Covid-19 and child trafficking in India: mapping the crisis through media coverage

The Covid-19 pandemic had a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable sections of society, including children. While fall in nutritional status and gap in education are well-recorded, the heighted risk of exploitation faced by children is less researched. This article traces the impact of the pandemic on child trafficking in India. The domains that were explored were if there had been a rise in child trafficking due to the pandemic, what were the forms of exploitation witnessed, if any new strategies of recruitment had been created by the pandemic and the measures taken by the state during the period. The methodology was content analysis and thematic analysis of articles in national dailies in English in India from March 2020 when a lockdown was imposed to October 2021 when schools finally reopened. The study found that the period saw a surge in child trafficking as evidenced by rescues. Labour trafficking emerged as the dominant form as compared to trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation and sale of babies. There was a surge in bride trafficking too. Two new forms of exploitation that were witnessed were auctioning of Covid orphans and induction of very young children into crime. Traditional recruitment methods such as word of mouth reference continued but technology in the form of social media platforms emerged as new pathways of recruitment. Disaster relief to affected communities was also adopted by traffickers to gain the trust of vulnerable families with targeted children. The state issued advisories to law enforcement for rescue and to local governments for prevention measures. Content analysis revealed these trends while latent thematic analysis gave information about the network structure of the trafficking business, evidence of presence of organized crime in some forms of exploitation and the embeddedness of the trafficking business in the legal economy.