Despite India’s socially conservative culture, the Ministry of Women and Child Development admits that there are an estimated 3 million commercial sex workers in India. NGO’s put that number much higher – at around 20 million, and claim that more than 35% of them entered the trade before they were 18.
Recently, India’s Supreme Court set up a panel to investigate the rehabilitation of sex workers into other vocations.
Amrita Nandy for The Women’s Feature Service has this report
NGOs say that sex workers repeatedly and desperately request the chance to get out of the business and earn their livelihoods in different ways. But to find work for often unskilled or even illiterate people that pays as well as sex work is no easy matter.
Asked if she would take up the rehabilitation scheme, 31-year-old Sonam says, "Why not? If the new job can give me as much money as this one, I am willing to give this up right away! But I do not hate this work. I could buy a two-room house in Delhi and send my daughter to a private school because of this work. It is not begging... I work hard to earn a living."
Sonam came to Delhi at 15 and was pushed into sex work. She says that at first she was unhappy and longed to go back home, but life in the brothel became comfortable because her madam treated her like a daughter. "This 'kotha' and its people are home and family now," she says.
Honour
In the slums of east Delhi, 54-year-old Payal is a sex worker as well as a female pimp. "This is no age for sex work but do I have an option? I tried stitching and still take on work like this (pointing to a pile of clothes) but I can barely survive with it,” she says.
Payal is positive about the rehabilitation scheme and says she is tired of her dual life, where she has to hide her work from her husband, children, parents, neighbours and even some peers. “They all know I pimp but not that I am a sex worker. Sex work gives a woman better money but takes away her 'izzat' (honour) and family. But I want 'izzat' now. People should know that I am a good person, a loving mother," she says.
Attraction
Despite the willingness of most sex workers to take up other professions, sex work remains the most economically attractive option for illiterate women, according to the first pan-India survey of sex workers. Moreover, many sex workers often have two or three jobs simultaneously. A domestic worker could moonlight as a sex worker, or a woman working on a factory line may, on the side, also be offering sexual services to senior colleagues.
Ageing sex workers often find it difficult to live off their dwindling earnings. "Before I die, I want to see a different life. So training me in stitching or something is fine but they must give us houses to live in and find us work too. That will be complete rehabilitation," says a tearful Lalli, who was brought into the red light district at the age of five.
She knows that banning prostitution isn’t a solution, "Sex work can never be abolished. So it is best to allow sex workers who wish to continue carry on, but improve their living conditions."
Cynicism
29-year-old Fauzia, a home-based sex worker, is cynical of the rehabilitation scheme. She believes it is a step towards abolition. She recounts the story of her friend who was forced into a remand home by authorities.
"I work out of my madam's house and visit clients at theirs. My monthly earning lets me pay my house rent and educate my son. And I am paying EMIs (easy monthly installments) for a small plot of land I have bought. I am illiterate, how can I find any other job that gives me as much? I plan to continue this work as long as I am young... will think of substitutes when I am older or if my family comes to know and I am forced to quit," she says.
However, the Supreme Court bench is taking measures not to employ forceful measures towards sex workers. The court order clearly states that sex workers cannot be forced to stay in corrective homes to undergo vocational training under the rehabilitation schemes.
(All names have been changed on request.)
(© Women's Feature Service)
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mai sex work krna chahta hu
mai sex work krna chahta hu
Sex industry is one of the most controversial industries that people and government work for. Currently I read from this article Council rejects biggest little whorehouse in Australia has shot down a proposal for a mega-brothel. The Sydney, Australia, city government has shot down a suggestion for a mega-brothel, which may have focused on a discrete clientele on an unheard of level. The business would create unjust competition and negative impact on citizen, government participants say. The government was quick to claim that it had no moral objection to brothels. It was the dimensions of this venture that brought on its denial.
In Sweden there exists a law off 1993 penalising men who have sex with prostitutes.Notice,the prostitutes in Sweden are freed according to that marasmatic law from any responsability for harassing men in the streets.So men in Sweden not only humiliate themselves by paying for sex but also are submitted to criminl prosecution because of that.Personally,I despise every man (who's not completely ugly or old) who has ever paid for sex with a woman.Personally,I have never touched prostitutes and never paid them,just because it was inferior to my human and man's dignity.After all,it was them who should have paid me for having sex with me.
No,Anonimous,there is a lot of shameful about sex.First of all,as I said below,it's shameful to pay for sex.It's shameful as well to have sex with persons who are less pretty or handsome as to women and men respectively.It's shameful to ask for sex,because sexual intercourse should be on mutual desire.It should be shameful and morally condemned for a woman to get pregnant and give birth to a child against the will of his biological father.And so on.
There is nothing shameful about sex. It is an urge and makes you feel good.
All sex worker are right, the proffesion never will end, see now Cuba after a long prohibition now even man and homesexual are protitutes. To abolish it firt you have to abolish poverty which never will end.
So if something India want to do about is incorporate them voluntary to the police because India need more police. The other way around is hypocrecy.
In my view paying for sex is much more shameful than working as prostitute.People,both men and women,in Holland as well as in india don't understand that truth,as they are completely in prey of prejudices.If a woman is good-looking and sexy it's way better for her to work as prostitute than work hard at a factory or at an office.As to "honour" those indian women spoke about,what's better for a man,being born from a prostitute or from a vile and dishonest woman who laid down with a man and purposely got pregnant from him to procreate and make him marry her?Or even from a lesbian woman who deceived a man about her true sexual orientation to procreate as many lesbians in Holland do?There are no statistics about that but we can suppose that even in Holland most children are born against the will of their biological fathers.In Moscow where sexual and contraceptive culture is higher that in the rest of Russia,I knew just very few young men who had really wanted their children.Hence,most of them were "rapped" with pregnancy by their girl-friends.I guess,the same siuation in this respect is in Holland.So what's more shameful being born from a prostitute or from an "honest" woman as a result of her sexual fraud?In my opinion,the latter is the most shameful.
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