On a filthy commercial street outside the Ajmeri Gate near the New Delhi Railway Station, one cannot help smelling urine and rotting garbage while walking past shops selling commodities from metal hardware to electric appliances.

The street is also notorious for its underground sex trade -- not with prostitutes wandering around or standing at the corner, but with teenage girls forced into sexual slavery by thugs and gangsters.

Sonita, 14, from the suburban area of Kolkata, West Bengal, has just survived one year of life in hell in one of the brothels on the crime-ridden street before being rescued by a religious group. She is now working in a small knitting workshop some three kilometers away from the nightmarish hole from which she thought she would never escape.

Like all Bengalese girls, Sonita has black hair and dark skin on which scars from beating and cigarette butts can be spotted easily.

Sonita's parents are peasants in West Bengal; they have six children. Because they were in debt to a moneylender, her parents sold Sonita to a relative of the moneylender for 2,000 rupees (about 40 U.S. dollars).

The woman took Sonita to New Delhi and handed her over to a vicious looking man who became her 'boss.' The man raped her that same night and forced her to work as a prostitute.

"Every day and night, we stood like cattle before customers, waiting for them to choose. The 'boss' and his wife took all the money. All we got was sour and bad food," Sonita said.

Some girls were often starved and beaten up for failing to attract customers, most of whom were drunkards, sadists and drug addicts, she added.

According to reports, many Indian peasants fail to pay debts they owe every year due to lean harvests caused by natural disasters.

Taking advantage of the situation, criminal groups lure the debt-ridden farmers with cash who then sell their daughters -- mostly minors -- to work as prostitutes in big cities.

Child trafficking in India has raised public awareness worldwide. The government has adopted many policies to contain the situation, such as the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act in 2000 and Goa Children's Act in 2003, but it still has a long way to go before totally eliminating the phenomenon.

Apart from this, child labor is another thorn in the side of Indian society.

Across the country, children are seen doing all kinds of hard work which even adults are unwilling to do, and their number is climbing every year.

According to a report from the International Labor Organization (ILO), about 80 percent of child laborers in India are employed in the agricultural sector, while others work on the street as beggars or sell small items.

Raju, 12, a native of West Bengal, comes from a very poor family. Along with nine other children from his hometown, he was brought to work in New Delhi.

Enduring long hours of work at a gold shop in Dariyaganj and suffering from the effects of physical abuse and very little food, Raju has become a hunchback. One of his eyes is almost blind due to injuries caused by metal debris while he was working. His hands are also deformed because of overwork.

"My parents are extremely poor, and they have four more children to take care of. They had no means to provide me with food and education, so they sold me to an agent for 5,000 rupees (about 100 U.S. dollars) who brought me here to work," Raju recalled.

Still, Raju misses his family. Sometimes, he writes letters to them but seldom gets a reply.

Recognizing the serious problem of child labor, the Indian parliament passed the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act in 1986, declaring child labor illegal and making it a punishable act.

"Many poor families rely on their children to work to support them, and it would be naive to think this situation can be reversed quickly," said Amit Malhotra, a Delhi-based social activist working for the cause of children.

Malhotra has rescued hundreds of child laborers from sweatshops and brothels in Delhi.

"This is not family-supported employment, it is slavery. For the most part, children are employed because they are easily bullied and beaten, demand fewer rights than adults and can be paid next to nothing. There is no moral defense of an economy that rests on these conditions," he said.

Soon after the Child Labor Act, the government adopted a National Policy on Child Labor in 1987, in accordance with the constitutional provisions and various legislations on child labor. The idea of adopting a separate policy on child labor was not only to place the issue on the nation's agenda, but also to formulate a specific program of action to initiate the process of progressive elimination of child labor.