Does anyone even care?

Year: 2006. While working for the BBC on a documentary on human trafficking, we interviewed a Nepali woman who was sold to a Kolkatta brothel. She narrated her harrowing tale of how she was trafficked to India and sold, and how she managed to escape. To trace her home, we accompanied her to a village in the north-east hilly region where we found a dilapidated shanty structure that housed her mother, four kids and a goat. A large lump rose through my throat. No wonder she was sweet-talked for a ´better paying´ job in India.



Cut to present. A recent news report narrates the story of six of our Constituent Assembly (CA) members meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharmashala, India. When asked, these lawmakers said they were under the impression that they were traveling to New Delhi, not Dharmashala. To cut the story short: They were ´duped´. I don´t want to go to the diplomatic ramifications of this visit as I don´t have a very good understanding of diplomacy.



Let’s put two and two together. Take the first case: An uneducated woman, married at an early age, is abandoned by her husband after four kids for another woman. The second comprises a group of people who have access to all the required information. Still, like the woman, these six lawmakers were ´duped´. The woman was ´duped´ to work as a sex worker in a notorious red light area in Kolkatta while the CA members are ´duped´ to meet the Dalai Lama.



The only difference between them is that the woman after returning had to struggle hard to lead a normal life while the others simply came back and boasted of their visit to Dharmshala, expressing ignorance of the ramifications. When the CA members did not question when they were being taken to Dharamshala instead of Delhi, can we expect a poor, illiterate and ignorant woman to dare ask someone where she was being taken to?



In the last three years, promises have been made, dreams have been shown but has there been any change in the status of Nepali women? Can women in Nepal be secure of their present and future? How many women will be trafficked again? How many more will suffer? The questions need serious deliberations. Does anyone even care?

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