A N A L Y S I S

Trafficking as Matrimony

Trafficking in India is largely understood as commercial sexual exploitation of women and children. It is a very limited understanding of trafficking even though 80 per cent of the human trafficking is meant for sexual exploitation as per the latest U.N. report. A Panjab University study reveals disturbing trends of forced marriages where girls from the poor families and mostly minors are sold as chattel and married to those who can afford to bribe and pay the price. In turn these poor girls end up as slave workers and prostitutes. Professor Manjit Singh who teaches Sociology at the Panjab University, Chandigarh tells this harrowing tale.

According to the U.S. Department of States, some 6-8 lakh people are trafficked every year, within and across border, of which 80 per cent are women and girls, and some 50 per cent are minors.   In India where 28 per cent population suffers the worst poverty and with 400 million vulnerable children, trafficking becomes a pervasive immorality.

India Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi in  an extensive survey of 13 Indian states on trafficking found that half of the total persons trafficked belong to  economically and socially poor sections  with 20 per cent being children. It also found that the annual turn over of sex industry is worth Rs. 37,000/- crore. National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO)  estimates the number of AIDS affected persons in India who are nearly 1.25 lakh. The Ministry of Home Affairs noticed that 90 per cent of the trafficking in India is internal.

Trafficking is not limited to sexual exploitation; it involves various forms of oppression, exploitation and discrimination irrespective of age and gender. However, trafficking remains, what UNDP calls, wrapped in layers of silence. According to NACO, in Haryana, the industry has spread over nearly ten thousand places while there is not a single recognised red light area. Villages are no exception.  The danger of sexually transmitted diseases threatens lives though the known cases of AIDS in the state are only 655.

Though Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act (ITPA), 1986 was modified twice during the past 50 years, it is still inadequate tool for intervention. This can clearly be noticed from the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, 2000, to which India is also a signatory. It defines trafficking as ‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of persons by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or service, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs’.

Consent is considered irrelevant in the case of children and according to the ITPA, 1986 a child is defined as all those who have not completed 16 years of age. Similarly Vulnerability is looked as a position of severe socio-economic deprivation that disables a family/ individual to cope up with the pressure of life and living.

The  UN accepts a) that trafficking in human beings means exploitation of vulnerable people by various means of allurement or coercion, and b), as a corollary, exploitation includes both of sexual labour and that of productive and service labour. If the UN definition is strictly followed in tracking down human trafficking in India we will find half the workers in India working under conditions of trafficking. But even a conservative and limited application of the defining criteria poses disturbing questions in case of our study of Paros of Mewat region of Haryana.

Mewat is constituted of 491 villages of Haryana spread over Gurgaon and Faridabad districts. The predominant community is Meo [Rajputs]  who are Muslims by religion. It is highly backward region with only 29 per cent area under irrigation and 23 per cent literacy rate. Out of the total nearly 2 lakh Meo households 5 per cent cannot find wives from within the community and procure some from the Muslim community of other states such as Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam. After surveying 26 villages and recording 322 such cross border marriages we found that, in most of the cases, the husbands had to spend, on an average, Rs.5-10 thousand which included expenditure on train fare and a small marriage feast as part of the ‘marriage’ ceremony. 71 per cent of the marriages are performed at the home place of the women in their respective state. All such women brought from other states are locally called Paros, means from outside. Nearly 95 per cent of such women are brought to Mewat through the known mediators on either side. Only five per cent have arrived through professional ‘match makers’.

The women brought to Mewat for marriage come from highly marginalised sections of society and they are hardly any better now. Nearly 86 per cent husbands of Paros are casual labourers and earn not even the statutory minimum wage prevalent in Haryana. At the time of marriage 75 per cent of women were under the age of 18 years. In fact, 7 per cent were children up to the age of 12 and another 37 per cent were children in the age group of 13-15 years. The average age of a Paro at the time of marriage is 17 years whereas the average age of their husband at the time of marriage is 29 years. 94 per cent of the Paros is illiterate and so are their parents.

Legally though such cross-cultural marriages may not be easy to prove a case of trafficking as there is a clear social sanction to such unequal relation but from the point of view of human rights all such women are forced to accept bondage to their so called husbands. Bondage essentially is a loss of freedom, whether to an employer who binds through debt or to a husband of extremely unequal relation backed up by the ideology of prevailing social and religious institutions. In fact it is a condition of adverse form of bondage as there is social sanction involved to it which is not so in the case of prostitutes or bonded labourers. But if the definition of ITPA, 1986 is expanded in the light of U.N. Convention, 2000, if not all the 10 thousand such cross-cultural marriages in Mewat fall within the purview of Trafficking, at least half of them are a clear case of trafficking as they were  married when children. Coming from extreme poverty, where dignity and freedom has little meaning, Paros have no option but to accept their destiny once they are handed out by their parents to the Mewati men in  the garb of marriage. And Paros remain torn between the domestic drudgery and a vain hope to meet their natal family.

BACK

With Compliments from


Gogi Sidhu
President

Satish K. Jain
Executive Vice President

1301, Mahalo Place, Rancho Dominguez , CA 90220 U.S.A.

http://www.magnespec.com
Phone:- 0013106032262

A full service mechanical and electrical engineering firm providing investigation, analysis, design services and construction administration in:

ELECTRICAL-
Interior and Exterior Lighting, Power Distribution
Short Circuit Analysis, Coordination Studies
Life Safety and Fire Alarm Systems
Security, Sound, Voice and Communications Systems

MECHANICAL
Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning systems
Plumbing, Refrigeration & Process Piping
Fire Protection, Energy Conservation, Life Cycle Analysis

Serving: District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. State registration for work throughout the United States can be arranged. Contact us for a complete company brochure