Rupak De Chowdhuri, Reuters / Landov
Firefighters rescued a 13-year-old girl from a suburban apartment in New Delhi, where she'd been locked while her bosses were on vacation. Sold to a job placement agency by her uncle, she was trapped working for a couple, both doctors, who paid her nothing, fed her little, beat her, and kept her under video surveillance to make sure she didn't steal extra food. The story caused a scandal in India, but it's far from unusual. The International Labor Organization has found that India has 12.6 million workers between the ages of 5 and 14, many working as domestic help, and many for India's rapidly growing middle class. “The demand is so huge that the government is tending toward regulation rather than saying our children should not work but should be in school," says a lawyer with a group working against the trafficking of children.