Geetanjali Krishna: The semantics of trafficking

Author is talking about human trafficking of labour

The other day, I had an interesting conversation with Roop Sen of Sanjog, a Kolkata-based technical resource organisation that works on issues pertaining to social equity, especially migration and human trafficking. There was a misconception, he said, that trafficking was mainly for the flesh side. There were, he said, other reasons why people from some of India’s poorest states are trafficked. As we discussed the issue of human trafficking for labour, and changes required in India’s laws and policies to better protect migrant rights, I felt a sense of déjà vu.
 
Over the years, most of the helps who have floated in and out of our house have been from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. They’ve told me that for girls like them, moving to the city to work is an accepted norm. The lucky ones have family in the city. The not so lucky ones come through exploitative agents. As I chatted with Sen, the story that one such girl told me long ago came to mind.

 
Sunita was the eldest daughter in a poor family of illiterate, landless labourers. They had little money, but got by, as in their village, barter was accepted currency. During the sowing and harvest seasons, her entire family — parents and six siblings ranging from eight to 20 years, worked as farm labourers in exchange for food grain, sometimes even clothing. Things changed when her mother fell ill and died after a few days of hospitalisation. The family spent their meagre cash reserves on her treatment. Her father’s love for booze and the easy life took a toll and soon he became bedridden too. This time, they had no money to pay for his medicine and had to take a loan of Rs 20,000 from the village moneylender.

 

At this juncture, a stranger filled her father’s head with dreams of wonderful job opportunities in cities. He said he would pay Sunita’s father Rs 10,000 up front if he let him take her to Delhi. Her well-being and getting her a job as a domestic help would be his responsibility. He’d send her salary directly to her father every month, and assured that she’d live comfortably with her employers. Then, a girl who had availed of the stranger’s scheme a year ago, came home one day. She had no idea what had happened to her year’s wages, was so traumatised that she was unable to talk coherently. Many of Sunita’s contemporaries had already been seduced by the stranger promises by then, and their families worried for their safety. Luckily, by then Sunita had joined a nearby church that offered placement services. Through them, she was placed in several houses (including mine) and was able to support her family.

 
I asked Sunita if she ever saw the stranger again when she went home to the village. She replied in the negative. It was possible, she surmised, that he’d been spooked; if a traumatised girl told her story (which she never did), he could get into trouble. Since then, Sunita told me that she advised all the girls who wanted to come to Delhi from her village, to contact the church. Not only did they find them employment, but they also ensured that the girls were treated fairly by their employers and offered a support system in the city.

 
Sunita’s story kept coming to my mind as Sen spoke of the vulnerability of illiterate young girls brought to the city to work, away from the government’s radar and with no one to turn to for help. Was the stranger that Sunita had met, a trafficker or an unscrupulous agent running an agency racket? There’s no way of knowing, how does it matter? The difference between the two is mostly semantic anyway.