read those articles write a short essay (550 words)
Make anargument about the similarities and differencesbetweenlabor trafficking in India and trafficking issues here in the United States.
Link
Some optional resources:
The Federal Human Trafficking Report 2017: https://www.traffickingmatters.com/2017-federal-human-trafficking-report/
New recommendations to tackle sex trafficking move ‘beyond law enforcement response’:
https://www.wric.com/news/politics/capitol-connection/new-recommendations-to-tackle-sex-trafficking-move-beyond-law-enforcement-response-/1517642767/
This Labor-Trafficking Case Exposes the Twin Cities Seedy Subcontracting Underbelly:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/this-labor-trafficking-case-exposes-the-twin-cities-seedy-subcontracting-underbelly/
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
1
Saving the slaving child: domestic work, labor trafficking, and the politics of rescue in
India
(Manuscript in final revisions with Humanity journal, August 2018)
Vibhuti Ramachandran
Assistant Professor
Global and International Studies
University of California, Irvine
Author Notes: 1. The ethnographic component of this article happened to me while conducting
dissertation research on the way foreign-funded NGOs are working with the law enforcement
and criminal justice systems in India to construct and respond to the issue of sex trafficking. One
of the NGOs whose work I followed closely, as well as some of the law enforcement officers and
judicial bodies I encountered, worked on both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, thus giving
me a chance to understand a different (if related) dimension of their work apart from the focus of
my dissertation. While the fieldwork this article draws upon (and the questions it pointed me
towards) was thus not funded as a project on its own, it took place during research I did in India
for Sally Merrys project on indicators as a technology of global governance on which I was a
research assistant and later, a Wenner Gren Foundation dissertation fieldwork grant.
2. When directly citing Indian legal texts, I have retained the original British English spelling
and punctuation conventions.
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
2
Saving the slaving child: domestic work, labor trafficking and the politics of rescue in India
Domestic labor has had a long, enduring history in India, vital to the homes and lives of
the middle and upper classes, and persisting through changing expectations and structures of
modernity, caste and class relations and domestic spaces.i In the past few years, anti-trafficking
and child rights NGOs in New Delhi, working closely with state agencies, have been calling
attention to the exploitative dimensions of domestic labor by rescuing impoverished young rural
migrants (especially girls) brought by unregulated placement agencies to work in upwardly
mobile urban households. These NGOs increasingly articulate concerns around labor
exploitation in the language of human trafficking and modern-day slavery employed by their
foreign donors (especially the U.S.) by weaving them into local concerns around forced labor
and child labor addressed within the Indian legal framework. Their interventions, framed both by
recent efforts by the U.S. State Department against slavery in the global South, and by
progressive postcolonial legislation in India against exploitative labor practices, rub uneasily
against socio-economic inequities and cultural hierarchies that have long perpetuated profoundly
unequal relationships between household employers and domestic labor.
The concept of slavery has become central to anti-trafficking NGOs interactions with
funding agencies, policy-makers and the media. However, as I will demonstrate, their rescue
operations on the ground require close collaboration with the local police, who view and respond
to domestic workers quite differently. Through glimpses into a rescue operation and subsequent
legal procedures in August-September 2012 in New Delhi, this article illuminates multiple
discursive constructions and contestations of what it means to save a slaving child from domestic
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
3
labor. It tracks the law in practice amidst the politics of rescue, to examine deeply varying
assumptions about and articulations of slavery, trafficking, child labor, and childhood itself.
The slavery framework has gained traction with an emergent global media and policy
categorization of human trafficking as modern-day slavery.ii It is buoyed by instruments of
global governance such as the State Departments annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report,iii
which has repeatedly chastised India (among other countries in the global South) for not
addressing human trafficking adequately per the minimum standards prescribed by a U.S.
legislation, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) of 2000.iv This
legislation mandates the production of TIP reports that rank other countries based on the State
Departments evaluations of their responses to human trafficking. The VTVPAs stated purpose
to combat trafficking in persons encompasses a wide net of concerns, including sex trafficking,
labor trafficking, forced labor, child labor, and involuntary servitude.v The U.S. legal framework
on trafficking thus brings together multiple concerns under one rubric, shaping the way the State
Department approaches these issues in the anti-trafficking agenda it sets for the global South. It
impacts how NGOs in the global South who receive U.S. funding conduct rescues and
sensitize police, judges and prosecutors. Legal scholar Janie Chuang describes the way the
U.S.-led anti-trafficking agenda rhetorically conflates the legally distinct concepts of trafficking,
slavery and forced labor to galvanize public outrage, media coverage and donor support, as
exploitation creep. vi As one human rights practitioner and researcher puts it,
There has been a recent trend in countries such as the US and the United Kingdom to revert to using the
term slavery, for example by referring to modern slavery (such as a Bill proposed in the UK), while
continuing to focus on the crime of human trafficking as defined by the UN Trafficking Protocol.
Unfortunately the word slavery seems to be used mainly for its emotive effect, rather than its technical
accuracy.vii
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
4
The VTVPA and TIP reports make frequent reference to modern-day slavery with a
distinctly American referent. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton drew out the connection
explicitly,
This annual Report embodies the United States continued dedication to fighting traffickers no
matter where they may be, because fighting slavery and standing up for human rights is part of
our national identity.viii
U.S. legislators and State Department officials concerned with trafficking invoke the
transatlantic slave trade as a horrific and ever-haunting forebear to human trafficking.ix The U.S.
political and legal deployment of the language of slavery to strengthen law enforcement and
criminal justice mechanisms against human trafficking globally reflects a sense of self-
righteousness at having acknowledged and addressed the past evils of human enslavement that it
continues to condemn.x Spearheading concerns about modern-day slavery, the U.S. State
Department plays global sheriffxi to strengthen state responses to human trafficking in
countries like India where they are seen as weak.
This article explores the meanings the concepts of slavery, exploitation, trafficking and child
labor acquire or resist in Indian anti-trafficking interventions, through an anthropological
exploration of the socio-legal context in which they are embedded. It examines how the local law
in practice is inflected by global forces, NGO intervention, and myriad socio-economic, cultural,
and individual factors impacting work and migration. Anthropologists have shown how human
rights ideas are appropriated, translated and remade across cultural contexts,xii and how
translations of universalizing human rights language can only be partial, as they constantly
engage with locally situated ethics, moral systems and priorities.xiii Anna Tsing proposes the lens
of friction for an ethnographic study of global interconnections. Tsing uses the concept to
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
5
describe the awkward translations, messy negotiations, conjunctures and contingencies through
which universal claims are charged and enacted in the sticky materiality of practical
encounters, with those encounters frequently being unequal.xiv The article explores how anti-
trafficking rescue operations in New Delhi are suffused with friction-ridden translations of the
legal concepts of slavery and exploitation, both between the global and Indian contexts, and
between progressive national labor legislation and its implementation in India. It tracks
encounters between new U.S.-driven interventions against trafficking or modern-day slavery
and the postcolonial Indian legal framework from a conceptual perspective, and between the use
of both these approaches and the role of the local police from an ethnographic perspective.
Feminist scholars have offered robust critiques of rescues in the context of sex trafficking, as
solutions that the U.S.-led global anti-trafficking agenda promotes without factoring in the
complexities of trafficking and risky migration choices.xv Feminist critiques of anti-trafficking
campaigns initiated in the global North offer useful accounts of the way the issue has seen NGOs
from an unlikely mix of activist persuasions work closely with state actors (particularly law
enforcement) to protect victims and prosecute traffickers.xvi I take a different direction from
these critiques by exploring the complex socio-legal context in which rescues are conducted,
both within and between the law in books and the law in action.xvii My ethnographic
observations of the rescue of young girls from domestic work demonstrate the need to
disaggregate the perspectives of NGO workers from those of the local police. While the former
speak the language of global anti-trafficking discourse and Indian labor laws, the latter view the
work situations of migrant labor through the lens of a commonsense knowledge xviii wherein
the perceived ineluctability of cultural hierarchies and socio-economic marginalization rubs
against both domestic laws and global anti-trafficking campaigns.
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
6
In the first section, I offer ethnographic insights into the messiness that is papered over in
media and policy narratives about slavery and exploitation, yet always haunts moments of legal
intervention against practices upon which those labels are precariously placed. The next two
sections expand upon the socio-cultural, economic and legal contexts that resist and complicate
the rescue of young domestic workers in India.
The Politics of Rescue
They took their time opening their front doors, taken aback at the unlikely set of people ringing
the doorbelltwo tall, strapping Jatxix police officers from one of Delhi Polices top investigation
units in plainclothes, a fresh and enthusiastic bunch of social work interns and two salwar-
kameez clad social worker-looking womena young NGO worker and myself, the
anthropologist-volunteer, from urban middle and upper-middle class backgrounds. The wealthy
West Delhi business families whose homes were being raided were even more surprised when
they heard that we were there to inquire about their maids. The policemen flashed their IDs to
announce their arrival, asked for the maids to be summoned, and left us women to question and
counsel the rather terrified-looking young girls who were tentatively brought before us by
their equally anxious-looking employers. The policemen reassured the businessmen and their
spouses, Youll see, its not that big a deal. The employers objected loudly, insisting that they
treated these girls like their own daughters. Within 10-15 minutes of our arrival at each home,
the NGO staff urged the girls to pack their meager belongings, after which the girls (fearfully,
sometimes reluctantly) piled into the police jeep with us and left their employers homes. While
leaving, one of the policemen would give the employers a mildly voiced admonition, Dont
employ them if they are below 18! [Excerpt from my field notes, August-September 2012].
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
7
In about a week, the police-NGO team had rescued eleven girls and one boy from homes
across the city over a total of seven raids. The rescue operation was carried out on the order of a
Child Welfare Committeea judicial body mandated by a legislation called the Juvenile Justice
Act to take decisions about the custody, well-being and rehabilitation of children in need of care
and protection. The Committee had found the addresses of the employers on the roster of a
placement agent apprehended in a different case. It directed the Delhi police to conduct the
rescues with an NGO, per established procedure. The NGO had a U.S.-sponsored project to
intervene in cases of labor trafficking, child trafficking, sex trafficking and slavery-like
practices. It initiated and actively participated in rescues, bringing those rescued before the Child
Welfare Committee. Those running the NGO were also heavily involved in advising
policymakers on trafficking at the national level and in training state agents like police,
prosecutors and judges on how to use Indian laws to respond to labor, child, and sex trafficking.
I had accompanied this NGO on raid and rescue operations on brothels in New Delhis red
light area, in the context of my dissertation research on the intersections and tensions between
the Indian law on prostitution and the discourse of sex trafficking. While spending time at the
NGO office, I became acquainted with its work on labor and child trafficking and accompanied
its staff on this type of rescue operation as well. For the NGO, sending me along was a way to
help meet their staffing needs across the different interventions it was involved in. From my
perspective, it was an opportunity to learn more about the breadth of the NGOs work vis–vis
the focus of my dissertation research. Observing this range of rescue operations helped me to
develop a broader understanding of how NGOs and a global anti-trafficking agenda intervene in,
and are also resisted by, the postcolonial Indian legal system with regard to multiple situations
possibly involving exploitative labor practices.
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
8
The growth of placement agencies which source domestic workers through agents from
villages in Jharkhand (a newly created state with a large indigenous and impoverished tribal
population)xx was a cause of great concern among both anti-trafficking NGOs and Child Welfare
Committees in New Delhi. Their growth is attributed both to employers demand for young
workers who are cheaper to employ and easier to train, and to the dire poverty in Jharkhand,
from where parents are often eager to send their children (mostly girls) to work in cities and send
money back to make ends meet. Their modus operandi allegedly entails paying agents (who also
get paid a commission by the girls parents) to bring the girls to work in the city, and recovering
this money from the employer. The domestic workers themselves are often paid nothing. Some
agencies tell them they will be paid after working for a year, others tell them that the money will
be sent to their parents in the village. There is no mechanism to ensure that they follow through
with these promises.xxi For these reasons, anti-trafficking NGOs describe the operations of
placement agencies as labor trafficking.xxii
Placement agencies are currently unregulated in India, although a Bill to regulate their
functioning and protect the rights of domestic workers has been drafted and is under revision in
response to NGOs dissatisfaction with its loopholes.xxiii Drawing on NGO inputs, the U.S. State
Departments Trafficking in Persons Reports have expressed concern over the growth of
placement agencies in their narratives about human trafficking in India in recent years, explicitly
linking the modus operandi of placement agencies to forced labor and domestic servitude.xxiv
In the rescue operations I describe here, while the recruitment and work conditions of the
rescued girls entailed many elements of exploitation, legal redress requires specificities that are
not easy to establish. Were the girls trafficked? Were they exploited or treated like slaves? Were
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
9
they children? These questions had complex answers, depending on whose perspective on socio-
economic realities, acceptable cultural practices and legal provisions was being considered.
The first question to consider is whether this was labor trafficking. The NGO framed the girls
recruitment into work and conditions thereafter in terms of both slavery and trafficking (deeming
both the placement agency and employers as perpetrators). When we spoke to the girlsat their
employers homes and later, on the way to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC)their stories
revealed complex paths of entry into domestic work, often reflecting a thin line between
trafficking and migration. Each girl had a different story about her entry into domestic work. One
ran away from home to escape a marriage with a man she didnt like. Another had herself
approached a placement agent so she could provide for the education of her younger siblings. A
few broke down, saying they didnt want to work, but were forced to do so by their parents.
Those supplying the girls to the placement agency were often their relatives, family friends or
neighbors. The girls narratives thus reflected some overlap between willing migration to work,
being forced to work by their families, and deception by the placement agency.
Next arises the question of whether the girls were exploited in their work situations. The
common thread in their stories was that none were paid wages. The employers claimed that they
had been paying the placement agent, who in turn claimed to be sending the money to the girls
parents. Most of the girls did not even know whether this money had been paid to their families,
with whom they were in touch only intermittently (some not at all, having lost the phone
numbers they had brought with them from the village, scribbled on fugitive scraps of paper).
Some were sure their families had not been paid. This non-payment of wages clearly made their
employment exploitative, as did their day-long schedule with no rest, including cleaning,
sweeping, cooking, washing clothes, and helping with childcare, eldercare and grocery shopping.
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
10
After being rescued, the girls were produced beforexxv the CWC office, a dank, bureaucratic-
looking office building where they were seated across from a bench of magistrates (two men and
two women) who asked how they came to Delhi, how they were treated in the homes they
worked in, and whether they were paid any money. In response, some of the girls spoke about
being scolded harshly and even occasionally beaten by their employers. Many burst into tears as
they spoke about missing their families in the village and about not being allowed to watch
television in the homes of their employers. Their narratives were replete with examples of ill-
treatment: Those people used to keep asking me to clean the house. I would get so tired,
running up and down, or actually, bhabhiji [term of fictive kinship for female employer] used
to beat me, but I didnt say anything that day when you all came because she told me not to. At
the CWC, where their employers couldnt hear what they were saying, a couple of the girls
mentioned incidents that they had not even told the police-NGO team at the time they were
rescued. One of them, Alice,xxvi who had barely spoken a word at the time of her rescue other
than insisting that her employers treated her very well, suddenly started to talk openly about her
ill-treatment; They didnt feed me properly. Some days I wouldnt get three meals in a day,
and they would lock me in the house when they went out so I couldnt roam around.
These work conditions, the role of the placement agency and the non-payment of wages
indicate elements of both labor trafficking per the UNs Palermo Protocol against Trafficking in
Persons (which India ratified in 2011),xxvii and forced labor per Indian law (see next section).
However, some of the girls resistance to being rescued complicated the situation, reflecting a
vexed set of experiences and perceptions. Their resistance summoned the need to acknowledge
what Denise Brennan calls a subjectivity of coercion, i.e., that migrant workers may evaluate
exploitative work conditions by different criteria than those provided in legal definitions.xxviii
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
11
Some girls, visually perceived by the police, NGO and CWC to be of borderline age (i.e.,
around eighteen), emphatically stated that they had been treated exceedingly well. One of them,
Roopa, was furious because she wanted to continue working for her employers, but now they
wouldnt take her back. What will you achieve by sending me back home? Can you get me a
job? she shouted. Another girl, Asha, was so attached to her employers that she seemed severely
traumatized at the prospect of being separated from them. Outside the CWC, she refused to step
into the police jeep to be taken to a shelter pending inquiry. Accusing all present at the CWC (the
police and the NGO team) of ruining her life, she choked out her unwillingness to go anywhere
without aunty, who had kept her so well, referring to her female employer, who stood nearby
offering her words of comfort. A third girl, extremely reluctant to be rescued, kept worrying
about how her aunty, who was so old, would manage without her. Some among the NGO staff
chalked the girls expressions of affective attachment to their employers up to Stockholm
Syndrome; a pop psychology diagnosis that reflected the way the NGO staff, following the
slavery analogy, saw the employers as captors.
Whether the girls genuinely felt this affection towards their employers, or were pressured by
them to express it, was hard to tell. Their use of fictive kinship terms for their employers
resonates with the irony Rhacel Parrenas observes in the myth of being like one of the family,
a phrase used by both employers and domestic workers to de-emphasize servitude, but which
simultaneously works to mask inequalities and exploitation.xxix In an earlier study of the
experiences of Chicana domestic workers in the United States, Mary Romero points out that
employers description of domestic workers being one of the family carries with it a
redefinition of work obligations as family obligations and of labor for pay as labor for love.xxx
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
12
Another crucial question suffusing the rescue operation and its aftermath was whether the
rescued girls were children. Coming from impoverished villages where birth registration rates
were low, none of the girls had any documentary proof of age. Visually, some looked younger
than the others. I wondered how the rescue team would determine who was a child and who was
legally a major (adult). During the rescues, the policemen used visual perceptions to gauge the
girls ages. Those who appeared to be eighteen or below (considered minors under Indian law
see next section) were whisked away to stay overnight at a shelter before being produced before
the Child Welfare Committee the next day. There was often considerable disagreement between
NGO staff who, given their agenda to rescue underage domestic workers, were more likely to
perceive a girl as below eighteen, and the police, who were less likely to do so.
The girls actual ages were established later through a bone ossification test at a government
hospital (per established medical jurisprudence in India). This test indicates age within a two-
year margin, rather than an exact estimation.xxxi There are other reasons why the ossification test
is not a foolproof mechanism. For example, Pooja was one of the youngest-looking girls we
rescued. Her employer had asked her to tell us she was eighteen. When the bone test results
came, her age was deemed to be eighteen to twenty, which would reduce the criminal liability of
the employer and placement agent. The NGO team was surprised, as was I, because she certainly
looked much younger. Then we remembered that her employer was a politician who had tried to
ask for a compromisexxxii with the NGO and police at the time of her rescue. Perhaps that
compromise was achieved later. My suggestion that this was an illicit settlement is based on
suspicion rather than concrete proof. It is intended to convey one among several factors that
render the determination of age neither easy nor reliable.
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
13
The rescues and CWC proceedings revealed a gamut of responses to child domestic labor,
ranging from NGOs firm belief in rescue as a solution, to varying and even conflicting attitudes
towards rescue among different legal agents of the Indian state. The members of the Child
Welfare Committee, a judicial agency of the state, had developed a close working relationship
with NGOs. Both entities had come to depend upon each other, with NGOs being instrumental in
carrying out rescues and the CWC often (but not always) ordering the rescues, holding the post-
rescue hearings and deciding the fate of those rescued. On the other hand, the Delhi police, who
were responsible for implementing the relevant laws and without whom rescues could not be
legally conducted, evinced a strong skepticism about the concepts of labor exploitation and child
labor, and of rescue as a solution.
Tensions between the police and the NGO staff became increasingly evident and often
confrontational. NGO representatives frequently voiced concerns that the police did not take
action in these cases, did not take exploitation seriously, or were not well versed in Indian labor
laws. The police, for their part, voiced their dislike of NGOs, whom they described as money-
making enterprises (In Hindi, paise ka khel) that received foreign donations based on how many
children they rescued.xxxiii
When the girls were produced before the CWC, the Committee had asked for the NGO report,
which they relied upon heavily in these cases. The police sub-inspector on our team handling the
case fumbled around, saying he didnt have it, while the NGO representative insisted it was
there. A CWC member finally asked for the file in the sub-inspectors hands, where the report
was found. Whether or not the sub-inspector was deliberately hiding the report, I cannot say.
This was certainly the belief in the NGO camp, in light of the rather heated discussion we had
had in the police jeep on the way to the CWC. Reading the NGOs report, the sub-inspector had
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
14
asked why it said that the girls had been scolded and beaten. We replied that that was what the
girls had told us. Kuch case nahin banega, he had said [this wont amount to a case].
The sub-inspector took it upon himself to explain to me (new to the politics of rescue) the
ulterior motives and inefficiencies of NGOs. Knowing that I was volunteering with the NGO for
my research and was thus an external and temporary (and, as he frequently pointed out, unpaid)
addition to their team, he never missed an opportunity to alert me to instances during the rescue
and post-rescue procedures when the NGO could have been at fault, deftly dodging my questions
about some of the polices actions (or lack thereof).
On a different day, when girls rescued by another team were taken to the CWC, I managed to
make it there only towards the end of the proceedings. Shaking his head in amusement, the sub-
inspector informed me that I had missed the climax. I learned that the CWC was upset with the
NGO because of a discrepancy between its report and the account one of the girls was giving.
The girl had apparently told the CWC that she did not wish to go back home to her village as her
father was abusive, while the NGO report based on what she said during her rescue stated that
the girl wanted to return to her parents. I reached in time to overhear frenzied phone
conversations between the NGO representative and its head office as they tried to figure out
whether this was a clerical error, or whether the girl had changed her mind. Please mention this
in your study, the sub-inspector told me with a gleeful smile, and I do so (as I did the incident of
the missing NGO report) to illustrate the vexed politics of a police-NGO intervention, rather than
to evaluate what actually happened or to attribute fault.
Besides their dislike of NGOs, the police often articulated their disapproval of the conceptual
framework of labor exploitation that was the premise behind rescues. The police on the rescue
team I was on talked about domestic labor, even by children, as an accepted fact of urban living
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
15
and rural poverty. On the first day of the raids, the sub-inspector turned around in the police jeep
and said, Ek baat bataoon, madam, aap inki exploitation badha rahe hain [Let me tell you,
madam, you are increasing [these childrens] exploitation]. By working in these homes, at least
they have a roof above their heads, he continued. Another policeman added, I just hope mujhe
in bachchon ki baddua na lag jaaye [I just hope these children wont curse me for doing this].
The police seemed to take the girls narratives about being scolded or slapped by their employers
quite lightly, quipping, Oh come on, even ones mother would scold that much. They did not
view these instances as exploitative, while the NGO and CWC did.
In response, after reminding him that the raid was initiated on the order of the Child Welfare
Committee, a determined young NGO employee, fresh out of social work school, went on to say
that the girls had been treated like slaves, and asked the police why they couldnt see that.
Slavery? Slavery kya hai? Uski koi definition hai Indian law mein? [Slavery? What is
Slavery? Is it defined in Indian law?] was the sub-inspectors response. Opening the copy of
the IPC (Indian Penal Code) that I (as a novice still learning these laws) was carrying with me,
we pointed out the relevant sections. The colonial-era Code specified criminal penalties against
the following acts associated with slavery: Buying or disposing of any person as a slave
(Section 370) and Habitual dealing in slaves (Section 371). I know these sections, he said,
But do they define what a slave is? How can you call this slavery when there is no definition?
For the NGO, the treatment of the girls amounted to slavery. But slavery was not, as the police
pointed out, defined in the Indian criminal law that could have been applied to the situation,
making it difficult to enforce.
We then drew the polices attention to the fact that the girls had not been paid anything.
The sub-inspector conceded (albeit grudgingly) that the non-payment of wages was the only
DRAFTNot for circulation outside this class
16
crime that the employers and placement agent could be prosecuted for. In the First Information
Reportxxxiv of the case against the placement agency, the police applied
