NEW DELHI: With a survey funded by US government assessing the number of “slaves” in India at 14-18 million, the highest in the world, the Modi government feels the documentation could potentially harm India’s image and exports and adversely impact efforts to eradicate forced labour.

“There is evidence of rising interest of private and multilateral institutions in highlighting human trafficking and forced labour as modern-day slavery, with India being the largest hub of slaves. Slavery documentation and laws, which include the annual trafficking persons report of the US, and anti-slavery laws of US/UK make it mandatory for businesses to declare that none of their suppliers are violating slavery norms/laws,” a government official pointed out.

Indian agencies say European corporations use the slavery assessments to fund NGOs to focus on alleged slavery in south India’s textile industry, which contributes 40% of the country’s textile exports.

US senators have been quoting the alleged slavery figures for India at hearings in the Senate and coinciding with the PM Modi’s visits to US. Many in India see this as a ploy by the US administration to bring pressure on India to dilute its stand on US NGOs like Compassion International that have been put in ‘prior permission’ list, requiring them to seek prior clearance for all contributions to Indian NGOs.

The US had passed a law in 1999 on human trafficking, giving itself powers to impose sanctions on countries which are not doing enough to tackle the problem. This was also when it began issuing annual reports and grading countries. India was on Tier 2 watchlist upto 2011 (a level above the lowest) but subsequently categorised as Tier 2, a fact mentioned by head of the

Bob Corker at Tuesday’s confirmation hearing for

for the post of US ambassador to India.

By 2013, there was a fresh attempt by western NGOs and US to start calling human trafficking as modern day slavery, covering forced labour, child labour, sex and child trafficking, domestic servitude and women facing issues at workplace.

The term now refers to any stituation in which a person has taken away another’s freedom so they can be exploited.

(WFF), which conducts the annual global surveys to estimate slavery, was created by Australian mining baron

in 2012 and reportedly endorsed by Hillary Clinton,

and

.