The Hindu : For a few dollars more

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 14, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

For a few dollars more

AT AGE 11, Marina Khatun faces a bleak future. She is physically deformed, slow in her mental faculties and unlettered. Compounding her woes is the fact that her family, located in West Bengal's Murshidabad district bordering Bangladesh, is poor and cannot oversee her needs because there are other children in whom making an investment makes some sense.

But, Marina was not born crippled. If anything, she was forced to become physically deformed when she was trafficked to Saudi Arabia at the age of three and sold to a so-called rich Sheikh to work as a domestic. She got burnt while cooking a meal and suffered constant beatings from the Sheikh's wife who demanded that delicious dishes be prepared for her husband everyday.

Marina returned from the jaws of death and to her family in Murshidabad , thanks to an initiative by an non-governmental organisation.

Khatura Char of Purulia district handed over her grand-daughter Pratima, 9, to the local Block Development Officer on the assurance that the child would be provided education in Kolkata. Instead, Pratima became a domestic hand in the household of the BDO's in-laws. Apparently, her employers did not find her suitable and one fine morning, the child was kicked out of the house. She is missing since then.

Taniya, 12, Rahima, 8, and Nashima, 7, all handicapped and from Murshidabad were transported to Mecca for the purpose of begging. The three, when they returned, were nearly dead.

Culled from the records of three enterprising non-governmental organisations, The Indian chapter of Free the Children (FTC) and Sanlaap and Jabala, both based in Kolkata, these portraits provide a key to understanding how trafficking in children and women, which is assuming alarming proportions, takes place.

Newspapers and television channels report the issue with monotonous regularity. The Government and the police are aware of the macabre crime. Various NGOs such as the ones mentioned above are conducting courageous campaigns highlighting the issue as part of their collective initiative to build up public opinion. Yet, the scope and size of the trafficking in children and women (in many cases they happen to be their hapless mothers) appear to be increasing everyday.

As Indrani Sinha of Sanlaap explains, the crime involving thousands of innocent children and women unfolds itself across all the rural districts including some prosperous ones such as Burdwan and Hooghly. However, until a few years ago, only Murshidabad and certain other border districts were cited in this context. Data at the disposal of the authorities as well as the NGOs suggests that no less than 20,000 to 25,000 children, mostly from poor Muslim families, are smuggled out from different parts of Bengal into Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Persian Gulf.

The geographical spread of the crime is extremely complex. The districts which have gained a degree of notoriety are predominantly Muslim such as Nadia, Hooghly, North and South 24-Parganas and Burdwan where poverty, the large size of families and illiteracy have created a situation ripe for exploitation by the traffickers and their touts.

It will be wrong to assume that all the children and women smuggled out of Bengal are Indians. A sizeable chunk of the smuggled children and women are from neighbouring Bangladesh and Nepal where the gangs, active in the sordid business, use the routes for moving human consignments through Bengal and other convenient regions of India to destinations in the Gulf.

A major trade is that of children who are transported to Mecca to work as beggars among Haj pilgrims — in Mecca alms-giving is considered a big virtue — as well as domestics and camel jockeys. The last bit is fraught with life-threatening risks.

The children are hung on the animal's necks bound with ropes and are encouraged to scream so the animals get adequately startled and run a fast race. On many occasions, children are whipped or administered electric shocks so that they scream well. Often many children die of suffocation and trauma.

The traffickers' agents tap the prevailing socio-economic conditions to carry on their activity. As a senior police official, requesting anonymity, says: "The impoverished families saddled with large number of children making heavy demand on scarce resources and trapped in poverty easily fall prey to the charming ways of the smooth-tongued agents who peddle dreams to them."

The poor children and their parents who have not seen glittering motor cars or advertisement glow signs, boarded a train or eaten a decent meal think they have actually made it when they reach Kolkata accompanying the agent on their way to the ultimate destination. These poor creatures feel beholden to the agents when they are given a meal consisting of stale rice and chicken curry or a cold drink or a small piece of jewellery.

According to a reliable report, the trafficker spends an average of Rs 1.71 lakhs per child on an entire trip. In return, the child earns up to Rs. 2,000 a day begging and hands over the sum to the trafficker leaving him with an annual profit of Rs. 5 lakh per child.

Trafficking in children fetches crores of rupees to the traffickers. It thrives because neither the ruling party nor the Opposition nor the police nor the Government looks serious enough to put a stop to it. With the Human Rights Commission taking an active interest in the goings-on, efforts are being made to sensitise the police and the panchayats to the crime. But, it is not clear at this point how far they will be able to oversee the activity through the porous borders between Bengal and Bangladesh and Nepal.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Robbed of their innocence

A safe nest

For a few dollars more

U.N.'s role in combating terrorism