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00:00Hello and welcome to ETV Bharat. My name is Nisar Dharma. Today we have with us a
00:04very special guest, a human trafficking activist and the founder of Impact and
00:09Dialogue Foundation who is now also a recipient of Ramoji Award of Excellence
00:14Ms. Pallavi Ghosh. Welcome Pallavi and congratulations. Thank you so much. Pallavi
00:20I was just going through the field of work that you have. It is a very unique
00:23field that you have chosen and at the same time it is something that is you
00:27know a little fraught with dangers. So beginning your journey as a human
00:32trafficking activist that too added at the age of 12. I mean how did you take
00:37this decision? It's not like I decided to be an activist at the age of 12. I saw
00:43something. I saw an incident and that kind of you know you can say that's so a
00:49seed inside me. So after that multiple incidents happened one after another. So
00:55it was a missing child who went missing from somewhere in West Bengal and the
01:00father was searching for this child and he kept coming to me all the time. I am
01:04basically Bengali but I am from Assam. So he was continuously coming to me and
01:09telling me and asking me where his child was. So honestly speaking that did not
01:13bother me. My only query was like a girl goes missing from a village which has just
01:19one entry and exit and how is it that nobody knows about it. So from 12 till
01:25the age of 19 multiple incidents happened one after another and those were
01:29incidents that happened organically nothing was planned and finally I got to
01:34know on my first year of graduation that one of the reasons of missing
01:40children is trafficking and that's when I decided that I want to work in
01:43trafficking and then after that one after another incidents happened I joined an
01:47organization I started working in trafficking so yeah so that's how it is.
01:50So you were primarily based in Bengal or you moved and you know started working in
01:56other states as well. So I was born in Assam I did my studies in Delhi but I got
02:02introduced to this whole thing of trafficking in Haryana and Rajasthan and
02:06then I started working so I was working in destination so in trafficking there is
02:10source transit and destination so I started working in Delhi Haryana Rajasthan and all
02:13but finally I figured it out as a young activist that everyone was working in
02:18trafficking were working only in destinations. So there is no point like so
02:22if you want to end the crime then you have to go to the source from where it
02:27originates. So that's when I decided that you know I should go to the source so
02:31that's how I started working in West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh. The first girl I
02:36rescued was from Guntur by the way the first girl I rescued so and then that's how I
02:40went to North East. Yeah talking about rescuing you know survivors or we won't
02:47call them victims you have around 10,000 survivors with whom you have
02:51rescued and impacted 75,000 women and girls it is a very strong an emotionally
02:57strong atmosphere it would be so how do you keep up with it and you know how do
03:01you maintain the temper and ensure that you know you keep on going and doing this
03:05work? To be very honest you have to work with police so I get an information and
03:09then I have to go to the local police station I have to convince them and then
03:13with them only I can go for rescue because we are not authorized because we
03:16are not law enforcement. So there are times I remember that you know it's
03:21mentally very traumatizing and exhausting but like I remember my first rescue the
03:27girl had rescued so I remember her mother traveling like 10 hours with a
03:33watermelon because she did not have anything to give me and then after her
03:39deposition in front of in the in front of the court she told me something she
03:43was elder to me I was younger to her but the statement that she told has stayed
03:48with me till now she told in front of the magistrate you know my mother gave me
03:53birth but she is the mother who saved me so I think I don't know like maybe
03:58because at a very early age I saw all this so this and incidents like this has
04:03happened there are people those who don't have anything but you know they travel all the
04:07way getting maybe a jaggery for me or maybe there is this girl who sends me
04:14cards in New Year with the flowers from a garden so I think this all these things
04:20money somewhere can't buy and maybe because I was exposed to this at a very
04:24young age so that is the reason that emotional sentimental thing always has been
04:29stayed so that's how I keep it up so that is how I kind of push myself you can the
04:32human connect yeah absolutely I was also going through the work that you have you
04:37talked about three P's prevention protection and prosecution and they seem to
04:42be central to your mission now your work revolves around them so which of these in
04:46your experience you know it's the toughest one to achieve and and why the
04:51toughest is prosecution because you can say like thousands have rescued but there
04:57has been only seven convictions the problem is that starting everybody
05:03thinks that rescue is easy but the main struggle starts post rescue what happens
05:09I'll tell you about this girl only had rescued from Guntur so it was such a strong
05:13case and we were convinced that there will be conviction but what happened
05:17because of Indian judiciary unfortunately the case continued for 10 years and
05:22after a point of time the victims turned hostile so everybody was like why the
05:26victims turned hostile now tell me something some some crime happened with
05:30me 10 years back every year I have been called to the court and I have been asked
05:35the same thing so I am reliving the trauma again and again and again at some
05:39point they're lucky whatever happened happened I want to let go of it so
05:44that's the problem and then this is one of the main reasons you know
05:47prosecution is tough but if you talk about prevention prevention is equally
05:51tough because I work in North East now so where when you don't have two square
05:57meals a day a lot of people tell me key they come by their own choice
06:02they go by themselves it's very easy to say for somebody who's staying in Bangalore
06:08Delhi or Hyderabad because you don't have to worry about your second meal the
06:11place where I work you will not believe people literally boil water people
06:18literally boil leaves and the water they get from there with that they eat rice so
06:24when there is so much and this is I am talking to you about 20th century our
06:28country when there is so much of poverty the moment you say that come let's go to
06:33Bangalore or Delhi you'll have a better life people will go and that's how this
06:38trafficking thing has started you know increasing so much exploiting the the
06:44factors that yeah yeah absolutely I understand it might be difficult for you
06:49to recall or it would be a difficult experience could you you know talk to us
06:53about one of the rescue operations or a survivor story that stayed with you or
06:58that is sort of a motivation for you always whenever you feel like you know I
07:01should take a step back or you know it's too dangerous or something like that
07:05there are hundreds of story but this particular story because this is the
07:08youngest child I had rescued it was a four month old baby and this was a case of
07:132013 I remember I so I went as a decoy with crime branch so this child was to
07:19be sold in Middle East and of course I do I I my appearance doesn't look like you
07:25know someone from the Middle East so I went as the maid servant of the person
07:30who's going and we had like 10 lakh counterfeit currencies and I went as a
07:36decoy and I rescued the child it was a four month child and so there was a big
07:41trafficking racket going in the NCR Delhi NCR and there was this compounder who has
07:48who had you know told everybody that he's a doctor he and the midwife as nurse they
07:55were running this business that child stayed with me for two days and then this was 2013 and
08:01till now I am going for witness in this case till now the child is now 12 years old a family has
08:10adopted her sad part is that the child's mother had trafficked her and everybody was against the
08:17mother asking that why the mother trafficked her but when I heard the story of the mother in one way
08:24I also realized that she was also a victim of the system because the father used to you know
08:30sexually exploit the mother every day so what the mother decided the mother this was the third child
08:35that the mother was selling so the mother stole that she was selling this child because she did
08:40not want to see what will happen to the child so this was her way of not knowing so this case still
08:45I am going so this case remained with me and this has actually motivated me a lot because I have
08:51seen a child from four months to now you know 12 13 years so this is something that has stayed with me
08:55and then there are other survivors also there are multiple other stories also that has remained with
09:00me and there is another woman I had rescued from who was 56 year old women she was rescued from Haryana
09:05it was such a sad story because she was going to be married to a young man who was younger than her son
09:13because she looked short and that that guy was intellectually disabled the entire village had
09:20bought her by selling a cow and a land and I rescued that women she was a 56 year old lady but she looked
09:25like you know people thought that so these two cases I can recollect now there are hundreds of
09:29stories like this in the delhi ncr was the family also from delhi ncr I mean yeah they were also from
09:36delhi ncr we actually the case is still in investigation but we are not able to the conviction has not yet
09:42happened because someone or the other is missing the witness doesn't come and you know our unfortunately
09:47our Indian judiciary is always dependent on witnesses so that's the thing we understand that traffic is
09:53not something new you know it has been happening several decades ago we could say it happened in the
09:58past century as well but now with the with the age of internet and technology do you think it has
10:03impacted trafficking in in what ways yeah absolutely you will not believe it earlier it was so easy for
10:09us to find the traffickers now it is impossible it has kind of become impossible because with Aadhaar
10:17card with one Aadhaar card you can get eight to ten sim sim cards like if you have one ID cards you
10:23can get and after making one call they just you know what you call they break the sim and they throw
10:27away that's the reason I tell everybody that you know whenever you go to photo stat your Aadhaar cards
10:33or your passports please make sure wherever you are giving your document trash it I'll just tell you a
10:37recent incident like a couple of months back what happened there were four engineering students they
10:42had actually found somebody on the Uttarakhand Road a girl had made a call and you know under the common
10:50intention these four guys were nabbed because when we were telling the calls their phone number had come
10:55so you don't know who gets trapped when so with internet it has become more risky and also with dark web
11:01because dark web may you can and then with satellite system like for example maybe you are in Hyderabad but you
11:06are showing that you were somewhere in Afghanistan or maybe you are in somewhere in Middle East and
11:10this with social media apps I'll just tell you an incident what happened there was this like two
11:15years two years back no 20 2024 January I get a call from my very good friend in US that her friends
11:24sister's daughter was missing from somewhere in East India I cannot disclose the details of the case and
11:29the child's parents were civil servants the child went missing so they called me now I am I am not some
11:37CID officer or some CBI I just told them start scouting our social media they started scouting our social
11:43media they were not able to find anything but after doing a lot of hunting because there was a lot of
11:49pressure from the government civil service service they found that the girl was chatting with somebody in
11:53this code this code is an app like slack and all and then I we have never done a rescue like this
12:00we literally were you know opening people's faces from blankets and then we rescued the girl after the
12:06girl was rescued when she was asked like what is the thing that you are missing because generally
12:10trafficking with the poverty or she told something which remained with me she was like my parents are
12:15very rich but my parents don't give me time they've given me smartwatch they've given me tablets and
12:20everything they know they don't have time for me they're so busy with their office and all and
12:24then we had to tell the father that do you spend time with him the father was like yeah I spend time
12:27with you with her I drop her to school so I think parents think that you know putting their children
12:32in IB schools and giving everything yeah that is the reason now trafficking has increased to the you know
12:40elite society also so pehle aasa tha ki like you know trafficking is only with people who are poor but now people
12:47from the what you call the middle class society from the elite they are also into trafficking even if
12:53they are not in trafficking they are into this cyber entire thing they are into recently somebody told
12:57me that she was allowing her child play with all these games and then suddenly she somebody told her
13:04that child the child's photo was in a porn channel and then they figured it out the child was playing with
13:10all those phone and with the camera the child's photo was clicked so with internet it has become much more and
13:16there is no limit you can't control because all your data is out so this is a big problem and
13:23there is no way to you know control this how do you control it it's quite scary uh now if we come back
13:31to the impact and dialogue foundation now since it's so uh fluid you know you have to understand the
13:37situation and then there is internet and you know there are so many factors involved how do you make sure
13:42that the training part you know in in impact and dialogue foundation how do you provide skill
13:47training and counseling and what how does that transform you know when you talk to witnesses or
13:52you talk to the survivors how does your training impact it the overall world so what we do is that we
13:59have this i have realized one thing that you know prevention is better than cure so what we do we so
14:05there are three safe spaces that we have one in meghalia one in assam and one in bengal what we do
14:11we train the girls so we have three three categories of girls one is girls those who one don't want to
14:18do the conventional education so we give them a one year of training and then we send them back to the
14:24village where they can like it's like a more of a ripple effect thing like i am trafficked now this is my
14:30experience now my village will know that no more girls get traffic this is one category of girls
14:36second category of girls is like we have memorandum of understanding with different organizations
14:41who teach the girls like maybe they want to do something like this certification course and third
14:47is the category of us who want to do conventional education because everybody say like sabko but you
14:51know honestly speaking not everybody wants to study so these are the three categories and what we do we
14:56don't go to the village like our objective so that is the primary reason we don't want to open a branch
15:02of the organization everywhere i was very clear since the beginning honestly speaking i did not even
15:06want to open an organization because i was like there are so many ngos why to open an organization the
15:12reason to open the ngo was during corona i had got cases of children who were corona positive and
15:19declared dead on investigation we found out that there was a huge organ trafficking racket that was going on
15:25so that's the reason the organization was started but then we were like key ngo will come rescue you
15:31and go no it should not be like that the community should be you know empowered enough so that's the
15:36reason we our focus is on empowering the community and it has helped us a lot because you know when the
15:40community is empowered when they know that they are accountable for their children then they it can go a
15:45long way in prevention so that's how we are kind of taking a village like i have now we recently had a
15:51graduation ceremony in one of the village in lanka which is in northwest india hojai district what we
15:56do is that we take one didi we train the didi under the didi we keep 10 other girls tell the girls
16:03teach the girls and then they go to 10 other so that's the approach and that has really helped
16:07so this is how we are trying to you know train the girls mobilize the girl tell them so has local
16:13panchayats also been a you know local panchayats yes because you have to we have created this thing
16:18known as village uh response committees we won't call it village vigilant committees because we
16:23don't want to be stalking anybody where you should know that if your child has gone to hyderabad is the
16:28child calling you or how much of money is the child getting is the child being exploited so you have to
16:35make that village responsible ngo will come ngo will make police that's not like that you have to make
16:40and that will happen when you keep making them believe that if they are a part of the ecosystem
16:47what happens with ngos mostly ngos go do the work come back we do a we do a regular mapping like
16:53today we are doing this work after three months what's happening did it impact how many cases were
16:58registered in the police station how many child marriages are stopped how many people have
17:02actually gone and questioned and that is the reason we have not been able to impact that much because
17:07it's to and to and fro to and fro so that's how we try to manage and it has really helped
17:12aren't you worried about your personal safety i mean that's one of the reason i don't stay in delhi
17:16anymore like i i was just telling i was just telling the team that you know i i it is thanks
17:23to etv it is because of etv only i came generally i stopped giving interviews the reason is that one
17:28i i don't go for any interviews i had gone for there was a rescue that i did in noida and i went for a
17:35podcast as to give awareness information and that podcast went viral like 10 crore people saw it
17:43and then that entire informatory podcast was made as a sensational reels okay so and i was hounded for
17:53a year like literally i can't go anywhere flight people are because my voice is also not like a
17:58typical woman's voice so flight may people are identifying me cannot place my identifying me so
18:03i'm worried about my safety definitely but then i don't i follow certain protocols and i try to keep
18:10my life as discrete as as discrete as possible yeah i think that should be the way to go uh now this
18:18moment that you are here and you know you have been awarded with ramoji award of excellence what does
18:23it mean to you and you know for your work to be very honest i was not expecting that what first of all
18:29uh etv how did you get to know about it so the thing is that etv has been following my work for
18:35a long time i think etv and and i'm not because i'm sitting here i would not flatter i don't flatter
18:42anybody but etv has genuinely covered my work in the most honest way i remember editing one of the
18:48stories yeah most honest way because there are so many people who have interviewed me either it's an
18:54exaggeration or it is too much of something which i don't even know so then when i got this message
19:00initially i was like i was i there was this message that there's a good news for you i thought that
19:04maybe another story will be i was in northeast i remember and then next morning i was given calls
19:09from everywhere guhati everyone was calling me and then when they said that they will give me the award
19:14i was initially i was like i did not know how to wow like on what context and then they said that they
19:20saw the award and everything i think more than the award it's like it is to understand because my
19:26field is something no people don't want to talk about i'm being very honest uh in bangalore nobody
19:32wants to talk about i sit with all the investors they are like we love your work but you know please
19:37don't tell us we get triggered i'm talking to you about people who are investors they're like they will
19:41be like please don't tell us it's too triggering i still remember i was sitting with a very big investor
19:46and he was telling me so i took him to bombay with me and there was this place known as kurla
19:52where he was telling me that there's no child labor don't worry so i made him go with me to this
19:58place where there was a small boy who was stitching shirt ke buttons and that boy was getting five
20:05rupees five rupees uh i think for four buttons he was getting 20 rupees and this man was standing with
20:12me and this man was asking that boy okay milta hai kya itna and that boy was from uh bihar that boy
20:18was like piece rupee milta hai and then that man looked at me so the problem is that people think
20:24that and now we don't even talk about trafficking we're talking about modern slavery out here
20:28people think that you know if i maintain this you know ostrichka approach
20:33nahi we'll not be able to see it but it's still happening it's happening in bangalore it's happening in
20:37hyderabad i still remember going to this village where i see girls plucking this uh chili red chili
20:44and getting 50 rupees for plucking chilis 500 red chilis so nobody talks about it because we are not we
20:52are not bothered so i think more than getting the word it's also important to understand that people
20:58should know about this issue so that is what is the most important thing i feel so for that reason i'm
21:03really grateful uh finally what would be your message to the to the young indians i know the
21:10field is something that as you said people want to stay away from it even though it is happening in
21:15the society but there are people like yourself they would be more who would want to work in this field
21:19so what would be your message how do they start or where do they start i think the first thing is that
21:25please be very sure that you want to work in this because many people started with me but they left
21:31because it's quite triggering one second is that initially my extended family members and everybody
21:39was really angry with me like such a bright student what nonsense she's doing i still remember but 10
21:46years down the line it has 180 degree angle changed now everybody is like you know she was our student
21:50she's my relative so i think if you really want to work in this sector you have to understand there's
21:56there is no shortcut to success there is no shortcut you have to be consistent determine
22:01and uh there is this whole thing of sincerity and dedication important i was just telling lucky
22:07money who accompanied me that you know if your intent is good universe will conspire believe me when i
22:16started five years back i still remember i faced so much of issues even now i'm shaped even now i'm facing
22:24i constantly have issues with funding and support because nobody wants to support survivors because
22:30their red light areas are rescue air brothels are everywhere but somewhere from something happens
22:36and i get the support so the i think if your intent is good the universe will conspire so i think that is
22:42very important whatever you do you should know that you're up are your intentions good so i think that's
22:48important if your intentions are good then some somebody from somewhere will definitely help you
22:52i think that's very important we wish you all the best for your work thank you thank you for joining
22:56with us and congratulations once again thank you so much thank you
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