Lost to Labour

Time of India

6 days ago

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Patna: In Bihar, floodwaters don't just wash away homes and crops—they sweep away dreams too. Amid this devastation, a quiet business thrives. It doesn't deal in goods but in people.
For human traffickers, natural calamities like floods are a gold mine, offering cheap labour and quick profits. But for the trafficked, it's a slow descent into a life where bodies become tools.
The faces of trafficking in Bihar are many. Children toil for 15 to 16 hours a day, often hidden away in cramped workshops. Girls dance under flashing lights in orchestras, and women are sold, not once but repeatedly—passed around like worn-out currency.
They are survivors of a brutal system that feeds on poverty and trades in despair.
In flood-prone districts like Sitamarhi, Araria, and Madhubani, rivers breach their banks each year, inundating homes and leaving families desperate. That's when traffickers appear—with promises of food, shelter, and jobs in distant cities. Parents, sometimes knowingly but often naively, send their children off, hoping they will find a better life.
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What they don't realise is that it is often a one-way journey into bondage.
"Most of the boys I rescued were working 15-16 hours a day," says Farooq Alam of Tatvasi Samaj Nyas, an NGO working in Bihar's flood-affected areas. "They were under informal contracts, mostly from Musahar or minority families." He remembers the haunted eyes of children who had grown too used to pain.
Shovan Roy from Siktia village in Katihar was just 14 when he was sent to Jaipur.
"I didn't have a choice," he says. "Floods destroyed everything—our crops, land, even hope. My father had died, and with no income, my mother sent me to work in a bangle factory. I worked from 7am to 9pm." Now an adult in Siliguri, he still shudders at the memory. "We were not children—we were machines made of flesh and blood," he says.
Trafficking in Bihar is not just a social evil—it is an organised business. "There's money behind every child," says Suresh Kumar of Bal Mitra, an NGO, who has worked in rescue operations for two decades.
"You would be shocked at the rates at which the children are sold. Many parents don't even know where their children are sent."
He recounts dreadful tales of children, who never returned, of bodies he received after they collapsed from working day and night. "They live on two rotis a day. No mattress, no fan. Just work and thrashes if they slow down."
Women fare no better. Many are married off to men in faraway states, only to be sold again and again.
Some fall into the clutches of the flesh trade, especially in places like Seemanchal, Arwal and Sitamarhi. Others are pushed into orchestras—entertainment outfits that often double as fronts for exploitation.
At first glance, these orchestras appear to be travelling dance troupes. But behind the makeup and bright lights lies a darker truth. "More than 500 orchestras operate in Bihar," says ADG, weaker sections, Amit Kumar Jain.
"A large number of minor girls have been forced into them." Between May 2024 and July 2025, 194 minor girls were rescued from Saran district alone, he says.
Jain identifies three main patterns of trafficking in the state. First, forced labour, particularly from districts like Gaya, Nawada, and Jamui. Second, sexual exploitation, often rooted in the Seemanchal area, Arwal, Nalanda, and Sitamarhi. And third, a rapidly growing trend—trafficking of girls into orchestras, especially in districts like Siwan, Saran, Gopalganj, Bettiah, Motihari, Rohtas and Nalanda.
He adds that these trades thrive in areas hit by floods or where scheduled caste populations are concentrated. "Trafficking is a low-cost, low-risk business," Jain says. "Most victims are helpless minors forced to work over 16 hours a day with little or no pay. Those who refuse are beaten and kept in inhumane conditions," adds.
Field workers say the orchestra circuit often masks sexual exploitation. "It's a curtain," says a rescuer.
"What the audience sees is performance. What happens off-stage is something else entirely," he adds.
On the traffickers' radar are the poorest of the poor: widows, orphans, landless workers. "They strike when people are most vulnerable—after a flood, a death, a failed harvest through a well-established ring of contacts," says Banku Bihari Sarkar, child protection specialist at Unicef, Bihar. "They offer a lifeline in despair, but it is laced with chains."