Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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Here in a quiet lane is the office of Prantakatha, an NGO which works with young people.

 

 

 

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We talked for some time with its founder, Bappadithya.

 

 

 

 

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And it soon became very clear that we shared the same values.

 

 

 

 

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I asked Bappa if he thought there was any way in which my organization could be helpful.

 

 

 

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There was a group called Roshni he was trying to support which was in a difficult situation. And so he began to tell me about Shahina Javed...

 

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Next

 

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Happy bunch

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Out of the Dark

"Once upon a time, a man walking along a beach saw a boy picking up starfish and throwing them into the sea.

 

He asked the boy why he was throwing starfish into the sea.

 

The boy replied, "The tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll dry up and die."

 

The man smiled patronisingly and said, "But, there are miles of beach and thousands of starfish on every mile. You can't possibly make a difference!"

 

The boy smiled, bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the sea.

 

"Well," he said, "I made a difference for that one."

 

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In December 2012 a Delhi gang raped a physiotherapy student on a bus, who subsequently died of her injuries. Because India does not allow the press to publicize a rape victim's name, the victim became widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless". Her father subsequently decided to disclose her identity in the hope that her life and death would come to symbolize women's struggle to end rape and the long-held practice of blaming the victim rather than the perpetrator. Jyoti Singh Pandev was only 23 when she died.

 

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Official figures show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year in India were against women. The real figure is thought to be much higher as so many women are reluctant to report attacks to the police.

 

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Lost among these figures is my dear friend Mono, senselessly murdered by her jealous husband in a 'crime of passion'.

 

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Then there is child trafficking. If you are born a girl to parents of the poorest Bengali families there is a possibility that you may be sold to a local “recruitment agent” for around 50 dollars. The agent will sell you on to a city “employer” for up to 800 dollars and into a life of abuse and suffering.

 

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Speaking to the BBC’s Natalia Antelava, an unnamed trafficker in Kolkata said, “I traffic 150 to 200 girls a year, starting from age 10, 11 and older, up to 16, 17. Local politicians and police are well aware of what we do. I have to tell police when I am transporting a girl and I bribe police in every state – in Kolkata, in Delhi, in Haryana”.

 

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Trafficking in India is a violent, complex issue fuelled by economic injustice and social inequality, harmful cultural attitudes and regional gender imbalances, with corruption among government officials and police allowing trafficking of children and women to continue and expand, illegal brothels to flourish and traffickers to go unpunished.

 

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Among the reams of material on trafficking in India, there is a staggering government statistic: a child goes missing somewhere in the country every eight minutes.

 

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Almost 35,000 children were officially reported missing in 2011. Over 11,000 of them were from West Bengal. However, it is thought only 30 per cent of cases are reported.

 

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Trafficking constitutes the third largest global organized crime (after drugs and the arms trade) and it is growing year on year. It is no exaggeration to say that India is the Asian hub of child trafficking, and that Kolkata is its trafficking capital.

 

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But there is hope. Anoyara Khatun was only 12 years of age when she was abducted. Anoyara’s courage came to the fore when she saved a girl from the clutches of traffickers and captured the men with the help of a group of children her own age.

 

“In our village, people go to sleep by eight and children aren’t allowed outside. I managed to get out of the house, take some friends along, chased the traffickers across the village, jumped canals and caught them. It was a huge risk but it changed the way elders looked at us.”

 

She is now 18, the leader of 80 children's groups across 40 villages in her district. Her refuge from the nightmare of being caged is a little diary full of songs and poems.

 

Mother I'm a prisoner of labor.

This was my fate.

Trapped between four walls

I'm being abused mother.

Apart from hard labor

They give me no peace mother.

She was nominated for The International Children’s Peace Prize in 2012.

 

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The dowry system that demands the parents of a bride pay substantial amounts to the groom is a major cause of female infanticide. “We have to give gold, silver, cash, vessels, beds, television sets, air coolers, clothes to the groom’s family and also arrange for a three-day village feast during a daughter’s wedding. We have to start saving for the dowry since the day a daughter is born. I will have to sell my land to get them married,” a mother in Rajasthan said. According to India’s National Human Rights Commission, the vast majority of victims belong to socially deprived sections of society, as well as children from drought-prone areas and places affected by natural or human-made disasters.

 

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West Bengal is now the most densely populated land on Earth, and Kolkata by far its most crowded city. And in the northern part of the city, close to Sealdah Railway Station, is the inhumanly crowded Muslim slum of Rajabazaar. Let me take you for a short walk. It will only last a couple of minutes. But 49,000 people are all around us...