Introduction
India is an Asian country with an emerging economy and a population slightly hovering over one billion people. Despite posting impressive economic growth figures, a large section of the population still lives under the poverty line. Additionally, the country has high incidences of social ills mainly brought by its unique demographic trends and sometimes failure or laxity of law enforcement.
One of the social ills affecting the Indian society is human trafficking especially for sex slavery. Sex trafficking which involves coerced recruitment, transportation transfer and receipt of men people for sexual exploitation propagates sexual slavery.
Sexual slavery can be defined as situations where unwilling people (both men and women) are forced to sexual exploitation for low or no pay at all. Sexual slavery arises when some people have the right of ownership over others and induce repeated sexual abuse, rape and forced performance of sexual acts on other people.
Various organizations including the international Organization for Immigration and UNICEF estimate the number of individuals involved in sexual slavery to range between 400,000 to 1.75 million.
Sex Slavery in India
Asia has been identified as one of the trouble spots as far as human trafficking is concerned. The US State Department considers India a source, transit point and destination of sex trafficking victims in Asia and the world.
The Supreme Court of India famously declared in the year 2010 that the country was becoming a hub for child trafficking and prostitution and urged urgent measures to curb the vice. The government of India through the Ministry of Women and Child Development estimated in 2007 that the country had about 3 million sex workers with approximately 35% of them aged below 18 years.
According to authorities and international organizations such as the UN, human trafficking for sexual exploitation in India is mainly internal with the country low income and lower cast communities providing the major source of victims.
In the country, there is major trafficking ring of women and young girls trafficked within the country mainly for sexual exploitation.
Most of these sex slaves work in the tourism industry in the country with major town and cities acting as the hub of sex tourism. Surprisingly, authorities and nongovernmental organizations concur that sex slavery in India does take place within the confines of religious pilgrimage in centers such as Tirupati and Puri.
There is an intricate connection between the prostitution cartels operating in the country especially, Nepal and Thailand. While a good number of girls are kidnapped and forced to prostitution, a large number from north eastern India are normally duped with promises of regular and high paying jobs in larger cities only to end up in forced commercial sex work.
Additionally, some of the men and women especially in Tamil Nadu are trafficked out of India through fraudulent employment bureaus that mainly send them to Middle East where they end up as sex slaves. The presence of Maoist rebels in neighboring Nepal exacerbates the problem as the group operates a well established cartel that operates brothels in India to source funds for their operations.
According to NGO sources, as many as 200 thousand girls have been trafficked from Nepal to India’s red light district with the rate being 5000 girls annually whose ages range ages between 10-12 years.
Indian Authorities’ approach to Sex Slavery
The Indian government acknowledges the existence of human trafficking in the country and forced sexual exploitation as a rampant problem. Many government officials also admit that compliance by to the government to the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking have been below par.
According to the US State Department, government response to sex trafficking in India has not demonstrated sufficient progress and there are concerns with law enforcement, protection and prevention efforts that have been put in place.
Notably, the government admits that there have been few convictions of the real people behind human sex trafficking and most of the raids on brothels and other trafficking hot spots are mainly masterminded by concerned nongovernmental organizations.
Additionally, there are fewer shelters for rescued sex slave victims and those that have been set up are of poor quality. Some officials acknowledge that corruption is a major hindrance in the fight against sex slavery in the country. It is an open secret that some officials are complicit to the prostitution cartels as they receive payouts to allow their illegal operations.
On the other hand however, there has been some progress in the fight against sex slavery in India especially through the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA) with a string of raids, arrest and convictions masterminds of sex slaves. It is important to note that most of these raids are however initiated by NGO and assisted by police.
There is consensus that sex slavery is rampant in the country and perceived laxity by authorities is exacerbating the situation. It is therefore necessary that the government puts in place comprehensive measures to curb the vice which infringes on basic human rights and mainly disadvantages women and children.
Bibliography
Kara, Siddharth. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. New Delhi: McMillan Publishers, 2010.
Kirkham, George, and Territo, Leornard. International Sex Trafficking of Women & Children: Understanding the Global Epidemic. London: Sage Publications, 2009.
Kunjakkan, KA. Feminism and Indian realities. New Delhi: Thomson Learning, 2002.
Manian, Sabita, and McCabe, Kimberly. Sex trafficking: a global perspective. New York: Cengage Learning, 2010.