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Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s decision to make rail travel free for Bihar’s flood victims has come as a shot in the arm for petty traffickers and contractors who are smuggling out large numbers of children on a daily basis especially since the police and the authorities are busy with relief work
Desperate mothers in Bihar’s flood-affected districts are selling their children en masse to traffickers. Ram Deo Prasad, who heads Bihar’s Child Labour Commission, pointed out that children in the districts of Supaul, Araria, Saharsa and Purnea were being sold for as little as Rs 200 per child. At present, nearly 2 lakh women and children live cheek-by-jowl in 3,000 relief camps being run by the state government and NGOs. Most of the able-bodied men have migrated to the larger cities in search of work, leaving the women vulnerable to smooth-talking traffickers who promise that their children will be given a better life in the cities. Last week alone, 1,500 children being smuggled out of the state by human traffickers were caught at the Patna, Hajipur and Khageria railway stations. “While the older children were taken back to the relief camps, there were some kids who were so young that they could not recall the names of their parents or the village to which they belonged,” Prasad said. “These young children were taken to shelter homes called Apna Ghars and will be lodged there till such time as their parents are located.” Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s decision to make rail travel free for Bihar’s flood victims has come as a shot in the arm for traffickers and contractors who are smuggling out large numbers of children on a daily basis especially since the police and the authorities are busy with relief work. “On average, we believe a minimum of 50 children are being taken from these relief camps. They are being brought to the bigger cities where they will end up as bonded labour, be forced into prostitution or become victims of the organ trade,” said Prasad. “The traffickers are so ingenious that they go around in boats to all the marooned villages, persuading parents to sell their children to them. No statistics are available on the scale of the trafficking going on,” he added. Over 200 volunteers working with Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) have spread out across the four districts and are keeping an eye on railway stations and bus stands that are the focal points from where the children are being smuggled out. Rakesh Singh, a volunteer with BBA who has been working in Purnea, explained how he had helped rescue over 30 children from traffickers. “In Saharsa recently, we found a group of five children at the station along with a man they called their chacha. He turned out to be a petty contractor who had paid a small sum to ‘purchase’ them. We complained to the police and managed to rescue the children,” Singh said. “So far we have managed to get 12 traffickers arrested. But it is not always possible to rescue the kids because by the time we call the police the train will have moved on. Even so, we have a list of 1,500 children who are missing from the camps.” Activists working with Unicef, Oxfam and other NGOs point out that it is not enough to just feed the children and provide them with shelter. Since they are going to be living in the camps for at least another six months, the state government must start schools for them so that they remain occupied. The Bihar state government has allocated Rs 82 lakh for rescued children; these funds are to be utilised within the next 28 days. “It is now up to them to ensure they are utilised for the benefit of the children because they remain the most vulnerable and traumatised,” pointed out Kailash Satyarthy of BBA. Meanwhile, BBA has written to universities like Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Patna University for volunteers who, along with members of BBA, can keep watch on Bihar’s bus and railway stations, as well as cities. Prasad visited the capital recently, along with the Bihar labour minister, to meet Union labour minister Oscar Fernandes to work out a joint strategy to help curb the menace of human trafficking. -- Rashme Sehgal InfoChange News & Features, October 2008
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