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From Our Own Correspondent: Romania and India

Romania and India

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Romania and India

Alan Johnston with personal reflections from correspondents Becky Milligan and Nidhi Dutt

Alan Johnston with reflections from BBC correspondents Becky Milligan, questioning the pimps who run Romania's sex traffic, and Nidhi Dutt, who joins some Indian teenagers training as Hindu priests.

Alan Johnston introduces wit, analysis and personal reflections from BBC correspondents abroad. In this edition, Becky Milligan goes on the trail of the pimps who entice Romanian girls into the sex trade; Nidhi Dutt sits in on a crash course which aims to turn Indian teenagers into Hindu priests.

Portrait of a pimp 

Romania has a problem. It has a bad reputation as a centre for human trafficking - the business of luring women into prostitution, and smuggling them across Europe. The girls and young women caught up in this trade can be drawn in by various means. They're told tales of opportunities abroad, and sometimes they're subjected to emotional or physical pressure from older men and women. 

But a charity in a town called Cernavoda is working to prevent youngsters falling victim in this way. Becky Milligan spent time with the group, and went in search of the figures behind the sex-trade.

A teenage priest, better than none at all?

It's now a just a few weeks until the festival of the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha - a much loved figure, believed to be particularly helpful when it comes to ensuring the success of some important new venture. For days during the celebration hundreds of millions of people will pray to images of the deity. 

But worshippers in the Indian city of Mumbai have a problem, there's a severe shortage of priests to oversee the ceremonies. But one man thinks he may have a solution, Nidhi Dutt found him putting his faith in Mumbai's youth.

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