Carpet weaving in Rajastan, India. Jeffrey Leventhal for ILO/Flickr. CC (by-nd)
In October 2017, India vehemently protested the release of the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage (GEMS) by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Walk Free Foundation (WFF) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). GEMS estimated that there were 40.3 million ‘modern slaves’ worldwide with 24.9 million persons in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage.
GEMS did not name countries, but the writing on the wall was clear. After all, the GEMS study conducted 17,000 survey interviews in India, compared to 1000 interviews in most countries, and 61.78% of the 40.3 million ‘modern slaves’ were in Asia and the Pacific. Furthermore, the WFF had, the year before, estimated that of the 45.8 million ‘modern slaves’ worldwide, 40% were in India alone. Registering its protest with the ILO, India vowed to undertake its own surveys. Bibek Debroy, economic adviser to the prime minister and member of Niti Aayog (the think-tank responsible for the sustainable development goals or SDGs), was scathing in his critique of GEMS. He called its estimates on forced marriage “confused and fuddled” and urged reliance on the government’s reports on child marriage.
