Defenceless Jharkhandi / Adivasi Girls in Delhi
The capital has emerged India's child-trafficking hub with illegal agencies selling thousands of minor girls into bonded labour.
Girls rescued from domestic labour in Delhi at their NGO-run home, Kishori Niketan, in Ranchi. Families often refuse to take back the stigmatised girls
They are called "Delhi returns". At their impoverished villages in Jharkhand, Orissa and Bengal, this ought to be a badge of honour, but not for these girls. As they return home from Delhi, these already scarred girls are stigmatised for life.
If they ever return, of course.
Aruna left her home in Ranchi three years ago, at the age of seven, to earn a living in Delhi. Her mother Runia Orao hasn't heard from her since.
When a distraught Runia pooled her resources and arrived in the capital, she found there were nine Arunas in the records of the placement agency that was to find her daughter a job.
But none of them was the Aruna she longed to see.
Activists following the case have found out that the owner of the agency that recruited Aruna had been jailed for raping three minors a few years ago.
Aruna is just one of tens of thousands. According to data available with social activist groups, 61,000 girls from Jharkhand and over 45,000 from Bengal work in Delhi as domestic helps. More than half are minors.
All are victims of human trafficking by over 2,000 illegal placement agencies operating in the capital, who send out scouts to faraway states to prise young girls out of their homes. They are netted with promises of a better life, often backed up with a small payment to their parents or a bribe to an unscrupulous relative or neighbour.
In the capital, these girls spend years working virtually as bonded slaves in various households with the agencies cornering most of their salary. Duped, tortured, often sexually abused by the agency operators or employers, the luckier ones are rescued by NGOs and put up at rehab homes.
Radha Kumari, 15, and Swati Kumari, 16, both from Jharkhand, say they were "sold off" by their parents to placement agencies.
"I worked for two years in a Noida house but didn't get paid. They beat and abused me regularly and took away all my money. Four months ago, I ran away," said Radha, who is now in a care home in Ranchi and wants to become a nurse.
These homes often turn a last stop for the Radhas and Swatis, with their families unwilling to receive them back for fear of the stigma.
"I was eight when my parents sold me off. I worked in a house in Ashok Vihar where they didn't give me any food and kept me locked up," Swati said.
"One day, I somehow managed to get to the station where some people handed me over to these people (Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO). My mother comes to visit me but she doesn't take me with her."
The Delhi government has never been serious in implementing the law on child labour, said Kailash Satyarthi of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (save childhood movement) or BBA.
"That is why domestic child labour has risen in the city. The children are being trafficked from Bengal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh," Satyarthi said.
"All these agencies are illegal. Many of them register themselves as firms or NGOs under the Societies Act. These kids are sexually abused and their condition violates several laws including the Bonded Labour Act, and in many cases the Child Labour and Juvenile Justice Act."
After the BBA filed a Right to Information application, the government acknowledged that 99 placement agencies were illegally recruiting domestic servants in south Delhi alone. At least half a dozen among them face complaints of human trafficking in the guise of providing domestic helps.
Activists claim that in areas like Punjabi Baag, Rani Baag, Sultanpuri and Golpuri in west Delhi, there are as many as 250 illegal placement agencies. Sakurpur Basti in northwest Delhi has 50. One agency operates right opposite a police station.
Operating without a licence, these agencies have to bribe local police.
"Their entire operation is so brazenly done, it's shameful. Can you believe it, girls aged 10 to 12 are the most in demand as maids in Delhi?" an activist said.
The agencies pay the families sums ranging from Rs 500 to a couple of thousand and take an advance of Rs 10,000-12,000 from the prospective employer. They hand the scout Rs 2,000 per girl and keep the rest. The girls are not paid anything for the first 11 months of their job, but the agencies don't always tell them that beforehand, the activist said.
"I wasn't paid for over 11 months. I worked almost 12-13 hours a day in a house in south Delhi and at the end of a year got just Rs 3,000. When I asked them (the agency), they said they had deducted Rs 4,000 as agency fees, Rs 2,000 for medical bills and another Rs 2,000 because they put me up before I got the job," said Savitri Lal, who has now returned home to Calcutta. She said she never ran up any medical bills.
"Young maids who run away from their employers' homes become soft targets for pimps unless we reach them first, because they are illiterate and cannot earn their livelihood. Many girls we rescued were in late pregnancy or had lost their mentally stability," said Sanjay Mishra, member of the Juvenile Justice Board, Ranchi. Mishra oversees the running of Kishori Niketan, a home for trafficked girls from Jharkhand.
One of the inmates, Shukla, was six months pregnant when she was rescued. Her family refused to take her back. She is now piecing her life together along with her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Radhika.
Some girls have to risk running away because their families wash their hands of them.
"I was lured by a girl in my village who took me to an agency in Delhi. I went with her thinking that if I could earn, I would be able to help my family," said Sanchi Kumari, 15, of Jharkhand.
When the beatings started she managed to call her relatives. "But they wouldn't come and take me away. So I ran away and was rescued by activists. Now, I am studying."
In Delhi, placement agencies get lucrative business because of the huge demand for maids. One agency in Lado Sarai, southwest Delhi, placed 298 girls from Calcutta in various households in 2007. Its owner was a vegetable vendor six years ago.
Recently, the Delhi government made it mandatory for all placement agencies to be registered under the Shops and Establishment Act, but activists feel the authorities need to earnestly implement the law.
"Besides, a monitoring mechanism should be created. Till then, human trafficking to Delhi will continue," Satyarthi said.
Maid to author
The girls can take inspiration from Baby Halder, a maid in a Gurgaon house who has risen to become an author. Her first book, Aalo Aandhari or A Life Less Ordinary, has been translated into several languages. Abandoned by her mother at seven, and taken out of school and married off by a negligent father at 12, she left her abusive husband with her three children. As a housemaid in Delhi, she hopped from one exploitative household to another till her last employer, a professor, encouraged her to write. "I can never forget my past life. I am glad that from the sorry depths of my life, I am now in a position where I can inspire girls like me to think big. My children are doing well in school, what else could I want?" Baby says
August 18 , 2008 / The Telegraph
