| By Ross Appleyard, The Times, 28th February
2006
DRESSED in a grubby smock Selma skips over the railway lines, expertly
dodging the huge trains that lumber into Calcutta station. The ten-year-old
is one of thousands of children who sleep on the platforms and rely
on begging, stealing or selling themselves just to eat.
"The only thing that scares me is the jumbo train," she
says. The jumbo train is an ancient wagon that brings bodies into
the city from outlying districts to be burnt. It arrives at night.
Selma came to Calcutta three years ago with her mother. Her mother
went home, but Selma stayed. "I sleep on Platform 1,"
she says. "I make some money from the eunuchs by dancing and
clapping for them."
The eunuchs perform for pennies at the station and pose little
threat to Selma. But others do. Calcutta has a burgeoning business
in child trafficking. Gangs travel to the poorest areas of India
offering jobs or marriage to young girls to lure them to the big
city. Inevitably they end up in the red-light districts, plying
their trade with lips painted bright red. Many try to look older
- some could even pass for 16. These children sell their bodies
for as little as five rupees (about 7p) and are brutally abused
by the pimps who control them and by the men who often rape them.
Many girls have a familiar tale to tell. Most come from poverty-stricken
areas such as the Sunderbans, three hours' drive from Calcutta.
Their parents sell them, in all innocence, to credible-looking men
who say that they are looking for a wife or a domestic servant.
For about £6, mothers allow their daughters to be taken in
the hope that they will get a job and an education and send money
home to the family.
The reality is that they disappear into the seedy background of
the massively overpopulated streets of Calcutta. Aid agencies battle
daily to help the people whom Mother Teresa described as the poorest
of the poor, but an increasing demand for young children means that
it is difficult to keep up with voracious traffickers.
"We have many projects in and around Calcutta but it is impossible
to reach everyone," says Lisa O'Shea, of GOAL, the charity.
"Education is the key here. If we can get young kids into schools
there is less chance of them falling into the hands of the traffickers
and pimps.
"We have built schools in the Sunderbans in an effort to keep
the youngsters in the countryside and that seems to be working."
The Sunderbans is an idyllic-looking estuarine system of mangrove
trees and rivers. Its name, Bengali for beautiful forest, belies
the dark trade that is plied here.
Mamouna ran away when she was 13 in search of a better life, only
to be subjected to cruel abuse before she was rescued by police
and placed in the care of a charity.
"The people were horrible and beat me. I had no food and was
made to sleep outside with the mosquitoes," she says. Others
who run away are not so fortunate.
Girls who are trafficked are moved across India, and sometimes
across the border into Bangladesh. No one knows the true extent
of the trade but agencies estimate that there are about five million
people homeless in Calcutta alone - almost one third of the city's
population.
A massive, sprawling rubbish dump lies on the edge of Calcutta.
More than 2,000 attracted by the promise of city jobs call this
place home. The huge tip is like Dante's Inferno on Earth. Foul
fumes spew from the muck and everything you touch is covered in
a black, oily residue. Overhead crows and hawks circle, waiting
to feed on the bodies of animals or people who dare venture inside.
Children hardly old enough to walk patrol the paths through the
dump, searching for tidbits that they can sell. They separate paper,
plastic and metal into huge piles before carting them off to recycling
yards for pennies.
A GOAL hostel in Calcutta provides shelter for prostitutes and
their children. The working girls are happy that their children
are getting an education - albeit that the schools operate in full
view of the prostitutes and their customers.
Nina, a prostitute, hopes that her 12-year-old daughter, Hadura,
will be able to become a teacher.
"I had no choice," says Nina. "When I was 13 I was
already working in the sex industry. My mother did the same. It's
very common to have this type of family tradition, but I want something
different for Hadura."
LIFE FOR CHILDREN IN INDIA
• About 17 million work, 2 million in hazardous jobs
• At least 6 million live in slums
• About 300,000 - at least - engage in commercial sex
• About 200 girls and women enter prostitution daily, 80
per cent unwillingly
• More than 30 million women and children have been victims
of trafficking for sexual exploitation in Asia in the past 30
years
• Under-5 mortality rate: 85 out of every 1,000 births
Sources: Indian Government and Census; Save the Children
India; UNICEF
|
