India’s Child-trafficking Nightmare Deepens in the Pandemic

as governments across the world hunker down to rebuild economies and healthcare infrastructures ravaged by one of the biggest health crises in human history, vital social issues such as early marriages, child trafficking and exploitation are taking a back seat. This is having a catastrophic impact on developing economies such as india, where millions of the vulnerable, especially children, have been pushed into a Dickensian vortex of despair, disease and death.

The indian government imposed the world’s strictest lockdown for its 1.4 billion people on March 24, 2020, driving millions of migrant laborers and daily wage workers into unemployment. Staring at a bleak future, these multitudes walked for hundreds of kilometers to return to their native villages.

according to the Centre for Monitoring indian economy, an independent economic think tank based in Mumbai, within the first two months of the lockdown more than 122 million people in india had already lost their jobs. of these, 75 percent were small traders and day laborers.

With their jobless parents fleeing from shuttered cities and factories, children bore the brunt of the crisis. heart-wrenching reports of youngsters being sold off for money soon began to surface. in one such case, a jobless father in india’s poorest state, Bihar, sold his four-monthold infant to a wealthy couple without his wife’s knowledge. The mother intervened to save the baby at the last minute with help from some neighbors. The man admitted that he had been driven to desperation due to joblessness and his inability to feed his family. at one point during

the lockdown, over the course of 11 days, there were 92,000 cases of child abuse reported to a government helpline.

Studies have proven that when families are economically unstable, the vulnerability of children increases. Traffickers prey on such unguarded families by making false promises of a new job, augmented income, better living conditions and financial support. Small wonder the practice of child labor still flourishes across swathes of india, with more than eight million children aged between five and 14 toiling in fields, hazardous factories, shops and homes, according to industry surveys.

Worse may be in store. The international Labor organization (ilo) has predicted that with the Covid-19 pandemic, the world may witness a surge in child labor for the first time in 20 years, risking years of progress in this area.

even though india has strict laws against child labor and prostitution, around 5,000 people are trafficked each year. in 2018, the eastern state of Jharkhand posted the highest number of cases of trafficking, with the western state of Maharashtra ranked second. according to a shocking investigation by online news portal The Print, young women can be brought for the equivalent of as little as us$415 in Jharkhand through monthly instalments. “healthy goats” cost twice as much in the farm-dependent state, it added.

Violating human rights

human trafficking is recognized as one of the gravest violations of human rights. But indian children are routinely trafficked within the country as well as to neighboring countries such as nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh for commercial sexual exploitation.

Some are enticed from villages and towns with false promises of gainful employment in the cities, while others are forcefully abducted by traf

Early Marriage worsens trafficking

a toxic cocktail of the raging pandemic and the closure of schools for months has had a devastating impact on young ones. Thousands have been pushed by desperate parents into early marriages. Childline india, a local charity, reported