Child Trafficking in India

27 June 2011

Child Trafficking in India

Child trafficking has become a major issue in India. Children are taken from impoverished areas by gang members and criminal organizations. Orphans are lured in by gang members and criminal organizations with the promise of food and shelter. Parents also strike deals with criminal organizations or gang members for debts they have incurred. Children are also taken throughout the criminal world. These children are then tricked into becoming factory workers, beggars, servants, and prostitutes. Child trafficking in India leads to health and safety risks for hundreds of thousands of minors across the country. Children's lives are being ruined by child trafficking. Their childhood is being taken away from them and they are forced to work for criminal organizations and gang members.

There is an estimated "115 million child workers in India alone" (Kovasevic 37). Criminal organizations and gang members often target areas stricken with poverty to supply the demand for child trafficking. Children are taken from their families and forced into labor to work off debts their families have incurred. Families often borrow money from gang members or criminal organizations to pay off bills, forcing their children to spend the rest of their lives paying off even the smallest of debts (Kovasevic 36). Orphans are also an easy target for gang members, because they promise food and shelter to the unfortunate children and instead use them for their own purposes. Children in impoverish areas of India are being robbed of their childhood. They are being tricked into believing gang members and criminal organizations are willing to help give them better lives, when in reality, the gang members and criminal organizations only want to make money.

Gang members often use children with amputations or other ailments in order to attract sympathy. These children are then taught how to be beggars and make money. If children do not have any ailments or amputations, the gang members often times create ailments for the orphans. In Slumdog Millionaire, a popular Bollywood movie, accurately depicts the criminal underworld of India. It shows the lives of orphan children, and the hardships of victims of child trafficking. As seen in the movie, children are often lured in by gang members into "orphanages". The children are promised money, food, and shelter. The orphanages are more like criminal schools. Orphans are taught how to beg for money. The gang members often look to see what each child has to offer, and exploit the children into making profit for their own needs. In Slumdog Millionaire, a child excels in singing. He is then permanently blinded by the gang leader in order to make him a more profitable beggar. Children are subjected to this cruelty and abuse daily in India.

Children are also educated on how to steal. Children are located on every street corner, designed to target the wealthy. Their "bosses" educate them on proper stealing techniques in order to maximize profit. Harjit Singh, a new immigrant from India, described how children would target wealthy people in order to increase their chance of stealing the most amount of money. "Children would go in (a) pair behind a wealthy man. One child would distract (him) from the front, and the other child would take a knife and cut his pants from behind to take his wallet. They were fully trained by someone" (Singh). The amount of energy spent training children on stealing could easily be spent on education to brighten the future of these children.

Servants are very common in India. Almost every household from middle class to upper class has at least one servant. They are designed to take care of the housework, cook, and watch over children. Approximately eighty percent of children that are being trafficked are turned into servants (Jha 208). These children "have been termed 'nowhere children' - as they are neither in school nor are they categorized as workers" (Jha 208). The reason the majority of children are turned into servants is because they are not protected by any child labor laws. This result