Discuss the nexus between internal migration, structural vulnerabilities, and human trafficking in India. What institutional mechanisms are needed to protect migrants from exploitation while ensuring their livelihood rights?

Q. Discuss the nexus between internal migration, structural vulnerabilities, and human trafficking in India. What institutional mechanisms are needed to protect migrants from exploitation while ensuring their livelihood rights? (15 marks, 250-350 words)

In Prajwala v. Union of India (May 2026), the Supreme Court held that trafficking "cannot be separated from broader migration flows" but "emerges from within them" [1]. Migration is thus not the cause of trafficking; the vulnerabilities migrants carry are.

Migration as the pathway - Distress-driven mobility into informal work — brick kilns, domestic work, construction, agriculture — leaves migrants outside registration, contracts and welfare cover, making deception and debt bondage easy [1]. - Demand for cheap, disposable labour sustains the trade: globally 27.6 million people are in forced labour, generating US$236 billion in illegal profits annually [2]; UNODC records a sharp rise in detected forced-labour trafficking [3]. - India is simultaneously a source, transit and destination country, with dense corridors along the Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar borders [4].

Structural vulnerabilities that convert mobility into exploitation - Poverty, caste and gender hierarchies decide who migrates on the worst terms; women and children are disproportionately victimised [1]. - Legal invisibility: the ITPA, 1956 addresses only commercial sexual exploitation [5], while the Court faulted its silence on voluntary adult sex workers for deepening stigma and obstructing victim identification [1]. - The Trafficking of Persons Bill, 2018 lapsed, leaving no unified statute covering labour, child and sexual trafficking [5].

Institutional mechanisms needed - A comprehensive anti-trafficking law integrating prevention, protection and rehabilitation, replacing the fragmented ITPA-IPC framework [5]. - Full operationalisation of AHTUs in every district with state-level Anti-Human Trafficking Bureaus and police Women Help Desks, adequately financed through the Nirbhaya Fund [6]. - Portable entitlements and registration of migrant workers, so livelihood mobility does not mean loss of legal protection. - Rehabilitation as a right under Articles 21 and 23, with consent-based rescue rather than custodial confinement [1]. - Activating bilateral MoUs (Bangladesh, UAE, Cambodia, Myanmar) for cross-border rescue and repatriation [4].

Trafficking is best fought by making migration safe, not by restricting it. Treating the migrant as a rights-bearing worker — registered, portable, and protected — converts Article 23's prohibition into lived freedom and advances SDG 8.7's pledge to end forced labour.

(~325 words)

Sources: 1. Prajwala v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 609 (Supreme Court, 29 May 2026) — migration–trafficking nexus; structural vulnerabilities; ITPA's silence on voluntary adult sex workers; rehabilitation under Articles 21 and 23 2. ILO, "Annual profits from forced labour amount to US$236 billion" (Profits and Poverty, 2024) — 27.6 million forced-labour victims; US$236 billion illegal profits 3. UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024 — rise in detected trafficking for forced labour 4. Ministry of Home Affairs, Anti-Trafficking Cell (Women Safety Division) — India as source/transit/destination country; bilateral MoUs 5. PIB, "Government of India has enacted Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956…" — ITPA's confinement to commercial sexual exploitation; absence of a unified statute 6. MHA Advisory F.No.15011/6/2009-ATC on Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking (18 October 2024) — AHTUs, Anti-Human Trafficking Bureaus, Women Help Desks, Nirbhaya Fund financing