurgaon Childline centre and will probably have to spend longer time there.

“We cannot keep her here for long; we do not have the resources to deal with such cases. We act as an immediate emergency support structure for minor victims,” said Ravi Kumar, executive director of Shakti Vahini - the organisation running Gurgaon Childline centre.

A resident of Gopalganj in Bihar, the victim was married off to a 45-year-old man (one Pramod) as her father could not repay money he had borrowed, the victim has said. The marriage took place in Bihar on March 10, and she was brought to Rohtak a couple of months ago, the victim said.

“My husband does not like me. He used to come home drunk every evening and beat me up,” she said. On Thursday, Pramod took her out to show the city. “I thought he has changed.”

She was of course wrong - Pramod took her to Gurgaon bus station and then excused himself, the victim said. After waiting for his return for over an hour, she started looking for him.

“On inquiring, the rickshaw pullers around said the man with me had gone away. I could not believe it,” she said. She waited for another two hours before the rickshawpullers took her to the local police station. A case of missing child was registered and she was handed over to childline workers.

The counsellors at the centre spoke to her and found that she was a human trafficking victim and needed to be put at a place where she would get protection and care while investigations were carried out against her husband.

She was taken back to the police station to register a fresh case of trafficking, but the cops refused to do so.

City Police Station SHO said, “We cannot register the case because the crime was not committed here. She was sold in Bihar and the case has to be registered there.”

On Friday, she spent the whole day in courtroom. Childline workers appealed that she be sent to nariniketan in Karnal. But the SDM refused, stating, “There is no place in Nariniketan.”

While the NGO workers are trying to figure out the logistics and possible action to be taken against her absconding husband and her father, the girl is unsure of what the future holds for her. But she is sure that she does not want to go back home. “My father will not let me stay there. He had even tried to sell me off to an orchestra two years back,” she said.

Head of Shakti Vahini, Ravi Kant, said they will keep the girl till the authorities find a way around the bureaucratic setbacks.

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Trafficking-victim-awaits-permanent-home/248285/

Gurgaon, November 8 A couple working as senior executives in a Gurgaon-based IT firm were arrested on Saturday for brutally beating up their teenaged domestic help. The victim, Lakhi, 13, was rescued by a team from the National Commission for Women (NCW). She had swollen eyes, burns and bruises on her hand and forehead, and two fingers broken.

Lakhi comes from Karimganj in Assam, near the Indo-Bangla border, and was employed by Debojyoti and Parinita Das - both senior executives in the same Business Process Outsourcing firm - this April, the police said.

Sector 56 police station SHO Hawa Singh confirmed: “The couple has been arrested for cruelty meted out to the girl.”

According to police, the couple beat up the girl after she was unable to complete a household chore. The couple stays in Kendriya Vihar, Sector 56.

The incident reportedly came to light on Friday night, when a neighbour lodged a complaint with NCW about the couple’s “cruelty” towards their household help. Subsequently, a team of activists from NCW and the NGO Shakti Vahini reached their house early on Saturday and rescued the girl.

Parinita Das initially denied that they had hit Lakhi - “they are old wounds” - but later admitted she had beaten her up. The victim said the family would manhandle her regularly at the smallest of mistakes. “They would twist my little finger, bang my head against the wall, and slap me if I did anything that displeased them,” Lakhi alleged.

DCP (East) Jagdish Nagar, meanwhile, did not confirm whether Lakhi is a juvenile. He said: “It is uncertain that the rescued girl is a juvenile (below 14 years for child labour, and 18 years for other cases). We are waiting for the medical report and subsequently decide whether to include charges under the Juvenile Protection Act.” The victim has been sent to Salam Balak Trust for the time being.

The NCW and NGO activists said help from the police and the District Commissioner’s (DC) office came long after they had made a complaint. Manju Hebrom, an NCW member, said, “We called the DCP (East) to help us by sending a police team this morning but he refused, and cited lack of orders from the DC office.

“He called later and said an SHO would help us in the rescue operation, though he (SHO) arrived hours later.”

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/gurgaon-exec-couple-held-for-cruelty-towards-help/383277/

NEW DELHI, Nov 8 - A couple hailing from Assam has been detained by Haryana Police for allegedly torturing their minor maid, following a complaint lodged by National Commission for Women and a NGO, Shakti Vahini. When the NCW team led by its member Manju Hembrom accompanied by the NGO and local Police raided the Sector 56 house of Debok Das, they were shocked to discover that the 13-year-old girl had been often subjected to scalding with hot tawa and her mouth smashed against the wall. They landed at the couples’ flat following a tip off by a neighbour.
Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini, who was part of the raiding team, told this newspaper that the girl’s body bore marks of severe torture by the couple, who hail from Guwahati. The girl has been sent to Rescue Home and the couple’s arrested by Haryana Police on the basis of the complaint by NCW, he added.
They have been charged under Juvenile Justice Act, Bonded Labour Abolition Act and various provisions of the Indian Penal Code.
Das and his wife Paramita are a working couple, while the husband works for a reputed BPO company, based in Gurgaon, the wife is working for a biological company. Both were mid-level management executives. The couple also has two children.

Ravi Kant said they were still trying to figure out the girl’s address. She told the Police that she hails from ‘No Man’s Land’ area in Karimganj district in Barak Valley. She has disclosed that she is actually a Bangladeshi national.
The girl was brought to Haryana some four-five months back by the couple’s maternal uncle, who is a resident of Assam.

http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/details.asp?id=nov0908/at06

Almost two weeks after a team from the National Commission for Women (NCW) and an NGO rescued teenaged domestic help who was brutally beaten up by her employers in their Gurgaon residence, Haryana Governor A R Kidwai on Friday took the issue forward. Kidwai asked the NCW to compile various cases of women and child trafficking and domestic labour in Haryana.

He asked the Commission to submit the report by Monday.

Kidwai took the step after representatives from the NCW and the NGO (Shakti Vahini) met the Haryana governor at Haryana Bhawan in the Capital today. At the meeting they discussed developments in the case of the domestic help Lokkhi. The girl’s employers, Devokjyoti and Paromita Das, were arrested on November 8 and charged with battering the teenager. They were later released on bail.

About asking the NCW to compile all such cases of abuse of helps and trafficking in the state, Kidwai said a meeting with officials from both the government and the state police would be held after going through the whole case study.

“Lokhhi’s medical reports confirmed that she is 15 years old,” NCW member Manju Hambrom said. “The tests have confirmed that she has partially lost vision in her right eye and that both her little fingers have been damaged permanently.”

She also told Kidwai that the case

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/lokkhi-abuse-haryana-governor-takes-note/389038/

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Ranchi, Jan. 6: A National Commission for Women (NCW) member, Manju Hembrom, has decided to visit child trafficking hotbeds in the state and conduct a series of workshops. The visits will be part of a campaign undertaken by the commission called Chalo Gaon Ki Or.

“The child trafficking issue has assumed an alarming proportion, but the state government lacks the will to end this menace. That’s why the NCW has decided to rope in rural boys and girls to battle the menace,” Hembrom said.

She was in the city today to attend a round table conference on trafficking and immoral trafficking prevention act organised in association with NCW, Action Against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Shakti Vahini.

“This issue largely concerns the state social welfare department, but I was very surprised that some officials didn’t even have the courtesy to attend the conference that focused on an immediate plan of action to tackle child trafficking,” she said.

“We have decided to go ahead with our plans to organise workshops in Simdega, Gumla, Lohardaga, Khunti, Sahebganj. Many minor girls are trafficked to the metros from these places,” she said.

She said the state should also have a Nari Niketan on the lines of other trafficking-prone states such as Delhi and Haryana do.

According to Action Against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children, the trafficking figures in the state increased from 20 per cent to 67 per cent in last five years.

Illegal mining in the face of falling groundwater levels and non-implementation of environment rules is posing a huge problem for the NCR. After Gurgaon, where groundwater levels have considerably gone down, it’s now Faridabad district where mining activity is gaining momentum.

A Faridabad based NGO, Shakti Vahini, has decided to oppose the Haryana government’s decision to permit four new mines to come up in the area. According to group members, the two existing mines have not been following any environment rules, carrying out plantations, dust management or air pollution control methods. “Groundwater levels in the NCR are in a critical stage.

Be it Gurgaon, Faridabad or surrounding areas, the groundwater levels have plummeted in the recent past, specially where mining has been taking place. In such a situation, where neither rules are being followed and where more mining will only further endanger natural resources, the government should not be permitting more such activities to start,” said Ravi Kant, executive director, Shakti Vahini.

On the basis of RTIs filed by the NGO, it found out that neither Haryana Pollution Control Board nor Central Pollution Control Board were carrying out any inspections at the two existing mines. According to a letter filed by the director, Mining and Geology, mining in the area was essential since the existing two mines “are not able to meet out the demand of building material in and around Delhi and Faridabad” and that the “two stone mines situated in villages Sirohi and Khori Jamalpur are likely to be exhausted in maximum next two years of duration as well”.

Every time you see a swanky new building coming up in Delhi, think of the ravaged Aravalis, savagely slashed along the red quartize face, innards gouged out. Think of the labourers working in dust-laden pits and stone crushers for 12 hours, if not longer, for Rs 100 a day — work that, more often than not, leaves them with tuberculosis or silicosis a few years down the line.

Think of Khori Jamalpur and Sirohi — the two legal stone quarries with a cumulative area of about 267 hectares, adjacent to the Pali-Sohna state highway where it cuts across backward Mewat, bringing to its people some temporary easy cash, but devastating their environment for successive generations. If you saw this bombed out tract of hills, just 36 km from Delhi, you would admit that the supply of stone chips for all constructions in the NCR comes at a high price. Perhaps, unacceptably high.

The mines were started here with the Supreme Court’s nod and also its guidelines for mining. When the apex court decided on Monday that the entire Aravali range in Gurgaon district would first be mapped by satellite imagery before new areas are opened up for mining, it overlooked this part of the Faridabad district.

If it were to map this area too, and back that up with a ground-level survey, it would find that its own guidelines have been thrown to the winds.

The world’s oldest mountain range, standing guard against the desertification of the Indo-Gangetic plains, has been virtually decimated in these parts. Mining here doesn’t have environment clearance. While the Central Pollution Control Board said in reply to a RTI application that the mines here don’t have an NOC from them, the Haryana Pollution Control Board claimed to TOI that since “minor minerals” (quartzite) were being mined, no NOC is required.

The violations appear to be many. We saw child labour in the mines, quarry and crusher workers working without mandatory safety equipment like masks, ear plugs and body suits. We were told about scant medical facilities, common respiratory diseases. We also saw boulder-laden trucks — 3,200 of them carry away 1,000 tonnes of stones every day, according to the manager of the Khori Jamalpur mines — using the Ballabhgarh-Pali-Sohna state highway, reducing it to a cratered mess, when they are supposed to take another road, specially built for the trucks by cutting through the Aravalis. Cops ignore mining violations: SP

While the Supreme Court on Monday took note of the ecological concern over mining in Aravali range in Gurgaon district and ordered the region to be mapped by satellite imagery before new areas are opened up for mining, at Khori Jamalpur and Sirohi mines in Faridabad it’s business as usual.

The two mines yield stones worth Rs 2.17 crore every day, according to NGO Shakti Vahini that works in this area. For every truck that goes out of the area, the company makes a profit of Rs 6,800 — it pays Rs 1,200 as tax to the government and sells the stones for Rs 8,000.

When TOI spoke to Faridabad superintendent of police Srikant Yadav about the violation by the trucks, he said: “They are supposed to use the inner road but the SHO sometimes asks for permission to let them use the main road during the rains when the road meant for trucks is all slush and mud.” He rang back to say that trucks carrying stone chips were allowed, but not those with boulders. We mostly saw trucks heaped with boulders on the highway.

On being told that the main road is used even at such times when the inner road is motorable, the SP said: “It’s a violation that smacks of connivance with the local police.” Gurgaon deputy commissioner Vijender Singh, however, said there is no rule about trucks not being allowed on the road. “How can you exclude vehicles from a state highway? There are plans to get a cement-concrete road there constructed on BoT basis,” he said.

Inside the mines, it’s a shocking spectacle of a mountain range systematically being torn piece by piece to fuel development. “We build Delhi,” said a proud Surender Sharma, manager of Khori Jamalpur stone quarry. That he surely does, even if it is to the ruin of the Aravalis.

The mandatory afforestation that mines are expected to do is sketchy here — the sturdy jatropha and Gulmohar have been planted on heaps of malba and waste near the road but not on the Aravali hills for the simple reason that by the time mining is over, there is nothing left in the soil to sustain plant life. As we went deeper into the mining area, we found the remunerative jatropha had been replaced by keekar, a coloniser, known to deplete any soil of nutrients.

This, despite a stringent “sustainable development” clause set down by the Supreme Court.

DC Vijender Singh said whether the Supreme Court guidelines on afforestation were being followed or not was something to be ensured by the department of mining and geology, government of Haryana. “I will get it checked nevertheless,” he added helpfully.

M P Sharma, mining engineer with the state’s department of mining and geology, gave a clean chit to the mines. “Everything that happens there is completely scientific. The water table is 80-90 metres below and the mines never reach that deep,” he claimed, even though the mine staff itself said mining stopped only 3 metres above the ground water level.

And when the water table was breached, pumps were used to pump out the water and go deeper.

The lease period of both the mines is set to expire in February 2009, but mine manager Surender Sharma said that an application has already been moved for a twoyear extension. If the extension is given, the ruin of the area will be still more extreme. Engineer M P Sharma denied any application for an extension of lease: “They have only asked for permission to increase their yield from 5 lakh tonnes per month to 9 lakh tonnes. We are considering it.” The mines manager, however, said the output was already 8 lakh tonnes a month.

The DC is categorical that the only complaints he has ever received from the area are about exploitation of workers but “inquiries have showed there is no truth is them. They have all the facilities and we have organized regular health checkups that do not show that they are surviving from any specific disease.”

Nishi Kant, a volunteer with the NGO Shakti Vahini, says that crusher workers cannot continue beyond a few years as they fall prey to tuberculosis or silicosis because they constantly breathe in fine stone dust that line the lungs, soon making them virtually useless.

We spoke to a worker, who did not wish to be identified. “We live in cramped rooms,” he said. “There are no medical facilities here. If it’s a minor ailment, they give some medicines but the moment they realise it is something complicated, we are just asked to go home and return when we are ok. Few do.”

Source:The Times Of India September 4th, 2008

26 Sep 2008, 0235 hrs IST,

Himanshi Dhawan, TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/North_East_girls_caught_in_sex_racket_Govt_orders_probe/articleshow/3528699.cms

NEW DELHI: The government has ordered an inquiry into reports of girls from the northeast being trafficked to Malaysia for sex work. NGOs

claimed that as many as 150 girls were reported to have been promised jobs in Singapore but landed up in clubs in Kaula Lampur instead.

The ministry of overseas Indian affairs (OIA) has ordered an inquiry into the reports. “I am looking into the matter. We have also alerted our embassies in Singapore and Malaysia,” Vayalar Ravi, OIA minister said. The minister has directed the Protectorate of Emigrants (PoE) officer to track records on the basis of which these girls were taken.

Complaints were received from Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) and Shakti Vahini regarding trafficking of girls from Zeliangrong community in Tamenglong district in Manipur. The two NGOs were alerted after three girls escaped from their traffickers in Malaysia and were rescued by a priest. He, in turn, got in touch with NPMHR, Unifem and Shakti Vahini.

Shakti Vahini’s executive director Ravi Kant said, “This information only hints at what could be a larger racket of human trafficking from the N-E.” While details are not forthcoming, NGOs said that a Singapore-based group was recruiting girls not just from Manipur but Guwahati, Kolkata, Dimapur and Shillong. NGOs also claimed that five girls on their way to Singapore were intercepted and rescued at Dimapur recently.

The N-E has emerged as a source-transit-destination point for trafficking of women and children. The region’s proximity to the country’s porous borders has made human trafficking from Nepal and Bangladesh easy while girls from Manipur, Nagaland and Assam find their way to Delhi, Mumbai and southeast Asian countries.

Human trafficking, coupled with trafficking of drugs and arms, has left the entire region in turmoil and internal strife. Concerned over the increasing number of fake recruiting agencies, the ministry has planned to strengthen the Emigration Act that will allow authorities to take stringent action against fraudulent agents. The amendments to the legislation are in the pipeline.

2 Mar 2007, 0039 hrs IST,

Dhananjay Mahapatra & Himanshi Dhawan, TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1709762.cms

NEW DELHI: Government proposes to broaden the definition of ‘‘brothel” to include those massage and beauty parlours as well as dance bars where prostitution takes place in various guises - a move which could lead to harassment of a wide range of establishments.

Working on suggestions of an NGO, Shakti Vahini, government has modified the definition of brothel in the modified Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Amendment Bill, 2006. This was stated by advocate Rajiv Datta after the hearing in Supreme Court on Shakti Vahini’s PIL on trafficking of women.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices D K Jain and V S Sirpurkar expressed anguish at the slow pace in which the government was working on the suggestions of the petitioner and asked Datta to inform the court about the status of the Bill during the next hearing.

Datta said the government has incorporated the changes suggested by the petitioner to make the punishment for offences more stringent and modify the definition of ‘brothel’ to include “parlours, bars and such places being used for prostitution to bring them under the ambit of the law”, he said.

These are part of the amendments under consideration by the ministry of women and child development (WCD) and include a more stringent definition of “trafficking in persons” on the lines of International Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons and “enhancing the punishment for a person who keeps or manages or acts or assists in keeping or management of a brothel”.

October 26, 2006 13:27 IST
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/oct/26paro.htm

Devdas’ Paro may have been the cynosure of his eyes, but love and family are distant dreams for the ‘Paros’ of Haryana and Punjab.

Women, who are sold in marriages to people in Punjab and Haryana from the Northeast, are called ‘Paros’ there. Every village in these two states has a host of such ‘Paros.’

Executive director of the Shakti Vahini Ravi Kant, participating in a National Media Consultation on Human Trafficking, HIV/AIDS and Drug Trafficking in Guwahati on Thursday said, “The girls mostly enter into forced marriages with grooms of the northern states and the villagers there are quiet vocal about them.”

He said the growing demand for girls in the northern fringes due to declining sex ratio had led to the increasing trafficking of women from the Northeast. The sex ratio in North Eastern states was much better compared to other states, he added.

“The current child sex ratio in Punjab and Haryana is about 600. One can well imagine the scenario in 15 years time,” he added.

The Northeast, with a vast unexposed and vulnerable population, is becoming the latest source to meet the demand. Ravi claimed that highly well organized networks functioned in the region that coordinated trafficking of girls.

“At times, the girls are sent with the consent of their families. However, more often than not, they are sexually exploited there,” he added.

He cited the recent instance of a girl from Jharkhand who was killed by her in-laws who were pushing her into a relationship with her brothers-in-law. Underlining that inter-state marriages or migration could be stopped, he said a record of the girls going out should be maintained.

On 27^th of August Childline Gurgaon received an urgent request for help forwarded by Childline( North Regional Resource Center) on the compliant of  Mr. Snehaish from SPAR Cooch Behar Project West Bengal to rescue a victim named Sabita Dey from the clutches of the Trafficker Suraj Bhan stationed at Bhadhurgarh District Jhajjar  Haryana.

On 28^th August a team of Shakti Vahini Anti Trafficking cell under the leadership of Shri Nishi Kant Director Programme reached Bhadhurgarh contacted the SSP Jhajjar Shri Vikas Arora and requested to conduct a raid to rescue a minor girl Sabita Dey.

As per the information which we received through Email, contacted Smt. Tanuja Bibi and Asha Devi and picked them up from there Factory and requested them to help, with the supported of the SHO City Police Thana. Information was collected from both of them, as Asha Devi used to live in the same building in which the trafficker was living so we went straight to her house but unfortunately Trafficker Suraj Bhan was not at home,from there we went to the shop were he has been working as Tailor. At last we were able to nab Suraj Bhan.

He was then taken to City Police Thana and was kept in custody. Information was collected from Suraj Bhan about the girl Sabita. First he refused to give any information latter when police interrogated he gave all the information, that he had brought the girl from West Bengal, but only two days back  has sent her back to her home with two boys who were from the same village from were Sabita used to come from.

On the precautionary measure Suraj Bhan was kept in Custody and we were requested to collect information from our sources weather the Girl has reached her home .The Coordinator SPHAR Cooch Behar was contacted in the night itself and was requested to visit her house at the village Dilmadia and see in person weather the girl has reached home safely. It was only when we got the information that she reached her home, we requested the SSP to leave Suraj Bhan on the bond of the landlord that whenever required he will produce him.

Later Coordinator SPHAR Cooch Behar Project was requested to counsel the child and collect information if any kind of physical or sexual abuse was forced by Suraj Bhan.Till date no information has been received from Mr Snehaish so futher development in the case remains pending.

Namita Kohli

The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, 14 Oct 2007

It’s a two-way street: of greed and need. When traffic flows, at the dead end are unsuspecting people, bartered every day in a consumerist society. As the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) identifies India as a top  source, transit and destination country for human trafficking, the spotlight is, yet again, on the issue and its million victims.
Prerna, 14, was lured from Andhra Pradesh to Delhi, by her aunt. On reaching the city, she was sold to a brothel for a paltry sum. “I don’t know who raped me, but there was blood on my body when I got up the next morning. We were told that if we escaped, the police would beat us black and blue,” she says, adding, “Those who don’t manage to escape, eventually turn into traffickers themselves.”
One crime, many faces
For those working against trafficking, one of the biggest challenges is its ‘multi-faceted’ nature. In a rapidly transforming society,  demands are ever-changing: prostitution, domestic work, friendship clubs, child sex tourism, migrant labour, forced marriages, even adoption. The human trafficking market feeds on all these.
“A low female sex ratio in Punjab and Haryana has given rise to trafficking in brides from poorer states like Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. They are brought for marriage, but many times they are forced into the sex trade,” says Rishi Kant, anti-trafficking activist at Shakti Vahini, a Faridabad- based NGO. In a city like Delhi, says Kant, domestic help placement agencies - all unregistered - are also trafficking women and children in droves. In one recent case, Darjeeling’s Priya Tamang, 12, came to Delhi with an IB official who promised her parents to educate her. The child later fled and told the police that they treated her as a maid. She is now staying in a Nari Niketan home in Karnal.
“It’s a colonial mindset of ‘master’ and ‘slave’,” says Bharti Sharma, chairperson, Child Welfare Committee. Sharma, who works with minor victims at the Nirmal Chaya Complex in Delhi, says she hears stories of multiple abuse inflicted upon children in domestic work. Away from their families, the child is not allowed to build a social network. Sexual, mental and economic abuse follows. In a fight or flight situation, more often than not the latter happens. “It’s here that either the child is restored to the police or goes untraceable.” Of late, she says, traffickers have also been tapping yet another market: adoption rackets. “It’s a complex crime, with multiple layers.”
To and fro
Even more complex are the routes charted by traffickers. According to a 2005 National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) study by Dr PM Nair and Sankar Sen, trafficking from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal is about 10 per cent; 89 per cent of the crime takes place internally. The UNODC report clearly shows the major ‘harvesting’ zones: Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand and Orissa. High demand areas point towards Goa, Maharashtra and Delhi. “As a transit point, Delhi scores on good connectivity - international airports and railways stations - so criminals are using it for trafficking people to Pakistan and the Middle East,” says Delhi Police PRO Rajan Bhagat. “Girls from predominantly tribal areas like Jharkhand are easy to lure,” says Manju Hebrom, member, National Commission for Women. Due to poverty, she says, young people become easy prey for the traffickers, who have extensive links in remote areas. From there, victims are transported in an organised way, with bodies changing hands and transaction made at each stage in the process.
The law is an ass
“The Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act  (ITPA) concentrates more on prostitution, than the other forms of trafficking. Labour laws that permit the movement of people also need to be amended,” says SC Raina, professor in charge, Campus Law Centre at Delhi University. A constitutional mandate under Article 23, the Indian Penal Code and a host of other laws like the JJ Act complete the legal framework against trafficking. But implementation is the problem. Prosecution is often delayed, witnesses are not protected and the ‘victim’ is made the criminal. “Also, the police often don’t even register an FIR,” says Hebrom.
“We need to kill the source of demand,” says Renuka Chowdhury, minister for Women and Child Development, referring to Section 5C of the ITPA, one of the proposed amendments that penalises the customer. She points to the prosecutions in Andhra Pradesh : 1,008 traffickers and over 300 customers were arrested this year.
“As of now, the victim doesn’t even have the right to represent,” says lawyer Aparna Bhat, pointing to the situation where the ‘victim’ turns into a mere witness. She stresses the importance of anti-trafficking units (ATUs) and regional cooperation. This year, for the first time, ATUs were set up in Andhra Pradesh, Goa and West Bengal.
Rescue to restore to rehabilitate
But this is only half the battle won. The NHRC study found that 24 per cent of the ‘rescued’ victims are pushed back into the trade. At the UNODC conference, Chowdhury rattled off a slew of rehabilitation schemes and stressed that state governments should take action. Meanwhile at the same event, corporates waxed eloquent on ‘strategic philanthropy’. But on the ground level, things aren’t as simple.
“In a country where even the Below Poverty Line card is possessed by only those who can buy it, schemes don’t reach the needy,” says Sharma, recalling instances of children being re-sold by parents as bonded labour in Bihar.
“A successful rescue operation is a lost effort without rehabilitation,” says Kant. Ask the authorities to define rehabilitation and most talk of making the victims self-reliant by giving them stitching, knitting or beauty training. “None of these vocations is lucrative enough and soon, leads to frustration,” argues Gary Lewis, UNODC representative.
But time is running out for victims like Rekha, who was rescued from Delhi’s red light area in 2001. She was only 14 when she left Jharkhand to work in Delhi as a domestic help. One day, she decided to return home. While waiting at a bus stop, a friendly ‘auntie’ offered her a drink. The next thing she remembers is waking up in GB Road. “I was beaten, assaulted and raped,” says Rekha who was rescued a month later. Two years later, she was still languishing in a rescue home, waiting for the verdict. One of the many stories that NHRC has recorded, Rekha says, “I wish I hadn’t been rescued.”
Piecemeal efforts are on to ensure that these girls don’t end up as mere case studies. Perhaps, as Nair suggests, well-coordinated community policing that’ll emerge from the concerted effort of the law-enforcers and the vigilant citizens can prevent the menace.
14 years, countless cases
“I have lost count of the number of rescue operations I’ve been part of,” says 39-year-old Ravi Kant, who has been working against human traffickers for the last 14 years.
Since 2001, Kant has been running his NGO Shakti Vahini in Uttar Pradesh. Here, he narrates  some of his field experiences - a grim reminder of the crime that’s taking place somewhere around our comfort zones.
December 2006, Faridabad (UP): This was a very disturbing case of child sexual abuse. A young couple had brought three minor girls to Faridabad for domestic work. The children, who were not even in  their teens, were kept captive in the toilet. They were served food on the toilet floor, beaten and sexually abused. I saw injury marks on their bodies. When we reached the house, the lady refused to open the door, but later gave in. The police arrested the couple, but there was a lot of pressure to release them. As for the girls, they were very traumatised and could barely speak. To add insult to injury, the victims are sometimes made to sit on the floors to narrate their stories.

December 2006, Jind (Haryana): One Ajmer Singh lured a 13-year-old girl, Tripala, from Jharkhand on the pretext of marrying her. She was taken to a farmhouse where she was asked to have sex with his brother. When she refused, Singh slit her throat. I traced her parents to Ranchi. When I broke the news of her murder to them, they were shattered. In many such forced marriages, parents back home are unaware of their daughter’s fate.
December 2006, Delhi: One night, I got a call from the local informants about Manju. She had been trafficked from Latur, Maharashtra, to a brothel in Kamala market. When I reached the spot with my team some 25 minutes later, their musclemen were hanging around, as always. The senior women in the brothel, who are usually aware of the law, tried to stop us by raising a hue and cry. Usually, in such times, they hide the victim in a water tank or the attic. But Manju was in a room. She had managed to persuade another victim to come to us. The girls had been beaten, raped, and had faced a lot of violence. As we took them out, all sorts of threat followed. ‘Dekh lenge, aapne accha nahi kiya,’ they said. The threats and menacing glares followed us in court as well. In places like Delhi, rescue operations are easier. But in smaller cities like Agra and Meerut, the local police are at times hand-in-glove with brothel-owners, making the operation difficult.

October 2005, Haryana: Three girls from Assam and West Bengal were trafficked to Mewat and were about to be sold for marriage. The whole village was up in arms against the rescue operation. Even the police were sceptical. Some violence also took place. It took us two to three hours to counsel them. ‘What would you do if these were your daughters? These are human beings, they can’t be sold like property,’ we appealed to them. They finally gave in.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=506adf7a-1ffd-485b-b919-473bbd27545d&MatchID1=4580&TeamID1=7&TeamID2=3&MatchType1=2&SeriesID1=1149&PrimaryID=4580&Headline=Seduced%2c+imported%2c+sold…

Slavery is not dead in India. Fuelled by trafficking, it is spreading far and wide. Thousands of Indians, especially women and children, are trafficked everyday to some destination or the other and are forced to lead lives of bondage. They survive in brothels, factories, guesthouses, dance bars, farms and even in the homes of well-off Indians, with no control over their bodies and lives. Women and children are also being trafficked for illegal adoptions, organ transplants, the circus and the entertainment industry.

In 2000, the United Nations defined trafficking as: “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception…for the purpose of exploitation…Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. “Although cross-border trafficking of women and children has been a problem in India for the last two decades, NGOs and academic researchers say that there has been a phenomenal growth in inter-state trafficking in the last five years. While India is both a source and conduit for international traffickers, 89 per cent of trafficking in India is inter-state.

Shakti Vahini, an NGO working on anti-trafficking issues, claims that traffickers are not just getting women and children to brothels or to tourist spots: young women from conflict-ridden states like Assam or drought-prone states like Andhra Pradesh are being sold as ‘brides’ in  Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. It is well-known that due to rampant practice of female feticide in the last two decades, Haryana has a severe shortage of women. The traffickers, who include even women, lure young girls with the promise of a job or simply abduct them and bring them to Haryana. Here, they are not married, but kept as ‘wives’ by men. Shakti Vahini says these women are caged in homes and undergo rape almost everyday.

Several tribal women and minors from states like Jharkhand and Bihar reach Delhi and NOIDA to work as domestic labor. A few months ago, the Human Rights Law Network, the National Domestic Workers movement and the National Commission for Women organized a public hearing of domestic workers (some as young as eight years) in Delhi. They all had horror tales to tell: some children said they are beaten with brooms, rods and belts. The women are often raped and if they try to leave, they are not paid their wages. Several of these women come from ‘placement agencies’ which have mushroomed all over Delhi.

In some parts of Punjab, women and children (mostly dalits and tribals) from states like Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand are increasingly being used as farm labor. They are sold to rich farmers who use them as bonded labor: they get no money, no rest and no freedom. One researcher has described what these persons face in the first few days of being trafficked. “They are starved, locked up in dark rooms, burnt with cigarettes butts, bound and tortured and sometimes killed for not trading their bodies. Children usually relent in seven to 10 days…”

While earlier women and children were largely trafficked from poor states, today the northeastern states - Nagaland, Assam and Manipur - have also joined the list.

In 2004, a report, ‘Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children in India’, commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) - in collaboration with UNIFEM and the Institute of Social Sciences - revealed that every year over 22,000 women and 44,00 children are reported missing in India. Of these, more than 5,000 women and 11,000 children are not traced. Many of the persons missing are actually trafficked. In states like Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu, the rate of missing children had increased from 100 to 211 per cent!

Like slavery, trafficking offers huge profits. According to the NHRC report, transactions in prostitution itself are worth Rs 185 million a day Rs 370 billion per year. Human trafficking is globally the largest source of profit after arms and drug trafficking. And, comparatively, the least risky. Experts feel that the government, law enforcement agencies, politicians and the general public should be more pro-active in tackling the issue. In 2004, the US government put India on the Tier 2 Watch list (along with six other Asian countries), for its inadequate response to the trafficking issue. The US government has also threatened to impose sanctions if the situation does not improve.

The Indian government has made efforts to prevent trafficking in the last few years. But a lot more can be done by engaging with important stakeholders from the judicial and law enforcement sectors. Strengthening of inter-departmental (government) collaboration and cooperation and bringing in accountability and transparency in government actions are areas that need to be worked on.

In 2002, Shakti Vahini filed a public interest litigation seeking to know how far the states had been able to implement the recommendations (made in 1998) of the Report Committee on Prostitution, Children of Prostitutes and Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking and Commercial Exploitation of Women and Children. Two years later, the states submitted their replies: none, except Andhra Pradesh, appeared to have taken any concrete steps. Some states have not even formed the basic committees to coordinate work on anti-trafficking. None of the state governments have conducted any mapping activity to determine the extent of trafficking, an essential requirement under the plan.

Training police officers to handle cases with greater sensitivity; setting up minimum standards of care for survivors of trafficking; coordinating law enforcement in the case of missing persons - the states have not set these processes in motion. Despite the enormous number of people trafficked, very few traffickers are arrested and prosecuted.

Of course, despite the cracks in the system, there are rays of light beaming through. Small, though significant, initiatives have been taken in recent years by NGOs by creating awareness on the issue, rescuing trafficked persons and getting the traffickers arrested.

However, this is a mammoth task. War against slavery needs a multi-disciplinary approach. Women and Child Development, Labour, Home and External Affairs - all these agencies must move beyond rescue operations to rehabilitation and integration of trafficked victims.

But this is not the government’s problem alone. Ordinary citizens - those who don’t mind hiring children in their factories or homes; who discriminate against the girl child; who look the other way when the issue of the use of children in sex tourism is brought up; who buy organs without bothering to check how the donation has been made; and who cannot see that the largest number of poor people are women - can be major agents of change.

The foundations of several ancient civilizations were based on slavery. Global India must not repeat history.

-  Malvika Kaul
May 29, 2005

By arrangement with Womens Feature Service

August 25th, 2008 by Bismillah Geelani

Parents of missing children are protesting in New Delhi demanding authorities take action to find their children.

They fear they have become victims to the human traffickers. The problem is so rife that the US “Trafficking in persons report” places India on Tier second of its watch list.

The report states that India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.

Bismillah Geelani meets with the victims and the desperate parents.

16-year old Munna hobby is to go to music shops and listen to Hindi songs.

Six years ago, he was kidnapped from one of these shops.

A year later he was released but without his right hand and left foot.

He says his captors chopped his limps off so he could earn more money as a beggar.

It’s fate that Madadev Muthia is praying has not happened to his five children.

They went missing from their home in a tribal area in the Indian state of Assam eight months ago.

“We were at a wedding and our children were at home. But when we came back, they were not there. I checked everywhere but couldn’t find them. I sought help from my fellow villagers but they couldn’t do anything. Then I informed police but that didn’t help either. So I came here.”

He has joined other parents in a sit-in demonstration at Jantar Mantar in the capital. They have been here for more than a month in the hope of getting help from authorities to find their children.

Manish Kumar Das’s teenage daughter and niece came to the capital from Jharkhand three months ago. They have not been seen or heard from since.

“The girls were offered jobs and brought to Delhi. But what happened to them afterwards, nobody knows. From Jharkhand to Delhi, I have searched everywhere but couldn’t trace them. I am unable to think what to do and it is so frustrating. The police assured us that they will find them out but they did nothing.”

Human Trafficking is a national shame.

According to the Crime Records Bureau, nearly 45 thousand people go missing every year in the country, more than ten thousand of them without any trace.

Social activist Devi Singh Suryawanshi puts the number much higher.

“The figure actually is 100,000 and I have evidence to prove that. The difference is because in many cases the police don’t even register the complaints. Young boys then end up being bonded laborers while the girls are thrown into prostitution.”

Ravikant is the secretary of Shakti Vahini, a New Delhi-based NGO campaigning against human trafficking. He says traffickers have a well organized network operating across the country.

“Delhi is the transit point. Not only for India but girls are trafficked from Nepal, Bangladesh, East European Countries, Thailand and other places as well and Delhi is the transit for all.”

But police authorities disagree.

Alok Verma is the public relations office for the Dehli police.

“No such evidence has yet come to the fore to suggest that the kidnappings are carried out in an organized manner whether for the purpose of begging, prostitution or any other commission of crime. We however do receive many complaints about missing people and whenever a complaint is lodged the police do take necessary action.”

But the undisputed fact remains that every year thousands of people in India vanish without any trace.

Parents like Manish Kumar Das will no allow their children to become just a another number.

“It is the responsibility of the government to find out where all these missing children are, and we are not going to leave this place until our demands are met.”

MOYNA Indian Express

Posted: Dec 09, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Trafficking-victim-awaits-permanent-home/248285/

Gurgaon, December 8 Abandoned at the Gurgaon bus stand on Thursday, a 14-year-old victim of human trafficking is left in the lurch with no one willing to offer her a solution, or a long-term shelter. Neither the local police stations nor NGOs are ready to take care of her.

First the police handed over the girl to NGO Childline; the latter in turn tried to get her admitted to a nari niketan at Karnal. But the authorities there refused to take her, saying that there was no place.

For the past two days, the victim has been kept at the Gurgaon Childline centre and will probably have to spend longer time there.

“We cannot keep her here for long; we do not have the resources to deal with such cases. We act as an immediate emergency support structure for minor victims,” said Ravi Kumar, executive director of Shakti Vahini - the organisation running Gurgaon Childline centre.

A resident of Gopalganj in Bihar, the victim was married off to a 45-year-old man (one Pramod) as her father could not repay money he had borrowed, the victim has said. The marriage took place in Bihar on March 10, and she was brought to Rohtak a couple of months ago, the victim said.

“My husband does not like me. He used to come home drunk every evening and beat me up,” she said. On Thursday, Pramod took her out to show the city. “I thought he has changed.”

She was of course wrong - Pramod took her to Gurgaon bus station and then excused himself, the victim said. After waiting for his return for over an hour, she started looking for him.

“On inquiring, the rickshaw pullers around said the man with me had gone away. I could not believe it,” she said. She waited for another two hours before the rickshawpullers took her to the local police station. A case of missing child was registered and she was handed over to childline workers.

The counsellors at the centre spoke to her and found that she was a human trafficking victim and needed to be put at a place where she would get protection and care while investigations were carried out against her husband.

She was taken back to the police station to register a fresh case of trafficking, but the cops refused to do so.

City Police Station SHO said, “We cannot register the case because the crime was not committed here. She was sold in Bihar and the case has to be registered there.”

On Friday, she spent the whole day in courtroom. Childline workers appealed that she be sent to nariniketan in Karnal. But the SDM refused, stating, “There is no place in Nariniketan.”

While the NGO workers are trying to figure out the logistics and possible action to be taken against her absconding husband and her father, the girl is unsure of what the future holds for her. But she is sure that she does not want to go back home. “My father will not let me stay there. He had even tried to sell me off to an orchestra two years back,” she said.

Head of Shakti Vahini, Ravi Kant, said they will keep the girl till the authorities find a way around the bureaucratic setbacks.

Sunday Herald - 20 November 2005

As selective abortion makes girls a rarity in parts of India, a warning of rising sexual exploitation

From Tom Sullivan in Delhi

http://sullivantom.com/Women%20worth%20less%20than%20cattle.htm

AS you enter the industrial town of Faridabad, an hour south of Delhi, ornately painted trucks fill the road with dust and the clamour of grinding gears and horns, jostling for space with cars, rickshaws and cattle.

The trucks carry agricultural goods from Rajasthan and bricks and gravel from Haryana. They also carry people - labourers, children, and women in brightly coloured saris - clinging on as the vehicles thunder across half-built roads. Some of these women are evidence of one of India’s huge problems: a prolonged cultural norm of favouring boys has left whole villages without women, young men without wives and a society where infanticide is common. Trafficking of women is now booming in the region.

“We intercepted a cargo of women from Assam (northeast India) near here recently,” said Ravi Kant, a prominent human rights activist.

“Female foeticide [sex-selective abortion] has created a big demand for women and it’s being met by trafficking, mainly from the northeast,” explained Kant, who heads Shakti Vahini, a human rights group which rescues victims and documents rights abuses. “There is a big problem here in Haryana state and also in Rajasthan and the Punjab. They have made their daughters vanish but they are in desperate need of women.”

Some estimates put the numbers of India’s “vanishing women” at almost 50 million. However, experts say that the figures are misleading since the preference among Indians for sons has meant there has always been an imbalance in the number of men and women.

Nonetheless, in recent decades the trend of decreasing female births is beyond doubt. National census figures from 1991 to 2001 show a 2% drop in the number of girls in relation to boys, and the reduction is thought to be accelerating as access to technologies to scan the sex of a foetus becomes widespread.

In Haryana, there are only 819 girls per 1000 boys aged up to six years whereas in 1991 there were 879 per 1000.

“There is a shortage of women in all the villages we have surveyed in Haryana,” said Kant. “In some areas there are as few as 600 girls per 1000 boys. You even have villages where there is not a girl in sight; where you only see boys going to school.”

Surveys carried out by Shakti Vahini have pointed to rising numbers of trafficked women, known locally as paros (women from outside), who are bought for as little as £50 to £60.

According to its research, about 8000 women have been sold in Faridabad, a district of two million people. Initially sold as wives, many are then resold into sex work or as slaves; each resale pushes their price down.

“Women are cheaper than cows here. And when women are sold cheap that exposes them to abuse,” said Kant, adding that women are lured with the promise of a good marriage. Many end up in forced labour and are subjected to rapes and beatings.

While a shortage of women is not new in India - British colonial officials reported villages with no women in northern India in the early 19th century - some analysts believe the country’s rapid modernisation is creating a demographic time bomb. In September, Unicef reported Indian census figures suggesting a link between higher incomes, access to pre-natal scans and declining female birth rates.

“There is a range of factors causing this decline in the numbers of women,” said Ena Singh, assistant representative of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in India. “It is a misconception that it’s the rural poor and the illiterate who are aborting their girl children. The data shows it’s predominantly an urban problem caused by religious, cultural and economic factors.”

Costly dowries, illegal in India but still common practice, are a major burden on the poor and working classes across the country and fuel resentment towards having daughters. Indian religion and culture puts greater value on boys who are seen as contributing to the wealth and good fortune of families. What is more, only sons can give the last rites to their parents.

“There is a saying in the Ramayana legend,” explained Suhas Chakma of the Asian Centre for Human Rights, a Delhi-based think tank, “that girls and animals respond better to sticks; this is really part of our religion and culture.

“When there are proven cases of illegal abortions and trafficking of women, it’s very difficult to get a case filed with the police. This is going to lead to serious social problems if it’s not checked.”

Some experts point to increasing reports of rape and violence against women as evidence that the skewed gender balance is already taking its toll on Indian society. Mounting criticism at home and abroad is starting to push the issue up the political agenda. The US State Department annual human trafficking report this year placed India on a watch list for lack of government response to the trafficking of women and Indian police involvement in trafficking rackets.

Last month, India’s Ministry for Home Affairs called police chiefs to Delhi for a seminar, the first of its kind, in a bid to raise awareness of trafficking issues.

“This is the first time the home ministry has accepted that it’s their task to check trafficking,” said Dr Loveleen Kacker, a senior official at the department for women and child development.

Kacker added that improving and extending women’s education and reducing poverty in states where trafficking is concentrated will yield results in the long run. But changing the mindset of a billion-strong population will take generations.

“People are making a lot of money from selling girls here but they are never prosecuted,” said Ravi Kant, referring to the lack of police action to root out trafficking networks.

“Haryana authorities say that the trafficked women are getting good homes. Maybe a few are. But what about those sold and resold, again and again?”

For the thousands of women who are trafficked across India, change cannot come fast enough.

20 November 2005