Poverty is a major factor contributing to the vulnerability of so many Indians to trafficking. The pressure of making money to survive, the need to repay debts, and the lack of education are key factors.

[scale of poverty]

Poverty is rife in India. With 42% of Indians living below the poverty line ($1.25 a day; 76% live on less than $2 a day), and almost 43% of under 5s under-nourished (compared with 29% in Sub-Saharan Africa), the poor in India are ripe for harvesting by traffickers and their agents. But poverty has many aspects, and according to the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index which measures poverty in three dimensions – education, health and living standards - 55% of Indians, some 600 million people - are considered to be in poverty. Along with many other countries, India is working toward the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 to end world poverty by 2015, but the latest report indicates that most goals are likely to be missed within that timescale.

[poverty and trafficking]

When you don’t have enough money to meet vital needs – medicine for example – taking out a loan is the only way to survive. With no money to repay the loan, working for the lender – a landowner or factory boss – may well be the only option. The result is being trapped in bonded labour, with no hope of ever being able to pay off the loan interest. [Read more...]

The lure of jobs dupes many women and girls inadvertently into the sex trade. Moreover, the financial reward for ‘selling’ a girl to a brothel owner, can be very attractive to a family who do not have the money to feed her. [Read more...]

Poverty also drives many children into the beggar gangs, but they soon discover that it is the gangmasters who take almost all their earnings in a multi-million pound industry. [Read more...]

When you are poor, the prospect of paying a dowry for your daughter’s marriage would be too much. Dedicating your daughter to a lifetime of serving the goddess as a devadasi provides an attractive way out. As soon as she reaches puberty, she ‘marries’ the goddess Yellama, and so cannot marry a man. And if she ends up being pimped by a family member, as many do, they stand to bring in some much needed money. [Read more...]

[India’s poorest]

India’s Dalits – formerly known as Untouchables – are most affected by poverty. 4 out of 5 people in scheduled tribes and 2 out of 3 people in the scheduled castes are reckoned to be in poverty, compared with 1 in 3 of the rest of the population. Dalits are restricted to some of the most menial and degrading jobs such as manual scavenging – the removal of human excretia by hand – but it is also among the most poorly paid jobs, earning as little as 7p a day.

The root of Dalit poverty lies in the caste system which restricts them to particular jobs. Discrimination also contributes to their exclusion from education and healthcare in many instances. [Read more...]