Assam, India. There are over 600 tea plantations in Assam, India producing a third of all the tea in India and about 15 per cent of world production. Unfortunately, behind the verdant landscapes and idyllic scenes of the Assam tea plantations lies a harsh reality - the horrific prevalence of human trafficking and exploitation. Young girls and women in Assam are particularly vulnerable to traffickers because they live in poverty, have very little education, and their parents are often saddled with debt. Most are descendants of the original bonded laborers brought in from other parts of the country by British colonial rulers. They live in the same impoverished circumstances as they did more than a century ago. Every leaf of every box of Assam tea sold by Tetley, Lipton or Twinings is picked by workers who earn less than $2 a day. So every year, hundreds of young girls are lured away from their families with promises of good jobs and a better life in distant cities. Instead, they too often find themselves sold as domestic labor and denied wages, or forced to work in the sex industry. When the traffickers come knocking, offering to give young girls a better life, their parents find it hard to say no."It is the poverty here," I’m told. "If any trafficker offers 1,000 rupees, they will get girls. It will be defeated only with employment and development and eradication of poverty.”