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Sex workers assert their rights
By Sujoy Dhar
4-12-2004
CALCUTTA - Times are changing in India. Many sex workers, instead of accepting
the status quo, are now determined to transform negative social attitudes
prevailing against their trade - often the only option available to poor,
unskilled women in a capitalist and patriarchal society.
Mala Singh and Sadhana Mukherjee are two such women. They spent the prime of
their youth pandering to male passions in the dark alleys of this eastern
Indian city's sleaze districts. They experienced their share of police
brutality, vicious pimps and the social opprobium that goes with their
profession - far removed from ideas such as legalized prostitution, workers
rights and dignity of labor. Older and wiser now, Mala and Sadhana are at the
forefront of discussions in India about the status of sex workers.
"In most discussions, prostitution and trafficking are deliberately clubbed
together and the number of women and girls who are trafficked deliberately
exaggerated," says Mala, 40. "It is rarely acknowledged that for most sex
workers, entering the sex industry is not a result of coercion or an act of
desperation but a rational choice."
According to Mala, who was invited to speak at the "International Conference on
Trafficking of Women," held in Geneva in June, prostitution is often sought to
be banned in the name of checking trafficking and the forcible entry of minor
girls into the profession. "What is overlooked in this sensationalist and
moralist approach is that sex workers are working women and men, who like many
other people, happen to be engaged in a marginal, sexist, explotiative and
low-status job."
What gave Mala and Sadhana a chance to gain recognition for their profession
and some semblance of internationally accepted standards, such as compulsory
use of condoms and the right to say no, was the global menace of HIV. "'No
condom, no sex' is our slogan in Calcutta and it has already lowered
perceptibly the incidence of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases [STDs],"
explained Sadhana.
As secretary of the Asia Pacific Sex Worker's Association Sadhana was invited
to speak on prevention strategies at the "Action on AIDS in Asia Pacific
Communities" program in Sydney in May of this year. At the conference Sadhana
stressed the importance of health consciousness among sex workers and drew from
the experience of the "HIV/STD Intervention Program" begun in Calcutta's
red-light district of Sonagachi in 1992. The program, hailed by the World
Health Organization as a 'best practice', first gave the long-oppressed sex
workers the consciousness that they were complete persons with emotional and
material needs.
By 1996, Mala and Sadhana had set up the Durbar Mahila Samanayay Committee
(DMSC), an organization which now represents 40,000 sex workers in West Bengal
state and leads a movement for legalization of prostitution and extension of
worker's rights. The DMSC taught its members to physically resist attempts to
force unprotected sex on them. Even though quite a few sustained injuries in
the process, by 1998 condom use was as high as 90 percent, compared to less
than three percent in 1992.
Since 1996 Calcutta's sex workers have had the benefit of a cooperative which
doles out loans to members at low interest and helps aged sex workers with
self-employment schemes. But their most important endeavor is to gain legal
recognition for prostituion - an issue on which opinion is still highly divided
in this socially-conservative country.
"They work with their bodies, and hence they want workers' rights," stated
Mrinal Kanti Dutta, the present director of the HIV/STD Intervention Program,
who does not hesitate to say that he is himself the son of sex worker. "If
mainstream society denies prostitution workers' rights on the grounds that it
is harmful it would be sheer hypocrisy since workers in the liquor and tobacco
trade, which are also harmful, are granted those rights," Dutta said.
According to former director of the program, Dr Samarjit Jana, since sex
workers fufill an important social need, prostitution must be seen as a
profession. "Under the patriarchal system there is always a need for sexual
services outside the family and hence prostitution will always be there," Jana
said. "If sex workers are armed with trade union rights they can articulate
their problems and avail of government schemes for themselves and their
children bettter."
However, Tapati Bhowmik, coordinator of Sanlaap (Dialogue), an non-government
organization working with the children of sex workers, feels that it is
unrealistic for so marginalized a group to make such demands. "They do not have
access to basics such as shelter, education and health care and it is
unrealistic that a government which does not even acknowledge trafficking in
girl children would agree to provide sex workers facilities like insurance."
There is support for the proposal of legalizatino from veteran trade union
leader and former federal home minister, Indrajit Gupta, whose Communist Party
of India forms part of the Left Front coalition ruling West Bengal state.
But the sex workers know that their best bet lies in transforming themselves
and their trade by making them more responsible.
In May they took a major step in that direction by forming a self-regulatory
board comprising sex workers and people from other walks especially to regulate
the entry of young girls into the profession. "Newcomers are now presented
before the board and if we find someone being coerced or persuaded to engage in
the profession as a minor we stop it," Mala said.
In three of the 17 red light areas of Calcutta, Rambagan, Sethbagan and
Tollygunge, child prostitution has been stopped despite personal risks from
pimps and crime bosses. "The three areas account for 1120 sex workers and it
hurts the pimps and other people who make a living out of trafficking in
minors," Mala said.
Sadhana said she was well aware of the hurdles ahead. "Our strategy is to first
strengthen the Asia-Pacific network and then launch the battle for workers
rights and respectability for the profession."
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