A young boy pushes a large cart full of vegetables up a street in Tamil Nadu, India. Mat McDermott/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
On 31 May 2016 the Walk Free Foundation released its 2016 Global Slavery Index. The foundation, headed by Andrew Forrest, an Australian mining magnate, grabbed headlines around the world when it claimed that there were 45.8 million ‘modern slaves’ around the world, of whom 18.3 million were to be found in India. Although Forrest’s preface to the 2016 Global Slavery Index was interspersed with kind and appreciative words for Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, there was no mistaking that the world balked at India’s shame.
Perhaps in anticipation of this indictment, the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development recently proposed the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2016 (hereafter the trafficking bill), on which comments are solicited until the end of June 2016. I argue that the trafficking bill needs serious reconsideration to prevent it from becoming a missed opportunity. There is an urgent need for the Indian government to go back to the drawing board to formulate a comprehensive, effective anti-trafficking law.
