A geographical analysis of women trafficking in India: Spatial distribution and socio-economic vulnerabilities

Abstract

Women trafficking in India constitutes one of the gravest violations of human rights and functions simultaneously as a deeply embedded socio-spatial phenomenon with discernible geographical contours. This study adopts a geographical lens to investigate the socio-economic determinants of women trafficking across India's diverse regional, demographic, and ecological landscapes. Drawing upon secondary data sourced from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD), the Census of India, and peer-reviewed scholarship, this research maps the spatial distribution of trafficking incidence, identifies high-vulnerability source and destination zones, and critically examines the structural socio-economic drivers — including poverty, gender inequality, illiteracy, unemployment, distress migration, and geographic marginality — that sustain trafficking networks. The findings reveal pronounced regional asymmetries: West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh emerge consistently as dominant source states, while metropolitan agglomerations such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai function as primary destination nodes. The study further establishes that flood-affected agrarian belts, and drought-exposed semi-arid zones exhibit heightened trafficking vulnerability, intersecting with chronic poverty, low female literacy, early marriage, and distress-induced circular migration.