US has recommended India to develop a comprehensive anti-trafficking law and increase prosecutions and convictions on all forms of trafficking, even as it noted that New Delhi is making significant efforts to comply with the minimum standards for its elimination.
For the second consecutive year, an official US report yesterday has placed India on Tier 2 list of countries, whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's (TVPA), but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
The report was released by the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
India, the report said, is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. The forced labour of millions of its citizens constitutes India's largest trafficking problem.
Men, women, and children in debt bondage are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories, the report said.
A common characteristic of bonded labour is the use of physical and sexual violence as coercive tools.
90% of trafficking in India is internal, and those from India's most disadvantaged social strata, including the lowest castes, are most vulnerable, it said.
