Crisis, and Change, and Compliance: Forced Sex Labor in India

By Nathan Chen Oct. 26, 2025

Introduction

Eight per every thousand people in India are estimated to be living in modern slavery in India as of 2023. The Walk Free Foundation, an international human rights group, ranked India 6th in their global modern slavery index in 2023, marking slow but existent progress. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that a variety of India’s industries are also deeply engrained with child labor, ranging from cigarettes and bricks to garments and sugarcane. The same set of findings estimates that approximately 2,119,846 individuals aged 5 to 14 in India are working, making up around 1.0% of the population in that age group.  According to the International Labour Organization, of the 27.6 million people in forced labor globally, 39.4% are women and girls, and among them, 4.9 million are in forced commercial sexual exploitation. Furthermore, more than half of the 3.3 million children engaged in forced labor are victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Annie Kelly, a human rights journalist, in an article published by The Guardian, brings to light the financial profits of forced sex labour for the traffickers and exploiters, describing sexual exploitation as “by far the most lucrative form of forced labour.” This is confirmed by Anna Fleck, data journalist, who reports that sexual exploitation accounts for “nearly three quarters of the total illegal profits from forced labour,” making up around $48.4 billion in Asia and the Pacific. Thus, this paper will examine the trafficking of individuals, specifically of vulnerable communities, into the sex labor industry, and the government legislation regarding the recent crisis COVID-19 has brought.

Trafficking: How Individuals in Vulnerable Communities Enter Forced Sex Labor

The U.S. Department of State’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report of India reports that millions of people fall victim to trafficking for commercial sex, bonded by “promising large advances to manipulate workers into accepting low-paying jobs and then adding exorbitant interest rates; creating new deductions for items such as lodging or health care; or fabricating the amount of debt, which traffickers use to coerce workers into continuing to work for little or no pay.” By using deceptive tactics, many traffickers are able to constrain millions of individuals to enter the sex labor industry, seemingly by their own will, only to later realize that leaving is not a choice they can make on their own will.

Amongst individuals, certain groups are more susceptible to being trafficked into the forced sex labor industry. According to the Minority Rights Group, a global human rights organization, approximately 80% of Dalits, otherwise known as “untouchables,” the lowest socioeconomic status ranking individuals of the now modern remnants of the traditional Caste system hierarchy in India, currently reside in rural areas, many of them being obligated to work for landlords or moneylenders against their will, tied by now outlawed debt bondages. The strong correlation between economic need and lower castes translates to the disproportionate impact of forced labor in specific regions and families, granted by the increased perceived appeal and lack of choice that financial desperation creates. According to the Set Free Alliance, an international nonprofit group, Dalits find themselves prey to forced labor encompassing but not limiting to sex trafficking and debt-bonded sexual exploitation, such as forcing children of debt-bound parents to work at brothels. The vulnerability and social standing of lower-caste-born individuals open optimal opportunities for sex traffickers to thrive off desperate, willing victims with little fear of backlash.  

Amitabh Srivastava, a journalist for India Today, a local Indian news channel, introduces another group of individuals that are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking in India– foreigners. “In September [of 2024],” he writes in an article for India Today, “Coimbatore police arrested Sikandar Badusha and Stephen Raj for orchestrating an international prostitution racket that trafficked women from Russia, Indonesia and Thailand.” The Indian police demonstrate consistent yet insufficient efforts to eradicate the exploitation of foreigners by Indian sex labor networks. A study by researchers for the International Socioeconomics Laboratory (ISL), a global research network, found that the Indian society had a strong Eurocentric tendency in its preferences: The Indian beauty standards consistently preferred Western features compared to traits that are associated with Indian ethnicities. Thus, traffickers who target foreigners are able to use such beauty standards to their advantage, manipulating the market to provide a constant stream of targeted supply. The demand for foreign sex workers is constantly driven by the Indian beauty standards of fair skin and “exotic” beauty. As a result, this demand incentivizes the continuity of trafficking and exploiting foreigners, especially Europeans, to feed the forced sex labor industry in India, generating more revenue for brothel operators and “pimps”.

Crisis and Solvency: Implications of COVID-19 and Tokens of Progress

With the rise and subsequent fall of COVID-19, circumstances have shifted, demanding a new set of adaptations. The Times of India, a local news channel based in India, reports that “the number of reported child trafficking cases has gone up in Delhi…While Delhi recorded a 68% increase in the number of trafficked children, Uttar Pradesh recorded an increase of nearly six times.” The drastic changes in demographics and increased use of trafficked children shifted India’s forced sex labor industry, perpetuating the necessity of a legislative augmentation. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) identifies the increased difficulty of identifying victims during quarantine and exasperated economic struggles as significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sex labor industry. Pushed deeper into cycles of poverty, already vulnerable individuals find themselves more susceptible to falling victim to tactics such as debt bondage that actively utilizes their victims’ financial desperation.

Prompted by the surging number of sex-trafficked victims, the Indian government put forward a number of new resolutions and amendments. For instance, according to the Washington Post, a news journal based in Washington, D.C., the Indian government “expanded the rights of sex workers by defining prostitution as a profession” in 2020, ending decades of ambiguity in the legality of sex work, which previously granted loopholes for traffickers to blur the lines between consent-based sex work and forced sex work. The Ministry of Home Affairs of the Indian government reports releasing 9 advisories regarding sex labor from 2019 to 2024, and several advisories in just 2024 alone, such as the Advisory to Registrar General of all High Courts, requesting them to hold Judicial Colloquium on Human Trafficking. The frequent releases underscore the government’s seemingly consistent measures to combat the added threat of COVID-19. Such efforts were recognized externally; The U.S. Department of State’s 2024 trafficking report on India evaluated India’s government action: “The [Indian] government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period… The government increased identification of trafficking victims.” The recently established policies, therefore, are shown to be recognized in their efforts of identifying and bettering the lives of forced sex laborers.

Despite the implementation of such policies, advocates from within India voice their concerns about the Indian government’s effectiveness, specifically in enforcing compliance, despite such measures taken. Meena Saraswathi Seshu, general secretary of SANGRAM, a collective advocating for sex workers based in Sangli, India, spoke out about her concerns. “The backlash is already beginning, the police are going to start looking for any kinds of arguments not to follow the Supreme Court.” Indian citizens and organizations, long familiar with the Indian government’s history of negligence and ineffective solutions, are skeptical that the recent legislation will lead to tangible change for the betterment of the victims’ livelihoods. BBC News, a global news channel based in the U.K., reports that activists say most traffickers tend to manage to get around paying fines “because they are connected to powerful people.” The risk of legal disobedience calls for additional measures to be taken in order to demand compliance; yet, such action is difficult when the state authorities are part of the feared noncompliance. 

Conclusion

Despite consistent efforts by the Indian government, sustainable safety is yet to be ensured. Nevertheless, such efforts are recognized by external major influences as solid progress toward combatting sex trafficking and forced sex labor. The economic marginalization of members of lower castes, exasperated by the COVID-19 pandemic for several years, renders them defenseless against trafficking tactics such as debt bondage and false job offers that exploit their desperation. The social persecution of such individuals, considered “untouchables,” hinders public backlash and resistance, creating the optimal circumstances for traffickers to operate. Similarly, foreigners are susceptible to trafficking tactics such as offering cross-regional occupations. The demand for sex work delivered by these marginalized communities is maintained at a constant stream through traffickers’ strategic utilization of the Indian beauty standards and their exploitation of the most vulnerable layers of people. In order to combat forced sex labor, it is imperative that governments ensure not only that the lives of current victims permanently improve, but also that fewer victims are created in the first place. In doing so, the government must take more active measures to hold all parties, including but not limited to state authorities, police forces, and brothel operators, accountable for complying with the governmental policies and guidelines regarding sex work.