What's behind the Indian Ocean's naval arms race?

The Indian Ocean is seeing a significant, high-tech naval buildup. In the past five years, India, Pakistan, Iran, South Africa, Indonesia and Australia have all enhanced their naval capabilities, despite the minimum risk of imminent conflict. At the same time, these powers are diplomatically supporting multilateral institutions such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium.

     It is fair to say that a stable balance of naval power exists in the Indian Ocean, despite the efforts of countries outside the region to acquire increased naval access, including the construction of dual-use facilities for civilian and naval operations. Examples include U.S. and U.K. naval bases in Bahrain, a French base in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and Chinese naval outposts at Gwadar, Pakistan, and Hambantota, Sri Lanka.

     Joint naval operations against piracy and terrorism have been an important feature of the presence of outside powers in the Indian Ocean. Regional powers have also participated in multilateral training exercises, such as the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise, a U.S.-led effort to improve naval security in the international waters of the Middle East.

Moving factors   

There are several reasons for the growth in regional naval power.

     First, geographical factors are forcing Indian Ocean countries to invest in naval capability to protect their sovereignty and safeguard national interests.

     Second, states need to exercise jurisdiction and control over maritime areas defined under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, such as continental shelves, exclusive economic zones, and contiguous and territorial waters. This factor has particularly influenced countries with large exclusive economic zones and/or boundary disputes.  

     The third reason is to undertake maritime policing operations against threats and challenges posed by violent nonstate actors, such as pirates, and the fourth is to work with and protect against the naval forces of the U.S., U.K., France and China that are deployed in the Indian Ocean.

     The fifth reason is a steadily growing awareness that naval forces are important instruments for political advantage and diplomacy, not just tools for security.

     Finally, some key countries in the region are seeking to develop offensive capabilities to guarantee that a favorable balance of power is maintained.

There is a wide disparity in the naval "order of battle" among Indian Ocean countries. Smaller nations, such as Sri Lanka and Kenya, have chosen to limit naval acquisitions to coastal security. Bigger players have broader capacities and strategies. India seeks power projection capabilities with the use of aircraft carriers, submarines and expeditionary vessels, and conducts complex operations across the sea-shore-air continuum.

Six key players   

At least six navies in the neighborhood merit attention. With over 150 ships, and nearly 50 warships and submarines under construction, India's navy is the largest in the Indian Ocean and a formidable force. India's Maritime Military Strategy sees the Indian Ocean region as the country's primary area of interest and operations, and the navy envisions long-range sustained operations supported by aircraft carriers and submarines.

     Pakistan's navy packs a strong punch and is a good example of a "lean and mean" force. Over the years, the country's naval planners have leveraged sea-denial capabilities built around submarines, along with anti-ship missiles and land attack cruise missiles, to limit India's naval power projection into Pakistan's littoral waters.

     The Iranian navy is the most powerful in the Gulf region and enjoys enormous numerical and firepower superiority over its neighbors. Iran regularly showcases new types of ships, submarines, and unmanned aerial vehicles and missiles that unambiguously exhibit its ability to deter potential enemies and project power in the region. Iran's naval order of battle supports its strategy of littoral warfare, particularly against the smaller Gulf navies, and asymmetric strategy against the more powerful forces of the U.S. and its allies that are deployed in the region.

     Among the East African Indian Ocean countries, the South African navy is better equipped than its regional counterparts. Although it has identified itself as the "Guardian of the Cape Sea Route," its focus has been on low-end maritime threats and challenges, as well as disaster response at sea.

     Australia's interests span the Pacific and the Indian oceans. It is a strong regional power and is building capability to project naval power in both bodies of water. Its naval inventory features submarines, surface combatants and expeditionary vessels. The Australian government plans to spend more than $65 billion on new vessels over the next 20 years.  

     In Jakarta, the government led by President Joko Widodo has highlighted the need for Indonesia to build a modern navy to protect national interests. The Indonesian navy is transforming itself into one with "green-water" coastal capabilities and is undertaking a variety of missions, including protection of commercial sea lanes and choke points.

Nuclearization   

The security dynamic in the Indian Ocean also has a nuclear dimension. India and Pakistan are nuclear powers and have developed naval capabilities to serve as the "third leg" of the nuclear triad, along with land and air.

     India's naval strategy envisages that conventional deterrence will prevail in normal circumstances. But should this fail, it can turn to nuclear deterrence. The navy operates one nuclear-propelled submarine, INS Chakra, and another,  the domestically built nuclear sub, the INS Arihant, will be ready in 2016. India plans to build two more nuclear submarines fitted with ballistic missiles and intends to fit short-range ballistic missiles on warships.

     Pakistan, meanwhile, has chosen to develop nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that can be launched by conventional submarines and warships. By placing a part of its nuclear arsenal on or under the sea, Pakistan hopes to obtain a notional conventional parity against the larger Indian navy.

     As a result, the emerging security scenario in the Indian Ocean presents complex challenges in both conventional and nuclear terms. While regional cooperation has prevailed, naval rivalry is intense, particularly in South Asia, where India and Pakistan are jostling for advantage. Both countries have given a high priority to nuclear weapons at sea to overcome a sense of insecurity. This has led to the permanent nuclearization of the Indian Ocean on top of the nuclear naval forces of the U.S., France, U.K. and China.

     This naval buildup, while somewhat offensive in nature, has not yet appeared to increase the odds of conflict. But even if the chances of war appear to be quite low, the competition between regional and outside powers presents major challenges that could change the Indian Ocean's security dynamic. The remedy lies in developing an inclusive functional mechanism for maritime cooperation, emphasizing safety and security as common goals under the aegis of multilateral institutions, such as the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium.

Vijay Sakhuja is director of the National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi. A former naval officer, he is the author of "Asian Maritime Power in the 21st Century" and co-author of "Climate Change and the Bay of Bengal."

So far yet so close to Paris, El Nino riles Indonesians

Indonesian soldiers wait for water pressure to return as they try to put out a peatland fire near Palangkaraya, central Kalimantan, Indonesia on Oct. 28. © Reuters

As global leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for the United Nations-sponsored summit on climate change, matters at the heart of the summit and global rallies demanding action from leaders were playing out on the other side of the world, in rain-soaked Indonesia.

     Southeast Asia's largest country has been coping with torrential rain since October, confounding the dire warnings from climate experts that, with the convergence of a drought-inducing El Nino phenomenon, the haze from peat fires across parts of Southeast Asia could continue until the end of the year.

After the downpours began, the smoldering fires that defied aerial water-bombing and the efforts of thousands of firefighters -- and prompted President Joko Widodo to dash home from his first U.S. visit as Indonesian leader on Oct. 28 -- were eventually extinguished.

     For more than two months from early September, the Indonesian regions of Sumatra and Kalimantan were blanketed in choking smoke, to the extent that the government was considering evacuating women and their children on an armada of naval landing craft. Smog had also drifted across the region, causing disruption in neighboring countries.

     As usual when these seasonal fires break out, Jakarta's politicians and other interested parties remained strangely unaffected -- until the day Widodo left for the U.S. The extra sense of crisis was undoubtedly a reason for his sudden cancellation of a planned visit to California's Silicon Valley -- and a factor in his decision to give the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila a miss.

     Now, Indonesians, Singaporeans and Malaysians are wondering whether they can breathe easily again. They are also wondering what happened to El Nino, which was supposed to be as strong as the one which devastated the region back in 1997-98.

Temporary reprieve

The news is not good for Indonesia -- which with record emissions this year as a result of the fires has moved up some notches to become the world's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind the U.S. and China. If the haze blanketing the country and its neighbors has gone for now, it does not mean that El Nino has as well. On the contrary, it is becoming even more powerful, evidenced by some of the highest water temperatures ever recorded in the Indian Ocean by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

     Climatologists are now hastening to point out that the pre-monsoon rains we have just seen -- up to 50-100cm falling in one week in early November over many parts of Indonesia -- were actually expected. But there is a big difference, they point out, between climate and weather.

     "The difficulty for us is the forecast for the rainfall anomaly was very negative -- and still is -- but less than normal is not the same as no rain," says Guido van der Werf, earth scientist at Amsterdam University. "I guess we can say Indonesia has been relatively lucky."

How climate change is related to market failure

Columnist Rajni Bakshi asks if the louder responses to the climate crisis will be those arguing that innovations are viable only when they give handsome and rapid monetary returns?

Governments may appear to be at centre stage at the COP21, which began in Paris on November 30, but it is not really the elected representatives of the world who are on trial at this summit and beyond. Nor would it be fair to put businesses, big or small, in the dock.

The culprit of potentially runaway climate change is the complex mix of factors that created the ‘global north’ - namely those of us who live ‘developed’ lifestyles and can take uninterrupted electricity, rapid mobility, and mass consumption for granted.

While most of the attention is on carbon-spewing technologies the far more important factor is that climate change signifies the biggest market failure in history, as British economist Nicholas Stern concluded in a study done nine years ago.

Climate change has exposed the fallacy of the market orthodoxy which took shape in the West over the last 250 years - especially its fundamental claim that if we all pursue our own pecuniary interest the larger common good will unfold naturally. While this assumption works well in an actual bazaar it is not viable in an all-encompassing manner on a planetary scale.

Billions of people following their own interest has led to lives of greater comfort for some, but resulted in catastrophic concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere.

Over the past decade there have been intensive efforts to drive market behaviour towards a low-carbon economy. But is this enough to resolve the market failure? This is the critical question to examine amid the multi-dimensional conversations in and around the official Paris Summit.

While government-level negotiations are vital, the centre of gravity at COP21 is the wide and impressive array of private sector initiatives, including new technologies, business models, and investment-related initiatives for a low carbon economy. For example, the ‘DivestInvest’ campaign has succeeded in persuading 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals in 43 countries to divest $2.6 trillion worth of assets in fossil fuel companies. The number of institutions divesting from fossil fuels jumped from 181 in September 2014 to 436 in 2015.

Under the RE100 campaign some of the world’s largest multinationals have declared a deadline by which they will make a 100 per cent shift to renewable energy. For instance, Infosys, the only Indian company so far to join RE100, has promised to be fossil fuel-free by 2018. Infosys locations across India already derive 29 per cent of their electricity needs through green power. 

However, despite low oil prices, a substantial volume of capital still continues to flow into new exploration and future extraction of carbon fuels. A report by Deloitte University Press in April 2015 shows that the oil and gas sector is still a magnet for new capital.

Altering this market behaviour is key to effectively addressing the climate crisis. The challenge lies in preserving the freedom and dynamism of market exchange while creating spaces for solutions that are not constrained by short- to medium-term monetary profit.

Thus the main focus of the Socially Responsible Investing movement has been to shift financial assets into long-term investments in companies that aim to be environmentally sustainable.  According to the Global Sustainable Investment Review, 2014,sustainable investment assets have grown from $13.3 trillion in early 2012 to about $21.4 trillion in early 2014. This 61per cent growth beats growth in conventional assets.

The dramatic rise in investments that do not ignore environmental externalities is partly due to initiatives like the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report by the UNEP, which virtually put a price on the functions that nature’s eco-systems perform.

However, even this good news leaves a fundamental question unanswered: should civilisation be equated with technological capability and material comforts? Or, as Mahatma Gandhi urged, is civilisation that which enables the flowering of the higher human faculties - notably cooperation, compassion, self-restraint? 

References to these values will pepper official documents, and their substance will be most loudly celebrated at the NGO gatherings on the margins of the official summit.

The litmus test in Paris is this: will the louder responses to the climate crisis be those arguing that innovations are viable only when they give handsome and rapid monetary returns? The agreement signed by governments in Paris will shape our future to the extent that it helps to reconfigure markets - making inevitable the creative destruction of the profit-only business models and the rise of businesses that give equal or greater value to eco-systems services.

Corporate India's goodwill deluge to speed up Chennai flood relief

Facebook enabled users to mark themselves safe in Chennai since Thursday morning

Companies and start-ups, which have been closed for the past three days because of the Chennai flood, are helping with the rescue and relief operations, using technology or by volunteering.

Life in India’s southern metropolis has been out of gear since Tuesday, when heavy rain - the highest in a century — inundated its streets and public facilities, including the airport. Till Wednesday morning, the city itself got 340.8 mm rainfall. About 300 people have been killed in rain-related incidents.

Medical facilities are often the first to swing into action in case of any natural calamity.

Apollo Hospitals and Pharmacy took to Twitter to advise patients on how to reach its facilities or what to do in case of an emergency.

Google launched South India Flooding, a crisis response tool, providing emergency helpline numbers, list of places and people offering shelter, and maps of flooded streets. It also provides important tweets, news updates and videos. A Google spreadsheet is also providing important information.

Facebook enabled users to mark themselves safe in Chennai since Thursday morning.

ICICI Bank and State Bank of India on Saturday said they would waive off penalty for their customers in Chennai for delay in paying credit card dues and EMIs.

Telecom companies are working round the clock to restore connections. A group of six engineers of a large company has stayed put on duty for 53 hours to ensure that connections were not disrupted. “We survived on biscuits. The company could not send us food as the whole area was flooded,” said one of the engineers who did not want to be named.

Airtel users have been given talktime of Rs 30, along with of 10 minutes of free calls within its network. Prepaid customers have also got 50MB free data. All this is valid for two days. Postpaid customers can pay their bills later - their services will not be disconnected even if they fail to make payments. BSNL is also providing free services.

The companies, too, are taking measures to help employees who have been stranded or are volunteering to finish important projects.

Information technology (IT) majors have been providing relief material and arranging accommodation and food to employees stranded in their offices. Some have also provided transport to their employees to move out of Chennai.

“We have made necessary arrangement for employees who chose to stay back at our offices and work on important projects,” said a Cognizant spokesperson. “We have implemented our business continuity plan are closely monitoring the situation.”

HCL Technologies has also implemented its business continuity plan and is offering employees a “flexible work schedule”, informing them about it on email.

Wipro employee have been taken from Chennai to Bengaluru - a distance of about 350 km - in 100 buses.

Start-ups, too, are stepping up to their bit in this crisis.

DocsApp, a mobile phone and online medical consultation app, is offering free online consultations for Chennai residents. Practo, the doctor-discovery platform, has put out a locality list of doctors and hospitals available to help.

Ola, the online taxi hailing service, is sending out boats to rescue people in the water-logged areas. Ola has handed over boats to the fire department, which has deployed them in Saidapet and Ekkaduthangal . It also created raincoats and umbrellas and set up shelters in different parts of the city.

Paytm is offering free mobile recharges to help residents stay connected. It is facilitating free recharge of Rs 30.

Food delivery start-up Zomato has started “Meal for flood relief” delivery service. When one customer buys a meal, Zomato provides another to someone stuck in a submerged area.

“Our users have bought over 55k meals Zomato makes it 110k,” company was quoted saying.

Delhi-based data analytics start-up SocialCops has partnered with a non-government organisation to start a crowd-sourcing effort to map inundated roads in Chennai. People can zoom in on the maps and check the status.

BlaBlaCars, the ridesharing app, has agreed to tag its vehicles moving from Bengaluru and neighbouring cities, to carry relief material to Chennai in coordination with volunteers.

Banks have decided to go easy on Chennai residents who trip on their EMI payments this month.

India’s largest private sector lender ICICI Bank on Saturday said it would waive off penalty for its customers in Chennai for delay in paying credit card dues and EMIs for November.

Vistara unveils 9th Airbus A-320

NEW DELHI -- India's new domestic carrier, Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, on Monday announced that it has added a ninth aircraft to its fleet of Airbus A-320s.

Vistara's 9th Airbus A-320

   The latest aircraft "will allow us to further enhance our capacity on our key routes and allow many more customers to fly a new feeling with Vistara," said Phee Teik Yeoh, Vistara's chief executive, in a statement. "With this addition, our fleet induction for the year is complete."

     Vistara, in which Tata Sons holds a 51% stake and SIA the rest, operates nearly 300 flights per week across 12 destinations in India.

     Though its economy class is doing well, industry analysts say Vistara has struggled to fill business seats. In the first eight months after the airline commenced commercial operations on Jan. 9, the passenger load factor was around 60% compared to the industry average of over 80%.

     Like all its previous aircraft, Vistara's latest plane has 148 seats -- 16 business, 36 premium economy and 96 economy.

     Vistara is India's third full service airline after national carrier Air India and private airline Jet Airways. A full service airline offers passengers facilities such as in-flight entertainment, checked baggage, meals and beverages in the ticket price. Their seats generally have more leg room than those of the low-cost budget airlines.

'They said my husband had sold me'

Indian anti-slavery crusader Kailash Satyarthi will receive the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo today, December 10.

A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com visits the infamous cages of Mumbai's oldest red light district, Kamathipura, to find out how human trafficking has given India the awful reputation of the nation with the highest slavery rates in the world.

All photographs published only for representational purposes.

Image: A sex worker cuddles her parrot in Mumbai's red light area.
Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters

The blood red lipstick is a signal. All the waiting women sport them. As your eyes meet, they smile invitingly, indicating they are available.

She was on the heavier side. Opposite her sat a thinner girl. Both were smiling. Both had dead eyes. Both had been hardened by a horrifying trade that does not respect men or women.

"You have come so early," said the stouter one. "Come here. Though she wasn't the one I was looking for, I walked towards her.

Then, I saw her. The one I was looking for. She was walking out of a building. She was very thin -- and very young.

"You," I called out. "Come here."

There was no greeting. No small talk.

"Rs 500," she said bluntly. "Will you pay?"

I nodded.

"Okay. Come with me."

This is Kamathipura, Mumbai's infamous red light district.

The girls can be seen in cages along the roadside. They wear bright lipstick, short skirts and tight blouses with plunging necklines.

There is no romance here, only sex which is bought and sold with a nod.

Once, the cages sprawled across 14 streets in the area. Over the years, the sex trade in Kamathipura has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was.

But everything else remains the same. That hasn't changed in the last century.

Many of the women and children plying the flesh trade have been sold into the profession by relatives, or by people they have trusted.

Organised gangs lure unsuspecting women and children to the cities under the pretext of employment or education and sell them to brothel owners.

Everyone knows this happens, but no one raises a voice because these children and women come from a province of Indian society which few care about.

Image: Sex workers sit outside their cramped quarters in Mumbai's red light district.
Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters

The thin young girl leads me back into the building she has just left.

"My first customer of the day," screams the angry woman I left behind. "You robbed him, you b***h!"

"Ignore her," advises the thin one. She is already running up the staircase.

I can only see the way until the first floor. After that, it is pitch dark. Outside, the sun shines brightly in the afternoon sky.

"Walk up," she shouts. "I am here."

There are girls all over the place. Most of them look sleepy.

"You wait here," she tells me and runs off to get a key.

We enter a tiny room. It has a bed and barely two feet of standing room. There is a tubelight near the ceiling and a tiny wall mounted fan that does not have a protective cover. I would have to make sure I did not raise my hand.

"Pay me," she demands.

I pull out Rs 500 from my wallet.

"And Rs 20 for the bed," she adds firmly.

I do not have change so I hand her an additional Rs 50. It is sad to see how the extra tenners make her happy.

"Come on, take off your clothes," she says as she starts to remove her own.

"I don't want to undress. I wanted to see you," I say.

"Okay," she shrugs. "See." She strips quickly, with practised ease.

"Please dress up," I tell her. "I meant I just want to talk to you."

She comes from a poor family. Her mother tongue is Bengali. She has studied up to Class 4.

"I was married when I was 15. We stayed in Delhi. About a year after we were married, my husband told me to get ready. He said we were going for dinner to a friend's house."

Her voice remains expressionless.

"There were many girls in that building. He took me to a room where a man and a woman were waiting."

Her husband said he had forgotten to buy sweets and it was bad manners to go to someone's house empty handed.

"He told me to wait. He said he would buy the sweets and return quickly."

He never came back. She tried calling him, but his phone was switched off.

"The lady asked me for my mobile phone and never returned it," she says.

When she tried to leave, they stopped her.

"They said my husband had sold me to them and I could not leave for two years."

"I told the lady I was two months pregnant, but that did not seem to bother her."

There were 15 other girls there, she says, but none as young as she was.

"The girls warned that I would be beaten up badly if I tried to run. They also said that, if I resisted, the customers would pay more to beat me up and rape me. The brothel owner liked girls who resisted as they brought in more money."

"I did not resist," she says quietly.

"As I was the youngest I got the maximum customers on any day. As my pregnancy advanced, one of the girls taught me about oral sex."

And so, she continued working.

Image: Raksha, a sex worker, prepares for a performance in Kamathipura.
Photograph: Vivek Prakash/Reuters

Her child was delivered by the woman who ran the brothel. The 'madam' gave her Rs 10,000 and told her to leave.

"The madam told me, 'You were sold for two years, but you have paid back in eight months'."

She went back to her village. "I told everyone that my husband was in Mumbai. Only my mother knew he had deserted me. My mother checked in his village, but my husband had not come back."

In Delhi, she had heard the girls talk about Kamathipura in Mumbai. "They used to say every girl got work there. No one was ever turned away."

She told her mother she had friends in Mumbai and left when her child was nine months old.

"I did not tell her about what I did," she says.

She was young and was accepted at the first brothel she entered in Kamathipura. But why did she return?

"I come from a very poor family. I didn't want to burden my mother."

She was just 18 years old then. "My madam told me to say 20 if anyone asked," she says.

Today, she is 21. And she sees no way out of the flesh trade.

"My daughter is sick," she says. "I have borrowed Rs 30,000 from Anna (a money lender). He charges 25 per cent interest. I have to pay him back in six months."

She has to give a part of what she earns to the brothel owner. If a pimp brings a customer, he takes his share as well. "And we have to pay for the use of this room by the hour," she says.

Life, though, she says, is not too bad. "What other work will a girl who has passed Class 4 get? I am happy here."

After six months, when she has repaid her loan, she plans to return home. "There is this boy who wants to marry me," she smiles.

"Old man, you finished so fast," says the other girl loudly. The other girls laugh.

I look at the girl, whose story I had just heard.

Despite the horrors that life has handed her, her eyes has not lost their innocence.

The tragedy is that this is not just her story. It is the story of millions of girls in India, who are sold against their will into the flesh trade.

Image: Sex workers wait for clients in a red light area in Mumbai.
Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters

India leads the world in slavery and in the trafficking of women. Areas like Kamathipura in Mumbai, Sonagachi in Kolkata and G B Road in Delhi continue to exist.

The late 1990s that saw the rise of AIDS marked the beginning of a change in Mumbai's oldest red-light district. Tough police crackdowns made soliciting difficult.

The number of sex workers began to dwindle.

The government's redevelopment policy offered sex workers an opportunity to move out of the profession and subsequently out of Kamathipura. Land developers began taking over the real estate.

In 1992, the Bombay Municipal Corporation recorded 50,000 sex workers in Kamathipura. By 2009, there were only 1,600 sex workers; many had migrated to other areas in Maharashtra.

Senior Police Inspector Nandkumar Krishnarao Mhetar heads the Nagpada police station; Kamathipura falls under its jurisdiction. It is one of the most difficult areas to police in Mumbai, due to the presence of various ganglords who deal in prostitution, gambling and drugs.

"We conduct raids when we get information that new girls have come in. We always go with a NGO (non governmental organisation). The girls open up more easily to the NGOs. We ask them if they have come here of their own free will or if they have been forced or cheated," says Mhetar.

Depending on their answer, the police take them into custody. "We also arrest those who brought the girls here and those who are doing business with them."

But that applies only to adults, he says. "When we find a child, she is rescued irrespective of whether she came here on her own or was trafficked. All those who are using her are put behind bars immediately."

All cases are registered under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act. "We can also chargesheet them for carrying on an illegal business," he says.

The rescued women are handed over to the court, which keeps them in protective custody in government and non-governmental organisations in the city. They can return to their homes with the court's permission.

But the profession takes its toll; most of the women don't go back.

"Earlier," says Mhetar, "there would be a lot of publicity when girls were rescued. Now that there are very few of them here, the media has forgotten this place."

Statistics obtained from the Mumbai police reveal that, in 2012, 119 women were rescued from Kamathipura. Sixty-four accused -- including nine male and five women brothel owners; 38 male pimps and two female pimps and 10 operators (operators manage the day-to-day business for the brothel owners) -- were chargesheeted under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking of Women Act.

In the first six months of 2013, 31 women were rescued in four separate raids. Four brothel owners, two managers, six women and a pimp were put behind bars.

This year, the police stations at V P Road, D B Marg and Nagpada have conducted 23 raids and rescued 116 women and four young girls.

Eighteen women brothel owners, five male brothel owners, eight women pimps, five male pimps and thirty-three operators have been arrested.

Image: Sex workers solicit customers by the roadside in a red light area in Mumbai.
Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters

Preethi Patkar runs the Prerna Sanstha, which has been working in Kamathipura for almost two decades.

"Once the girls are rescued, their age is verified medically," says Patkar. "The children are sent to separate homes under the Child Welfare Committee."

The CWC is the sole authority when it comes to matters concerning children in need of care and protection, says the Delhi police Web site. A CWC has to be constituted for each district or group of districts, and consists of a chairperson and four other persons at least one of whom should be a woman.

Patkar says it is important to ensure that children are released into the custody of their legal guardians only if the latter are capable of looking after them.

"If they are financially weak, there is a good chance that the child will be sold again," she says. "In that case, we object and tell the magistrate that the child should not be released from the home."

Patkar's NGO teaches the children to work at petrol pumps and beauty parlours. They are also taught fashion designing. "The idea is to rehabilitate them properly instead of teaching them candle making and chalk making, as was done earlier," she says.

If you visit Kamathipura today, you will find doctors, beauticians, dentists, traders and money lenders running their businesses here.

Much of Kamathipura has been converted into a tailoring hub where readymade garments are made in minimum space. Cutters, tailors and washers work in horrifyingly cramped quarters to turn out cheap garments for the poor.

Low wages, long working hours, non-existent holidays and cramped living quarters ensure they are no better than the prostitutes who once plied their trade here.

All photographs published only for representational purposes.

'Krishna is your best friend. He knows what's best for you.'

'They talk about death being a final exam. So at 65, I have to be studying for my final exam.'

• Part 1: This Ford has more on his mind than cars

IMAGE: Alfred Brush Ford and his wife Sharmila sing hymns during a ceremony at the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in Mayapur, 120 km north of Kolkata, February 23, 2004. Photograph: Jayanta Shaw/Reuters

Before he adopted the name Ambarish Das, he was known as Alfred Brush Ford. His mother is the daughter of Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son. That makes him a fourth-generation Ford from his mother's side and a part of one of America's most iconic families.

In the second part of his interview to Manu Shah for Rediff.com, Ambarish Das speaks about his stint at the Ford Motor Company, his wife Dr Sharmila Bhattacharya, the love that the two share, the Bhagwad Gita, among other things.

IMAGE: Alfred Brush Ford prays. Photograph: Jayanta Shaw/Reuters

What was your involvement with the Ford Motor Company?

I never really was too involved with the Ford Motor Company. I have been involved with the charities and the hospital in Michigan.

You had built a reputation as one of the foremost art dealers in Indian art.

Back in 1985, Sharmila and I were named the top collectors in Indian art by Arts and Antiques Magazine. I had a team of devotee friends who went to India and they would scour different galleries and palaces. We collected paintings, sculpture and art objects for the home and things like that.

Did you find a good market here?

It was an okay market. We sold a lot of things to my family members actually. My mother was the best customer. She loved the art and bought a lot of it for her houses. Detroit is not a hotbed for Oriental art.

IMAGE: Ambarish Das aka Alfred Brush Ford weds Sharmila Bhattacharya in 1984 in India.

How did you meet your wife, Dr Sharmila Bhattacharya?

I met her through a mutual friend of ours in Australia, who happened to be her initiation guru.

I was very impressed with her. I knew her parents were looking for someone to get her married to, as she was just finishing her PhD from the University of New South Wales. So I proposed that maybe I would marry her.

We were married in 1984. It was a Hare Krishna wedding with the fire sacrifice in front of the deities in a Hare Krishna temple in rural New South Wales, Australia. Many people came, there was a lot of press coverage.

Are your daughters Hare Krishna devotees?

They are because they were brought up in our house where we have always had the temple room and deities. My older daughter Amrita is married now. She lives in Washington, DC. She has her own temple and she carries on the tradition. The younger one, Anisha, is still in college.

How does one balance the material world with the spiritual world?

I can only speak for myself. I have to put my spiritual life first. In order for me to do that I have to put in the time, early in the day. I'm always up by 3 or 4 in the morning doing my meditation. My wife and I are up early and we do our japa, our offerings. We try to get centred early in the morning and then everything else comes after that.

If I can't go to the temple, then I watch the arati on the Internet. I take care of the deities in the house, make an offering to the guru, read the scriptures. If I put all those activities in the beginning of the day, then the rest of the day kind of just flows.

Tell me about the Vedic temple, currently being built in Mayapur, West Bengal, the birthplace of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

I am focused these days on getting the Vedic temple built in Mayapur. I did give the seed money for the temple, about $25 million. I was nervous as that was the time the Ford company was about to go bankrupt because of the economic downturn.

IMAGE: Alfred Brush Ford at the head office of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in Mayapur, February 23, 2004. Photograph: Jayanta Shaw/Reuters

I'm glad that the transcendental project worked out beautifully and will help Westerners, Europeans and Americans come to Mayapur and chant Hare Krishna.

The opening date for the Vedic temple has been pushed back and hopefully we'll be able to do the opening in 2022.

It is a very complicated building. It has a huge 350-feet high dome and we are putting up a big chandelier inside the dome of the universe according to the Vedas -- so it's a lot of work that needs to be done.

What about the international Himalayan ski village project you had proposed near Manali?

As far as I know, the whole venture is dead. It was a wonderful concept and the government of Himachal Pradesh was totally in favour of it. But then they had an election, a new government came and, more or less, they closed it down.

Do you speak any Indian languages?

No, not really.

Any experiences in India that you would like to share?

India has gotten much more user friendly, as they say.

When I first went in 1975, it was very difficult to negotiate (your way) around the country and I was very sick.

Back in those days really the only airline in and out of India was Air-India. You had to go down in person to confirm your ticket out of the country. So it was kind of very archaic in those days.

Now everything is very modern, very streamlined. My wife and I go a couple of times a year. It is very easy to get around and we love it.

Where do you stay when you are in India?

I am in Mayapur most of the time. I stay in the guest house there. I would like to build a small residence there. Sometimes I go to Mumbai too.

What are your other interests apart from the Hare Krishna movement?

I am 65 years old. I used to have a lot of other interests. As you get older you tend to focus more on what you are really trying to accomplish in life.

The reason I joined the Hare Krishna movement was to make some spiritual advancement.

The whole point of becoming Krishna conscious is when you give up this body, you evolve into a spiritual body, hopefully. Or at least another birth that may be more advanced than the one we are in now.

They talk about death being a final exam. So at 65, I have to be studying for my final exam.

IMAGE: Alfred Brush Ford during a ceremony to begin construction of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness temple in Kolkata, December 29, 2002. Photograph: Reuters

What is the message from the Bhagwad Gita you would like to see spread in the world today?

There are so many. I'd like to say Man-mana bhava mad-bhakto which means surrender to Krishna. He's your best friend. He knows what's best for you. There's no reason to be fearful of him.

Yours is a fascinating story. I'm surprised there is no book or movie on you.

I am glad. I'm a very private person. My wife and I don't seek publicity.