Modern Day Slavery-trafficking of human beings

BY PINKY PRADHAN

Pinky Pradhan is Communications and Advocacy Officer, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime

Kumari and Jayanti start their day’s work at 4 am every morning. This is the only time these two women get to talk and discuss their problems, before the others arrive. Jayanti has been upset for the last few months. Her teenage daughter ran away with the boy in the next village. How could she have done that? Did she not think of the shame it would bring to the family ? Did she not think of what repercussions it would have for her sister who was yet to be married or the difficulty her father would have now to raise a loan for the tractor? But Kumari was wise, she was a true friend. She tried hard to explain to Jayanti that the only way was to accept and forget; after all, 3 years ago her daughter had run away with someone too but with time life had return to routine comfort for her and her family.

While this family rejoices the return of normalcy, there are others, elsewhere who have stopped waiting for normalcy to return. Instead they have gone ahead and created a different normalcy for themselves, very different from what you and I understand.Rashmi, a teenager on the brink of adulthood, likes music, jeans and Bolywood movies. She giggles while saying that, she is an ardent fan of Hrithik Roshan and doesn’t miss a single movie of his. But, Rashmi faces a daily cruel ordeal which she fervently prays no other human being or child faces. In any given day, she has to serve to 5-6 men-her clients. She is a commercial sex worker, operating from a house which has 7 other girls like her. Rashmi is seventeen years old; she was taken away from her village when she was only fourteen.

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