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Speaking to the wronged

A new release sets the agenda

COVER Painting a stark picture

The net income of a trafficker who manages to sell a girl a month is Rs 6.5 lakh per annum. Shocked? Welcome to the real world of Trafficking in Women and Children in India. An eye-opener, the researchers of Institute of Social Sciences have unearthed the multi-faceted reach of this nefarious problem.

Instead of voyeuristic stirring of go go girls on the road or the preachy words from on the high, the researchers coordinated by Sankar Sen of ISS hit the trafficking route and spoke with 4006 persons across the country and etched out the crime in all its gory detail and an action plan to ameliorate it.

Not viewing trafficking as a crime or a social problem and seeing it as a human rights violation marks out the study's framework and gives an understanding of the nature of the crime and what it does to women and children.

The ISS researchers panned out through the country and tracked the problem from begging to massage parlours to domestic sexual abuse. They also tracked the problem to social culture, family values, poverty, legal failure, tourism and the role of law enforcement to create the cesspool of crime.

It is not a simplisistic crime where there is a victim and there is a perpetrator of a crime. No. The study paints all the lurid colours of the crime where a victim becomes a victimiser for a few rupees more. There are no stereotypes here only surprises as the findings of the researchers show.

The study has not come one day soon as the US is even threatening sanctions against countries which fail to control the crime. And at the rate trafficking is going up in the country this 748-page tome brought out by Orient Longman should put the problem in its right perspective.

Trafficking in Women and Children in India

Orient Longman

Rs. 1200

SERISH NANISETTI

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