I was in a trepidation after deciding to write a blog on the raging debate in India about legalization on prostitution in India. My difficulty is to decide on which blog should I post the write up. Thanks to my friends, I have three blogs in a short time, one on Indian economy, two, on social issues and third on personal musings. With great mental debate, I decided to post the blog in the Indian economy, fully realizing that prostitution is a human issue, though the business of prostitution can be categorized as an economic issue. I am not differentiating between the two. But my heart goes with the unfortunate multitude of women especially children, who are forced to prostitution by the accident of their birth.
Some years ago, I believe that in Economist, there was an incisive article which analyzed the entire gamut of business of prostitution and underscored the need for legalizing them. Should women be considered object of pleasure and enjoyment? Historians and sociologists may point out that the institution of prostitution is as old as mankind. They may have their reasons to categorize them as a part of societal life. Some of them argue that but for those who are practicing this profession, rape incidences would have gone up , family lives would have become vitiated and so on. That is why epics across the millennium talk about prostitution. References of prostitution is there in Bible, Sumerian epics, Greek mythologies, and our epics like Mahabharata and Ramayan.
I am not an anthropologist. But I believe that such credos are heavily tilted towards the victims who are practicing the trade. Once you consider prostitution as a part of business, what guarantee one is providing the practitioners to pursue trade. In India, it is reckoned that there are around 50 million sex workers. Most of them are victims of trafficking and hail from very poor regions and families. Most of them are sold at an young age by their parents to middlemen, who make a killing by selling them to Kothis in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata etc. A few of them land up in the confines of the rich people in villages and double as their maids concubines.
We have to be realistic while making an assessment. The average working span of a sex worker is only a few years. After that most of them are left high and dry. A sizable percentage of them are susceptible to communicable diseases. With no one to look after them, they vanish into thin blue unknown and unheard. Leave aside the society, the government seems to be washing off their hand on the issue. No proper government scheme has come forth to protect the lot of the unfortunate people.
Recently, the apex court of India has set up a panel to look into the legalization legalizing prostitution. The panelists seem to be sharply divided on the issue of amendment to the archaic Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956 (ITPA). Everyone in the panel says that they have the best of interest of those who are trafficked. One set of panelists say that licensing prostitution will open up the floodgate of more people joining the ranks and middlemen taking advantage of the situation. The group which favors the licensing believe that the amendment to the law will break the nexus between Kothi wahllas ( euphemism for those who running prostitution) police and politicians and make the trade less vulnerable to exploitation.
Importantly, on 8th November 2014, there is the crucial meeting of the panel to deliberate on the subject. I just have to remind the learned panelists that by legalizing prostitution, you are not closing the door for those who want to quit the profession to start anew in other areas. Rather, you will give them more confidence, money and security to opt for their profession and empower them to lead a decent life. Both licensing and empowerment should go together and not in isolation. Let not intellectual expansionism and egotism block the future of this unfortunate lots
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