Kitaiskii Bazar

Anita Sengupta

Almaty, situated in southern Kazakhstan, is close to the Chinese border. One of the most interesting places in the outskirts of the city is Barakholka, a large out-of-town bazar that lies to the north-west of Almaty, reputedly stretching for nearly five kilometers. Nestled in the foothills of the Tien Shan, it is a noisy, congested and chaotic maze of zigzagging aisles where thousands shop every day. The market, which stretches along-side a road leading out of town, is organised into sections, each named differently—“Europe,” “Evrazia” and so on. Barakholka is a rabbit warren of stalls (actually comprising several different bazars, each offering specific merchandise). Most of the bazar is outside, and trying to find a particular section is nearly impossible. One can spend hours turning corners and walking through long barn like buildings weaving through the crowds. The bazar sells literally everything that one would want to buy from clothes to food and toys, hardware to handicrafts. It is also a market where Uzbeks, Uighurs, and Dungans converge to sell products of Chinese make. Inside the labyrinths of shops and tents there are restaurants that reflect the ethnic diversity of the market. There are also always hawkers who walk through the narrow aisles selling tea, fruit and somsa, yelling alternately in Kazakh and Russian.

Understanding Trafficking in West Bengal: Some Personal Experiences

Asokendu Sengupta

(Prof. Sengupta is Former Chairperson, West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights. This two part series is informed by his experiences as well as expertise in the field. This is the second part.)

I served as the Chairperson, West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights for about 2 years (2014-16). I also had the opportunity to act as the Chairman, State Level Inspection Team (SLIT) & State Level Inspection & Monitoring (SLIM) Committee, during 2012-15. From my experiences I have learnt that it is very difficult to identify the cases of trafficking as it is often made in guise of marriage, recruitment of domestic worker or workers for shops etc. I will share a few cases with my readers that will reflect on the complex nature of the problem and the difficulties of (and within) the administration.

Case I

Once I visited Uttarpara Children’s Home along with Shri Bidhan Bhattacharya & Shri Sujato Bhadra, members of SLIM. A group of women surrounded us as soon as we reached there. We learnt that they were all trafficked Bengali girls who had been rescued from Maharashtra. The Maharashtra Police, by order of an appropriate court, transferred these Bengali-speaking girls to the West Bengal authorities. As a temporary measure, the authorities here had dumped them at Uttarpara Children’s Home. Naturally the Home management was not at all happy with this. They were not equipped or trained to handle such trafficked victims. Moreover, as they rightly pointed out, these women were all adults. They were misfits in a children’s Home.

We also learnt that the Government had already arranged for an alternative shelter for them. But the women were unsatisfied. They demanded a better shelter and also an assurance from us ( unfortunately they considered us representatives of the government authority) that they would be allowed to use mobile phones and other gadgets as well as participate in the profession they were in for last seven months. They did not want the government to intervene.

Being inexperienced & ignorant, I asked “Why! Don’t you like to be reintegrated with your family or community? Should we not try for that?”

They rejected my proposal unanimously. They laughed at me instead.

CHILD TRAFFICKING IN INDIA: A NOTE

Asokendu Sengupta

(Prof. Sengupta is Former Chairperson, West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights. This two part series is informed by his experiences as well as expertise in the field. This is the first part.)

Over 130 children have been reported missing every day this year. About 15,988 children were reported missing this year till April 2015, of which over half (6,921) were untraced.

Times of India /TNN | Jul 24, 2015

“Children who have gone missing were at the risk of being trafficked. … Every 30 seconds a child runs away from his home!”

Devi Sirohi, Chairperson, Chandigarh Commission for Protection of Child Rights(CCPCR), Keynote address at the Workshop on Child Trafficking,12-03-2015

 

Trafficking & Child Trafficking

It is difficult to find a comprehensive definition of trafficking in persons. NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) defines trafficking as trade in human, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation for the traffickers or others; or for the extraction of organs or tissues, including surrogacy and ova removal; or for providing a spouse in the context of forced marriages. Palermo Protocol defines trafficking in persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat, or force or coercion, abduction, or fraud, deception, abuse of power, position of vulnerability, giving or receiving payments/benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Thus, the thrusts of the definitions of NCPCR and Palermo Protocol are different. While the former emphasises on the purposes of trafficking, the latter’s stress is on the act itself. In any study of trafficking it is important to focus on the child trafficking as NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) Action Research has established a direct linkage between ‘Human Trafficking’ and ‘Missing Children’.[1] Missing children are sold as bonded labourers, child prostitutes, beggars, drug peddlers, sold for illicit trading of organs etc. These children are normally from economically and socially disadvantaged marginalized sections.

“Bari Jabo Kobe?” : Plight of a homeless young Rohingya

Adrija Maitra

(Adrija is an intern at Mahanirban Calcutta research Group and can be reached at eshamaitra07@gmail.com)

“When will I go home?”* With a look of half uncertain hope and half despair, fourteen year old Safi Akhter just wanted me to answer this question. I had gone to meet her to document her personal narrative – the journey from her homeland Myanmar, where she was born, to the land where her parents currently live in, India. She has been living in India for a year now, although if given a chance, she would go home. (I interviewed her as a part of my ongoing research project on the Rohingyas, which aims to adopt a gendered lens on the Rohingya international crisis. Safi is the sole Rohingya girl in West Bengal at this moment, and thus, her narrative will add a first-hand dimension to my research undertaking.)

Safi belongs to the Rohingya community, a minority Muslim community who call the now Rakhine state of Myanmar their homeland. According to the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), “Muslim Arakanese or Rohingya are indigenous to Arakan. Having genealogical linkup with the people of Wesali or Vesali kingdom of Arakan, the Rohingya of today are a perfect example of its ancient inhabitants.” The golden age of the Muslim Arakanese culture came during the 15^th century, under the Mrauk-U dynasty (1430-1784). The royal court patronized Arakanese literature, Muslim titles were adopted by the Mrauk-U kings, coins were minted in which was inscribed an Islamic declaration of faith, and also took inspiration from the dressing sense of the Persian rulers.

The Rakhines entered the Arakan kingdom around 10^th century, although tensions between the Rakhines and Rohingyas emerged only after the British conquest of Arakan in 1825. Thousands of Bengalis, especially from Chittagong, migrated to Arakan to work in the British colonial plantations which boosted the imperial economy. The Rakhines bitterly resented this influx of “illegal Bengalis” taking away their jobs, and thus, in post-colonial Burma, the Rohingyas were discriminated against. Ethnically and culturally distinct than the Burmese, the latter viewed the Rohingyas as a remnant of their oppressive, exploitative, and colonial past. Therefore, the 1982 Burmese Citizenship Law recognized 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar, excluding the Rohingyas, rendering them stateless. Against such a historical-cultural-political backdrop, Safi experiences reality.

Safi has grown up in a village which she calls Harifara, in Myanmar, with her maternal grandmother (nani), a maternal uncle, and his daughter Zayida. Her parents moved to India when she was 4-5 years old, and listening to her childhood experiences it seemed that she hardly has any memories with her parents. There was but one trip that she had made to India with her parents, of which she couldn’t recount any particulars. She remembers playing with Zayida in their home in Myanmar, and spoke of her cousin with a smile. “Why did you leave Myanmar?” I asked her. “Because my parents are in India.”  Her countenance, almost within a fraction of a second, became grave and thoughtful.

The sweat of Kolkata: Paying homage to its people and their “labour-power”

Texts and images by Giorgio Grappi.

(Dr. Grappi works on the transformation of the State form and logistical corridors. He explored India several times. The pictures attached to this text were shot in 2011. He can be reached at giorgio.grappi@unibo.it)

Kolkata is many things. Kolkata constantly changes. Kolkata reshapes itself. Calcutta lasts. Under the scratches of its many developments, the people of Kolkata ignite the city with their labour power. At the outskirts of the city, moving from Howrah towards the ancient French colony of Chandannagar, the blackened bricks of the old mills dot the green fields of Bengal.

Once, this land was the promise of colonial development. Then it became the dream of an independent India, fluctuating between the words of the poet, the guns and the bombs, and the workers’ sweat. On the opposite side, Rajarhat is now becoming the Pandora’s box of the dreams of the uninhibited middle class. Rajarhat wants to forget Calcutta, yet Rajarhat is Kolkata.

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