Operation Rice Bowl in Philadelphia:
Indian activist links human trafficking and hunger
By
NADIA MARIA SMITH
CS&T Staff Writer
Hunger has made millions of women and children vulnerable to human trafficking
throughout the world, says the director of an organization that fights
such sexual abuse and exploitation in India.
The link between the lack of enough food and trafficking rings is something
Pravin Patkar understands all too well: More than 210 million people in
India live with chronic hunger, according to the Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
Patkar is director of Prerana, an India-based non-profit organization
that has pioneered several groundbreaking interventions against commercial
sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children in Mumbai, India.
He was the Feb. 13 speaker in the Operation Rice Bowl Lenten lunch series
offered this year by Catholic Relief Services at the Archdiocesan Office
Center on 17th Street. The series works to heighten awareness of hunger
in the Archdiocese and throughout the world. [See page 3 for the next
speaker in the series.]
In his talk, Patkar described the dire situation in India, where virtually
every industry — including coal, textile, carpentry, agriculture,
auto repair and tobacco — employs children as young as 6 years old,
forcing them to work in subhuman conditions for a plate of food.
Lack of food also drives young women and girls to sign up with fake employment
“agencies” that promise to find them work as maids in urban
homes — but instead sell them into brothels, Patkar said.
In Mumbai, the financial capital of India, he said it is common to find
girls as young as 12 in the city’s red light district. They live
in captivity for their first five years as prostitutes, until the traffickers
are sure they’re too emotionally broken and socially stigmatized
to leave.
He said infants born to trafficking victims are drugged to sleep nine
hours a day, in order to allow their mothers to continue serving sex customers.
The daily druggings result in severe learning disabilities, and psychological
and emotional problems for the children, Patkar said.
When they grow older, those children are trafficked into other labor markets
or forced into prostitution. Boys between the ages of 13 and 14 are castrated
and turned into male prostitutes, or groomed to become pimps by running
errands for sex customers, fetching liquor, cigarettes and hard drugs,
and arranging pornographic films.
Prerana has been working tirelessly to change all that. For 22 years,
the organization has been a global leader in identifying and combating
human trafficking.
Thanks to the organization’s work, which is supported by CRS, the
next generation of children in Mumbai’s red light district have
been saved, Patkar said.
Prerana provides the children with food, housing, education and health
care. When they get old enough, the children are sent to boarding schools
and then go on to college or are trained in vocational schools. He said
the efforts have ended the cruel cycle of trafficking in Mumbai.
Going hand-in-hand with that work is the rehabilitation of victims who
have been rescued by the police, Patkar said. Prerana offers programs
to help women victims reenter society, and teaches them work skills so
they can provide for themselves and their children.
Many of Prerana’s successes can’t be publicized, because the
victims’ new lives would be ruined if their pasts were revealed,
Patkar said.
He said his organization also works in the courts to help prosecute traffickers,
and has become a leader in global advocacy for human trafficking victims.
Patkar believes understanding the connection between hunger and trafficking
is important for Americans when they make choices both as consumers and
voters — because their choices take a toll on the life of another
human being across the world.
He said he realizes how powerful consumerism can be when he sees crates
of Pepsi and Coca Cola in every poor village he visits — even though
90 percent of the villagers have to walk great distances for clean drinking
water.
“They are not asking for the moon,” he added. “They
are just asking for [help with] some basic needs — an opportunity
to have food and drinking water, to go to school and a place to live free
of danger.
“There are good people every- where. All that is required is that
when bad men conspire, good men network,” Patkar said. “We
all must work to make the world a safe place. It is the best gift we can
give to our children.”
To learn more about the work of Prerana visit www.preranaatc.com or email
Pravin Patkar at pppatkar@gmail.com.
CS&T staff writer Nadia Maria Smith may be reached at npozo@adphila.org
or (215) 965-4614.