WUNRN
INDIA - DROUGHTS LEAD INDIAN FARMERS
TO SELL WIVES & DAUGHTERS TO
BROTHELS
Farmers
in India made destitute by "climate change droughts" have been forced
to sell their wives to brothels to pay off moneylenders.
By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
15 September 2009
An Indian farmer and his son walking over their parched paddy field Photo: AFP/GETTY
A succession of droughts
compounded by flash floods in recent years have destroyed crops and ruined the
soil, leaving farmers in debt to loan sharks.
The growing number who have committed
suicide to escape the shame has attracted concern but less attention has been
paid to farmers handing wives and daughters to prostitution. Sangeeta, a
farmer's wife from the Bundelkhand area, which straddles Uttar Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh and has been particularly hard hit, told campaigners how her
husband had sold her to a pimp for one month to raise 2,500 rupees (£31) to
settle a debt.
"We had nothing to eat and
my husband had huge debits. It was difficult to survive and I had to sell
myself to live," she said.
The disclosure of a trade in
women to settle debts emerged as an Oxfam report detailed how climate change
had affected Indian agriculture.
"In India and across the
world, Oxfam is seeing poor people going without food, pulling their children
out of school and selling off cattle and other assets critical to their
livelihoods to pay for the debts caused by continuing crop failure," said
Nisha Agrawal, the chief executive of Oxfam India.
"Without support to help
farmers adapt to the changing climate, the effect is a downward spiral into
deeper poverty."
One farmer in
Kalicharan, 40, had borrowed
30,000 rupees (£37) from a money lender in a neighbouring village to irrigate
his tiny landholding, which was less than one acre, in 2001 when the droughts
first started to hit.
After three years of falling
yields and other blows to his livelihood, a drought wiped out his crop, leaving
him with no money to offer the money lender.
"He came to my house and
asked for money," said Kalicharan.
"I told him to give me some
time to arrange money but he forcibly entered my house and took my wife and
children."
His wife never came back and now
had a child by the money lender. She said she had no wish to return to her
husband because he could not provide for her and their children.
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