India plans a riposte to slavery report: 

India plans a riposte to slavery report: 

Context:

• India sends a refutation to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) challenging India’s ranking in a global slavery report.
• The country will now build pressure on the global body to distance itself from the Australian-based NGO-Walk Free Foundation.

Why is India against the report?

• India has raised question about why the International Labour Organization (ILO) tied up with Walk Free Foundation  (WFF) to produce a report on ‘modern slavery’, a term ILO hasn’t so far defined in its own convention.
• The ILO, without following any protocol, endorsed WFF’s survey.

What is Modern Slavery?

• Modern slavery refers to situations where one person has taken away another person’s freedom.
• Their freedom to control their body, their freedom to choose to refuse certain work or to stop working so that they can be exploited.
• Freedom is taken away by threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power and deception.

What is International Labour Organization (ILO)?

• The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency.
• Objective: It deals with labour problems, particularly international labour standards, social protection, and work opportunities for all.
• Also, the ILO registers complaints against entities that are violating international rules.
• Member States: The ILO has 187 member states: 186 of the 193 UN member states plus the Cook Islands are members of the ILO.

What is Walk Free Foundation (WFF)?

• The Walk Free Foundation is a global organization.
• Objective: It makes an attempt to end contemporary slavery and human trafficking.
• More specifically, it is known for its Global Slavery Index.

What is Global Slavery Index?

• The Global Slavery Index presents an annual ranking of 167 countries based on the percentage of a country’s population that is estimated to be in modern slavery.
• Three key variable: It includes data on three key variables:
• Prevalence of modern slavery in each country,
• Vulnerability and
• Government responses to modern slavery.

What is India’s position in the recent Global Slavery Index?

• The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today.
• Now, India has been ranked 4th out of 167 countries.
• The top three countries were North Korea, Uzbekistan and Cambodia.
• In 2016, it was deemed to have some 18.3 million people trapped in slavery.
• In 2017, about 1.4% of the population working under coercive conditions.

Where is India lagging behind?

• The long-term structural weakness of India’s economic reform has been the inability to expand the market for jobs in sync with its demographic growth.
• Many of these new-age slaves are women and children, the most vulnerable sections on the frontline of economic slowdown and poverty.
• Increase in number of slaves every year is due to the rank failure of India’s law enforcement institutions.