Months after she was rescued, 16-year-old Asma, a resident of Sunderbans in South 24 Parganas, took a loan of ₹20,000 from local moneylenders in May 2020 to rebuild her life. The first wave of COVID-19 had made it difficult to get any work. A year later, in May 2021, Ms. Asma, who was unable to repay the loan she took last year, took another loan of ₹32,000.
The second wave of COVID-19 and its related distress has pushed survivors of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation into more debts at higher rates of interest in the year 2021 than compared 2020.
Stories like that of Ms. Asma and the debt trap that the pandemic has pushed them into have come to fore in a survey carried out by Tafteesh, a platform for anti-trafficking stakeholders.
The survey covered about 335 respondents, survivors of trafficking and sex work from West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. A comparative analysis of the average loan taken by members of different survivors’ collectives in 2020 and 2021 proves the point.
For instance, the average loan amount for women associated with Bandhan Mukhti, a collective of survivors in West Bengal, was ₹18, 946 in 2020, which increased to ₹31,848 on an average in 2021. The maximum rate of interest increased from 18% a month in 2020 for Bandhan Mukti members to 20% a month in 2021. Similarly, for survivors of trafficking at Bijoyni, another collective, the average loan amount increased from ₹5,967 to ₹17,147, and the maximum interest rates rose from 8% in a month to 15% a month.
Both Bandhan Mukti and Bijoyni are collectives of survivors of trafficking from West Bengal.
The other collectives which were a part of the study are Vimukthi from Andhra Pradesh, SAANS from Chhattisgarh, and Utthan from West Bengal.
“The analysis of income and loan information of 335 survivors of human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation and sex workers from West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh has found that 201 or 60% of them have taken some loan at a time of this study in May 2021…” a press note by Tafteesh said.
The document added that out of 142 survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and women in sex work surveyed for the research, 99 have taken loans as low as ₹5,000 to as high as ₹5,50,000 during the second wave of the pandemic.
The research points out that the debt amounts increased exorbitantly over the past two years as the women took high risk loans beyond their repaying capacity. “Another important learning from this analysis is that women are particularly at the risk since they are at the front of all their family debts, and they are likely to be sued for defaulting in repayments or subjected to harassment by the moneylenders and their recovery agents,” the statement by Tafteesh said.
