| Article @ SandeshIndia | |
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| Headline : South Asia trafficking news from Bihar |
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This was published in the Indian Express, on !3th Nov,2001.
In north Bihar, girls come a dime a dozen: NGO study ARUN SRIVASTAVA PATNA, NOVEMBER 12: The north Bihar region, including Katihar, Purnea, Araria and Kishanganj districts, has become a fertile hunting ground for child traffickers who buy teenage girls from impoverished parents and sell them off into prostitution, a recent NGO study has shown. The hapless girls end up in the red light areas of Mumbai and Gulf countries, the survey by NGO Bhoomika Vihar, which has been working in these four districts, said. The report blames grinding poverty of the populace because of recurring floods and dwindling employment opportunities for this phenomena. They lure parents with false promises of lucrative jobs in cities for their daughters in return for paltry sums. At present the 17 red light areas in the region employ some 2,250 prostitutes. These women allegedly play a major role in enticing more parents and teenage girls into the net. These brothels have also become transit points for procuring or exchanging girls from Nepal, Bangladesh and West Bengal. The open borders between India, Nepal and Bangladesh only makes things easier. Whereas, in the past it was the low-caste nut women who engaged in prostitution and were patronised by the landlords, poverty and lack of proper employment has forced others to join the profession. Whereas in the past average age of prostitutes was between 30-35 years, now up to 45 per cent of them are in the age group of 13-18 and 40 per cent in 19-22. For clues as to why things in north Bihar have come to such a pass, a glance at the socio-economic evolution of the region's population is instructive. A 1910 report by the Board of Revenues said: ''The population pressure on the soil is light and the people docile.'' The area was then dominated by big landlords. An old survey shows that 54 landlord families owned 73,000 acre of land. Most of the region's population comprised of landless labourers. According to the report, as late as the early eighties the area of old Purnea district (Katihar, Purnea, Araria and Kishanganj) was sparsely populated. After Independence there was a huge influx of Bangladeshi refugees into the region. According to the 1961, 1971 and 1981 census reports the percentage of the landless labourers has gone up from 29.5 to 51.3 in 1981. The inevitable consequence of this massive increase in population was shrinking size of land holdings. In 1951 the average land owned by a person was 1.39 acres but it went down to 0.88 acres in 1961. Every year the area is ravaged by rivers such as the Mahananda, Kankar, Kari Kosi, Kamla and Riga among others. Flood control measures have failed to tame the Mahananda and the Kosi. Post-flood waterlogging has also become a perennial problem. Because of the socio-economic crisis, large sections of the population have started migrating to Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan. Poverty forces children into drug peddling. At present 30,000 women in the region work as hawkers and vendors and an equal number are engaged in other petty jobs. |