Sex Workers in India

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015 Last Modified: 11 Jan 2018

Prostitution is a contentious issue in India. Although, prostitution (exchanging sex for money) is not illegal, but the surrounding activities (operating brothels, pimping, soliciting sex etc.) are illegal. In fact the worst part is that the people in India forget that in series of insulting this profession, they put a question mark on the life of that person...of that girl who had possibly been just another victim of unexpected and unwanted assault of bad times. It is being heard often, rather always from people that call girls are like this, they are not good, it is not preferred for decent people to be friend with them or to be in contact with them though they forget that it is this crowd who exploits the helplessness of these girls. It is easy to make out from outside that they are themselves indulging in these activities but nobody bothers to take charge to rebuild them. Once these innocent souls of 11 or 12 years are forced into the hell like brothels...a word called 'LIFE' goes away from their ruined being and self respect.

In 2007, the Ministry of women and child development reported presence of 2.8 million sex workers in India, with 35.47 percent of them entering the trade before the age of 18 years. The number of prostitutes has also doubled in the recent decades. It itself is a proof of one thing that India's male dominated want this ,do this..that is why prostitution is augmenting at such a pace. Sonagachi in Kolkata, Kamathipura in Mumbai, G.B Road in New Delhi, Reshampura in Gwalior and Budhwar peth in Pune host thousands of sex workers. These are also known as red light areas in the country, where everyday thousands of girls are browbeaten. Ones who are considered to be so called lucky get freed from this cage because of intervention of police or NGOs but being rescued from a brothel is not always the end of a dark tunnel. Rather, it could be the beginning of a more traumatic life. A number of sex workers rescued and repatriated show higher-levels of traumatic disorders than those living in brothels, according to an all-India study. The study conducted by Swanchetan, an NGO, from October 2007 to March 2008, used the five-point Likert scale to map the relative intensity with which each victim experienced and demonstrated trauma. Human trafficking is illegal but prostitution is not ....the difference of which people rarely understand. Films made on the life of sex workers or bar girls like Chameli, Chandni bar, Mandi show the true picture of our society where the situation and their family members themselves do not think twice to make life of those girls a deal for them. According to a Human Rights Watch report, Indian anti-trafficking laws are designed to combat commercialized vice; prostitution, as such, is not illegal. A sex worker can be punished for soliciting or seducing in public while clients can be punished for sexual activity close to a public place, and the organization puts the figure of sex workers in India to be around 15 million, with Mumbai alone being home to one hundred thousand sex workers, the largest sex industry centre in Asia. Over the years, India has seen a growing mandate to legalize prostitution, to avoid exploitation of sex workers and their children by middlemen and also in the wake of growing HIV/AIDS menace. Many NGOs are working towards it but still a considerable change has not been brought in the lives of these girls or women. So the need of the hour is to enlighten ourselves, our spirit and our unconscious soul to rein in the chances of innocent girls getting exploited by the animals in disguise of men in our society.