Country Report: India

Child slavery and sexual exploitation grow rampant in overpopulated and impoverished India.

A Victim's Story

When Rani was 9 years old, her parents handed her over to a man claiming to have a job for her. He offered her impoverished family in Nepal monthly pay in exchange for a few years of their young daughter's labor in nearby India. Instead of being given a job, Rani was trafficked to an Indian “circus,” where girls between the ages of 8 and 16 are enslaved and forced to work as dancers, contortionists, prostitutes, and domestic servants to their managers. Rani, now 15, explains that she was kept at the circus for six years and forced to work from 5 A.M. until midnight, seven days a week, and paid little to nothing for her work. She and the other girls were frequently beaten, sexually assaulted, and punished for making mistakes or refusing to do work. Rani remembers "We were always hungry because we were not given enough food to eat. Then too the food was grim — a kind of meal that was given to the horses.” Though Rani was rescued and now lives at a rehabilitation center, hundreds of thousands of young girls are currently suffering similar fates, being trafficked internally or from other countries into India's sex industries and forced labor networks.

Country Background

India, a South Asian country with roughly 1.1 billion inhabitants, is one of the fastest growing developing countries and the world's largest democracy. The second most populous country in the world, the Republic of India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, leaving behind decades of oppression only to enter a new era of continuing environmental, economic, cultural and population challenges. India's per capita income is extremely low; roughly 26% of all inhabitants are currently living below the poverty line.

Causes of Slavery

Although it has been steadily gaining economic standing for a few decades, largely due to increased involvement in services for modern and agricultural industries, India remains largely impoverished and overpopulated. Pressure to take part in the highly profitable global market and lack of modern resources, leads many Indians in cigarette, carpet-weaving, and agricultural industries to utilize slave labor in order to keep costs low and profits high. This, combined with a culture that espouses dominance over girls and women, sustains a thriving trafficking network. Women and children are often sold for money, as many families are extremely poor and cannot support their families. These victims are frequently trafficked to places such as Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries for the purposes of forced labor and sexual and domestic servitude. Boys between the ages of 2 and 7 are often kidnapped from their villages and trafficked into the forced camel-jockeying networks in India, Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries. High profits and increasing popularity of traditional camel racing support a constant demand for small jockeys working long hours. Internal trafficking is also widespread, with women and children forced into a profitable commercial sex industry, indentured servitude, and bonded child labor. A rigid caste system contributes to the issues of slavery and forced labor in India, making those in the lower castes extremely vulnerable and prone to enslavement. There are an estimated 10-15 million slaves in India today out of an estimated 27 million worldwide.

The Process of Enslavement

Children are often victims of debt bondage arrangements, or bonded labor, in which families exchange the labor of their children for amnesty from money-collectors. Frequently, these children are not taken to work in the agreed-upon factory, but they are trafficked into complex networks of forced labor and sex rings, never to be returned to their families. Most often, inflation rates make it impossible for children to work off the debt, and debt bondage is inherited by the next generation of the family. Both in the case of debt bondage and in the case of forced labor in India, “masters” are given complete control over their workers, workers are forced to live and work in terrible conditions, and girls and women are often subject to rape. In the case of prostitution, struggling families sell girls into sex networks, children are lured into neighboring towns or cities by false promises of money or jobs, or they are simply kidnapped. Young boys who are forced or sold into camel racing industries are kept until they grow too tall or heavy for their job, and then they are discarded, given nothing, and left to poverty by their masters. Enslaved camel jockeys are subject to beatings, long hours of work, little food, and sleeping quarters with the animals they tend to. Many girls, such as Rani, are trafficked into India from countries like Nepal and kept as sex slaves and domestic workers. In addition, there are an estimated 250,000 child “carpet slaves” in India, children kidnapped from their homes and forced to live and work in captivity, weaving carpets (a signature product in India) in exchange for little food and horrific living conditions.

Products

Some products known to be made through slave labor in India include:

Hand-woven carpets
"Bidi" cigarettes
Silk
Textiles
Clothing

Response on the Ground

Because it composes 15% of the world's population, India's issues do not often go unseen. However, its size also poses difficulties for those addressing its multitude of problems, as there are simply so many people and so many cases of humanitarian need. In 2006, AASG partnered with the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) to provide over $5,000 in direct aid to rehabilitate former child slaves. SACCS, an organization dedicated to rehabilitating traumatized children, and other children’s and human rights groups, are active on the ground in India working to protect victims.

More Information

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