Bride trafficking is an emerging threat to human dignity in India. This was one of the major findings in a national study on human trafficking conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 2019. The study adopted a mixed methodology design, and included a household survey of 36,500 households across 134 districts, 331 case studies, 163 focus group discussions, and 2825 key informant interviews. The study unearthed various forms of human trafficking (e.g., child trafficking, sex trafficking, bride trafficking, trafficking for labour and domestic work, trafficking for illegal adoptions, organ harvesting, surrogacy, etc.). The prevalence of female feticide through sex-selective abortions has led to a skewed sex ratio in the demand areas, leading to the creation of a market for trafficking of brides. Bride trafficking is especially prevalent in the north-western states of the country, where women from underprivileged social strata are lured by promises of a better life, with locals acting as agents and traffickers. It emerged that 24 per cent of the households which reported a marriage in their family during 2014 to 2016 had received money from someone, pointing towards instances of “purchasing” the bride. Purchased brides were subjected to miserable living conditions and exploitation, substituted as domestic workers, and/or objectified and abandoned after a passage of time. The presentation will focus on the profile of victims, characteristics and modus operandi of trafficking, source and destination areas, forms of exploitation, and challenges in addressing the issue and including survivors’ voices in finding solutions.
Dr. Vijay Raghavan is a professor at the Centre for Criminology and Justice, School of Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. He has more than three and half decades of teaching, training, research, and field action experience in the field of criminology, criminal justice, social work, rehabilitation of custodial populations, and anti-human trafficking.