Annual Global Slavery Index was recently released.
What is Global slavery Index?
It is published by the Australia-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation.
It includes data on three key variables-
Prevalence of modern slavery in each country,
Vulnerability,
Government responses to modern slavery.
Modern slavery refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot leave because of threats, violence, coercion and abuse of power or deception.
According to the index the global incidence of modern slavery is estimatedas 46 million in 2016.
What is the position of India?
India has been ranked 4th out of 167 countries.
The top three countries were North Korea, Uzbekistan and Cambodia.
In 2016, it was deemed to have some 18.3 million people trapped in slavery.
Now about 1.4% of the population working under coercive conditions.
There is an addition of 4 million slaves when compared with 2014 index.
Indian Policy-makers discount the ranking as a function of the size of the population, but most populous country china is ranked at 4oth position.
What implication does this index leaves on India?
The long-term structural weaknesses of India’s economic reform has been the inability to expand the market for jobs in sync with its demographic growth.
Many of these new-age slaves are women and children, the most vulnerable sections on the frontline of economic slowdown and poverty.
Increase in number of slaves every year is due to the rank failure of India’s law enforcement institutions.
Indian migrant labour has not been taken into account for this index, if they had been included India might have topped the list.
According to UNDP India will see a severe job shortage in the next 35 years, the number of the country’s modern slaves is likely to boom.
