Why in news?
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.
Source: Business Standard
