Parents lost to Covid-19, young lives fall vulnerable to exploitation

As India reeled under a brutal second wave of the pandemic, appeals for adoption of children whose parents had succumbed to Covid-19 circulated widely on social media.

When an official of the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) called up a number, posing as an interested party, adoption was promised but in exchange for cash — the going rate was Rs 8 lakh for the custody of a boy and Rs 5 lakh for a girl. The child rights body alerted the police. And it passed on details of another suspected child trafficking racket to the West Bengal police after a group promised to allow orphaned children to be picked up from Kolkata.

The pandemic has exacerbated the crisis for the most vulnerable sections, and children who have lost a parent or have been orphaned are among the worst hit. The Ministry of Women and Child Development has said that 577 children across India lost their parents to Covid-19 between April 1 and May 22 this year alone. In the wake of the second wave, the problem has thus become visible and prompted state governments as well as the Centre to promise financial assistance to such children.

Although there is no official data for 2020-21, those who work on child protection are of the view that incidents of trafficking are likely to go up during the pandemic since it is a phenomenon that thrives on disasters.

Until May-end, according to official figures, India recorded more than 300,000 deaths. In Delhi, DCPCR desegregated the data and found 2,600-odd families in which a person aged below 50 had died. “Assuming an average of 2.2 children in a household, 5,500 children would have lost a parent in Delhi. However, the probability of children turning orphans in general is very low,” says Anurag Kundu, chairperson, DCPCR. He adds that until the end of May, DCPCR had been able to trace 40 children who were orphaned during the second wave.

Typically, a statutory body such as DCPCR approaches a child either with the help of her relatives or neighbours, the district child protection officer, childline, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) or a counsellor. If nobody comes forward to be the guardian, the child is sent to institutional care after being produced before the district child welfare committee.

Secondly, DCPCR tries to ensure access to essential supplies for the child or family, provide medical care if a child is sick and education, which includes arranging sponsors.

Only children who are abandoned can be legally adopted by strangers. DCPCR has issued newspaper ads and run social media campaigns to make people aware of the adoption process.

Kundu says that since governments have data on Covid deaths, they can reach out to the families directly. “In Delhi, we are not waiting for distress calls. We are reaching out to families who have lost loved ones and enquiring if the child is okay.”

Admitting that there is underreporting of Covid deaths across the country, he adds that the helpline model can help in case of undocumented deaths.

DCPCR has an SOS helpline. From mid-April till May, it received 2,500 calls including 400 emergency ones. The emergency calls relate to loss of a single parent, loss of both parents, physical or sexual violence at home, missing or trafficked child, lack of immunisation of a newborn, need for medical care and lack of access to essential items.

Rakesh Senger, executive director of Kailash Satyarthi Delhi-based Children’s Foundation, says that the NGO has been alerting the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, child welfare committees and investigating agencies about illegal adoption calls. He adds, “Financial compensation is not a solution. There is a lack of uniform guidelines across states. It is also important to compile and update official databases as NGOs will have separate and varying data.”

Although the pandemic has affected everyone, the level of vulnerabilities for children can differ from place to place.

Roop Sen, founding member of Sanjog, a non-profit working with trafficking survivors, points out that debt bondage has emerged as a major issue among the poorest in states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. Mounting debts can be a surefire way to getting exploited and trafficked, he says, adding that sex workers are more in debt so their children are more likely to being forced into prostitution.

A call for help

On April 29, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi tweeted that children abandoned or orphaned due to Covid-19 could call the helpline of his NGO, Bachpan Bachao Andolan. Until May 24, it received more than 400 calls. There were 26 complaints on trafficking, child labour or exploitation. The most number of calls sought support to a child staying with a single parent, followed by 38 calls requesting support for a child who had lost both parents.

Suresh Kumar, executive director of Centre Direct, a Patna-based organisation that is a part of a national platform called Indian Leadership Forum Against Trafficking, says the pandemic has made trafficking, which is an organised but hidden crime, easier. Centre Direct has been working with 500 children who were rescued from Jaipur’s bangle factories. Six of the children have lost a parent or become orphans post-Covid. “They had been repeatedly trafficked earlier, and we had to file FIRs twice or thrice to rescue them. Prosecution or conviction, on the other hand, is negligible because two states are involved and there is a lack of coordinated investigation. Such survivors are even more at risk when they lose parents,” says Kumar.

He explains that when trains were running regularly, the victims could be intercepted more easily. Because of the disruption in rail services post-lockdown, the modus operandi of traffickers has changed. “Now, luxury buses with curtains drawn have been ferrying children from villages in Bihar, particularly northern districts that are flood-prone and witness outmigration.”

According to him, traffickers tend to forge Aadhaar cards of children to conceal their actual age and dodge authorities. Child trafficking is demand-driven and targets the most vulnerable.

In Gaya, for instance, from where many of the children Centre Direct works with come, about 90 per cent are Musahars, an extremely marginalised scheduled caste group.

The magnitude of child trafficking is way beyond official data, says Kumar. “Unless we rescue children from units where their labour is most sought after, we can’t have concrete evidence and data,” he adds.