prostitution17

Child prostitution in India
I. Introduction
Child labour is not a new phenomenon. It has existed in one form or the other in all
historical periods. What is new, however, it its perception as a social problem and its being
a matter of social concern.
In older days the child was viewed with a tender feeling and treated with warmth, mercy,
and compassion. But the fund of knowledge about the psychophysical needs and the
environmental influence impinging on his growth and development was rather meager. The
mechanics and dynamics of child development were not adequately and scientifically
understood. Today on scientific grounds it can be asserted that work as a direct fulfilment
of child's natural abilities and creative potentialities is always conducive to healthy growth
but work when taken up as a means for fulfilment of some other needs becomes enslaving
in character of a social problem in as much as it hinders, arrests, or distorts the natural
growth processes and prevents the child from attaining full blown personality.
The lions share of the value generated by it is appropriated by some one else and the child
is left with a fraction that can not meet comfortably even the survival needs.
Child labour is thus defined as work performed by children that either endangers their
health or safety, interferes with or prevents education or keeps them from play and other
activity important to their development. Child labour of this kind is considered a social evil.
The problem of child labour is a multi-dimensional one as the children from a large
segment of the total population. Child prostitution involving both boys and girls is very
common today but female child prostitution is more common than male child prostitution.
Termed as the oldest profession, prostitution has become an integral part of 'all sorts' that
make the world. Women who resort to this rarely get a sympathetic word from the society
and their life is wasted away selling momentary pleasures for a meal and existence in
cubby holes called 'cages'. If their plight is pathetic, worse still is that of the child prostitutes.
Today there is existence of 'kid porn' where children and not adults are chosen for sexual
exploitation.
Ironically child prostitution is a special category of rigorous case of child labour and it
raises more troubling ethical problems than child labour in general.
II. Extent
Many surveys have been conducted to find out the extent of child prostitution. Dr. Gilada's
paper on perspectives and positional problems of social intervention" shows that,
"70% of women are forced into prostitution and 20% of these are child prostitutes."
Statistics of the survey done show:-
City Population Prostitute Population

Bombay 10 million 100,000
Calcutta 9 million 100,000
Delhi 7 million 40,000
Agra 3 million 40,000
A survey conducted by Indian Health Organization of a red light area of Bombay shows:-
1. 20% of the one lakh prostitutes are children.
2. 25% of the child prostitutes had been abducted and sold.
3. 6% had been raped and sold.
4. 8% had been sold by their fathers after forcing them into incestuous relationships.
5. 2 lakh minor girls between ages 9yrs-20yrs were brought every year from Nepal to India
and 20,000 of them are in Bombay brothels.
6. 15% to 18% are adolescents between 13 yrs and 18 yrs.
7. 15% of the women in prostitution have been sold by their husbands
8. Of 200m suffering from sexually transmitted diseases in the world 50m alone were in
India.
9. 15% of them are devdasis.
III. Cases
There are several causes of child prostitution but some of the most important ones are as
follows:
1. Devdasi system:- many of the devdasis are the girls who were dedicated to the Goddess
Yellamma by their parents at a very young age. They are the servants of God as they are
married to the Goddess. This ceremony takes place twice a year. The main one is during
the second fortnight of January at Karnatakas Saudatti village in South West of Miraj. Once
the girl is married to a Goddess she cannot marry a mortal.
The procurers frequent the place inorder to get the fresh supplies of girls as 4000 to 5000
girls are dedicated every year to the Goddess.
Attaining puberty is a secondary thing as there is a ceremony known as heath Lawni (or
touching ceremony) whereby the girl is made over to the highest bidder.
A study revealed that one third, of which three fourth are under fourteen years, are in
Bombay's cheapest brothels. They belong to the low castes like Mahars, Matangs, etc. who
give low priority to education. They are so poverty stricken that Fathers, brothers and
husbands do not hesitate to sell their daughters, sisters and wives.
Prevention of devdasis Act has been in the statute book since 1935 and amended recently
but the system continues even today despite governmental ban, Still the girls are dedicated
to the Goddess and forced into virtual prostitution and made to entertain males in order to
invoke the blessings of the deity.
It was estimated that in Delhi 50% of the prostitutes are devdasis and in Bombay, Pune,
Solapur and Sangli. 15% of them are devdasis,
(2) It is also noticed that young and old men prefer young and new girls.
(3) Growing poverty, increasing urbanization, and industrialization, migration, and
widespread unemployment, breaking up of joint family system etc. are also responsible for
the prevalence and perpetuation of the child prostitution.
(4) The influx of the affluent and not so affluent people from Gulf countries in India has
boosted the flesh trade in cities like Bombay, Hyderabad etc. The parents are forced to
part with their daughters for as little as 2 rupees tow two thousand in the fond hope that
they would get two square meals in the moneyed new world.
(5) Quick marriages without proper knowledge of the bridegroom's family background
leading to a divorce initiates the gravitation of girls to the red light area.
(6) Another inaction is after rape. A fifteen years old girl was brought to Dr, Gildas Clinic as
she was suffering from the symptoms of an STD she had been raped and sold by a self
styled social worker. The poor girl was forced into silence by the threats of dire
consequences.
(7) The children are not lured into it but are thrust into it. There was a case of a sixteen
years old girl who was sold to a brothel owner by her father following incest. 8% of these
girls are victims of incest because of the myth-that one of the causes for an STD is
intercourse with a virgin.
(8) Many a times when a child who has lost both his parents is looked after by the relatives
and these relatives too force the child into prostitution.
(9) Child marriages are a common phenomenon even today and the bride is very much
younger to the bridegroom so the husband drives the innocent wife into prostitution. There
is a case where a girl of 13 was married off to a man of thrice her age three months later
he abandoned her and married another girl. She returned to her poor parents and three
months later a man promised her a good job and took her to Bombay from where he went
and sold her to a middle aged woman at Kamatipura for rupees ten thousand and did not
come back to take her.
(10) Some of them are lured to Bombay the tinsel town. They dream of stellar roles in films
and mostly end up as prostitutes in the cages.
IV. Who are these girls, where then they procured from? How and why?
Tribal Kolta women and girls from Garhwal hills are compelled to become prostitutes to
rescue their family from debt bondage. Poverty stricken young girls from Bengal and Nepal
are lured with promises of attractive jobs and marriage. The agents came to know about
the existing condition in the areas of U. P. Tehri Garhwal. Dehradun etc. The local Rajputs
used to keep the men as animals and exploit their wives, sisters and daughters too. The
agents were successful in convincing these women well and hence brought them to Delhi
and Agra and sold them to the brothels there.
The phenomenon of commercialized trafficking of their girls found an easy acceptability
among kollas as Nadeem Hasnain, an anthropologist researched the Socio-economic and
cultural variables responsible for the bondage. In his book Bonded for ever (1982) says.
"… Centuries of exploitation and extreme degrees of material and non material deprivation
and the resultant wretchedness have taken the fight out of them and they can hardly resist
the temptation of getting some hundred rupees even at the cost of selling their offsprings
and wives. It is an economic battle for life".
Nearly 5000 teenagers and women in a Tehsil of sangli district in South Maharastra wait for
the month of June when the Arabs come and the year long poverty and hunger of these
women, children, and babies is dispelled over night. The flesh trade flourishes from June to
September and makes all the people connected with it happy.
In Rajashtan teenage prostitution is catching up as men sit and smoke hukkas while women
fix bargains years after passing of the suppression of immoral traffic of women and children
act. The children of the age group between 12 yrs to 20 yrs practice prostitution after
school hours. Most of these children are later sold to the brothels of Agra and Delhi.

In big cities women procures are on a lookout for girls and they get girls from Basti, Gonda,
Gorakhpur, Shahjahanpur, which are particularly notorious areas. Trilokpur police said that
in a period of a year one thousand girls were sold in Doomariyaganj tahsil alone.
Nepal has a very large female population and majority of them are illiterate and are very
gullible and can be lured under any pretext. They are very religious and succumb to the
promises of being taken to temples in India. They are fair skinned and attractive and a
promise to get them into films tempts them. There is widespread unemployment in Nepal
and the girls are totally unexposed to the outer world.
About 40% of these girls are habitual bidi smokers so a little bit of the soporific can be
mixed in the cigarettes for e.g. Ganja, Charas before abducting them. The Govt. of Nepal
plans to ban smoking for women for this reason. The procurers find new ways of abducting
them. One of the ways is giving them the 'magic paan' (betel) which is cocaine mixed, as
most of the girls are abdicts of paan and beedi fall an easy prey to the cocaine intoxication.
Another bait is that of dowry which exists in reverse from in Nepal. A man can buy a bride
and then he brings her to Bombay or anywhere and sells her at a brothel. Bombay seems
to be an end of the rainbow when the daughters disappeared, the parents did not try to
find out because they neither had the resources nor the ability to do so. They are assured
that each girl can look after herself and if she does not reach so far. But when the girls
started disappearing more frequently the rumours filtered back to the villages the
neighbours were told that she was working in Bombay.
The parents do not accept the girls back but the money they send to them 80% of the girls
crossing the Indo-Nepal border fall victims to racketeers who include Government officials
of the two countries.
Girls are also brought from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh and are assaulted
and raped till they submit to this shameful life.
V. Conditions
In the seamy and sordid world where each painted faced hides its own talk of abduction
coercion an submission the 'gharwali' or the 'madani' rules by force and is helped by
'Goondas'. The prostitute is deprived of her earnings till the price which was paid to buy
her is procured. If she utters a word of dissatisfaction she is whipped. They are kept in
sophisticated cages by their owners. The child prostitutes who are minors and virgins are
kept under strict vigil in reserve as they are in great demand. The Arabs and Koreans are
used to paying thousands for these girls. The girls are never lodged at the same place
permanently and they are shifted occasionally to a dozen of brothels owned by the
procuress of their own country to avoid familiarity with the customers or police detection.
The procurer first rechristens the girl and the cautions them against revealing their real
names and also disclosing there true addresses to the customers. Thereafter they are
trained on the ethics of flesh trade never to turn away any customer, to treat all customers
well equally courteously and superficially and never to discuss personal matters and keep
themselves clean. They are also given one weekly holiday. The brothels where minor girls
are kept, have two entries so as to escape during the sudden raids.
The girls have to live in a really unhygenic condition with very little food. A dozen girls have
to live in a 10 x 10 room and that too without any medical check ups. These girls are forced
to work round the clock. They are excused only when they are physically very weak.
Madams have quacks to treat them who dispense debilitating remedies and also use
dangerous and unhygenic methods of abortion. The quacks inject coloured liquid in the
infected areas as the treatment for various sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis,
scabies, venereal wart etc. making the children never totally cured thus extending their
hold on them. The girls are seldom taken for treatment as sex with a minor girl is a crime so
the madams are scared of the criminal proceedings.
For decades the most important red light areas have been enjoying the police protection.
The policemen themselves go to the brothels for tea snacks and girls. They inform the
brothel keepers in advance about the raids which are scheduled to take place.
The police, the brothel keeper, and pimps share the major part of the earnings of the
prostitutes and the rest of it that percolates down to the prostitutes is a mere pittance. It is
alleged that the police and abet the running of the brothels. They accept the hospitability,
money and free use of the girls. The police helps the brothel keeper even by bringing back
the ones who have run away. In a case where a girl named Geeta who was ten years old
was rescued by a hawker after many attempts was returned back to the brothel keeper by
the inspector himself on the same day.
The escapes by the victims and recovery by the police are rare. The recoveries do not
account for even 2% of the actual number of girls procured it different places.
Child prostitution does not exists only in India but also in other parts of the world.
"60 sex salves all from impoverished Dominican republic were found hidden in sealed
containers unloaded at the port St. Thomas in U. S. Virgin Islands. 28 of these died and
survivors were weak with no identity papers. They work for 18 hrs in a day and get only 20
dollars per client."
"Millions of third worlds young women and children are sold. Sexual slavery is becoming
increasingly international and industrial incharacter".
An organization of Manila which exports girls had 18 girls between the ages of 10 yrs to 17
yrs ready to be exported with same sign tattooed on the right thigh.
In Thailand child prostitution is relatively discrete and tolerated by police.
VI. Effects
Practice of child prostitution is economically unsound, psychologically disastrous, and
morally dangerous and harmful on even and individual child. One can hardly imagine the
extreme trauma that a child under goes. There is a case of a child prostitute who lost her
speech after being raped by one who had hired her. She is now placed in a deaf mute
school for speech recovery.
The case of Tulsa a Nepali girl is more pathetic. Since the age of 13 she was sold and
brought by many people and shifted from brothel to brothel and was forced by five to seven
men every day. In this process she ended up with many diseases. She was taken to J. J.
Hospital at Bombay. She was said to be suffering from meningitis, tuberculosis of brain,
bone and chest and had an STD in advanced stage. The police took over sixteen months a
file a charge sheet. Finally she was repatriated to Nepal. The culprits in the Himalayan.
Kingdom were tried and imprisoned for 20 years.
Child prostitutes become ready recruits for flesh trade for they are rendered unfit for any
other trade or calling not being educated or having any knowledge of any other trade.
Child prostitution itself is a criminal activity and serves as a catalyst for further criminal
association in other fields. The helpless children are turned into mere pawns in the criminal
syndicates which lead to a steady deterioration of morals.
50m of the worlds 200m prostitutes who suffer from STD are in India and they are mostly
found to be affected by tuberculosis, meningitis scabies, chronic pelvic injections anaemia,
syphilis, chaneroid. Tineacrutis, vevercal war etc. This was the scars that the child
prostitution leaves on the child prostitutes can not be erased but to a certain extent can be
minimised by the medical help.
VII. Law and child prostitution
The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act passed by both houses of parliament last August
come into force from Monday 26th January 1987.
Under the amended act detention of a woman for purposes of prostitution is punishable
with a minimum of seven years of imprisonment and maximum of life imprisonment Equally
Stringent punishment will be awarded to those procuring children for prostitution.
Earlier, the act was known as suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act
(SITA). The name of the act has been changed and it has been made more effective and
stringent. The definition of prostitute itself has been changed to include persons of both
sexes. Earlier it included girls and women only. The amendment takes into account the
growing menace of male prostitution especially that involving young boys.
Under the new act there are three categories of victims-children, minors and majors. The
children are those upto 16 years and minors are those between 16 to 18yrs and majors are
those above 18 yrs. The earlier act recognized only women and girls - a women being one
who has completed 21 years. Punishment for offences committed against these categories
differ in severity Offences Committed against children and minors will be dealt with more
severely than those against majors.
The new act provides for the appointment of a special police officer for investigating
offences with inter-state ramifications the women who are resended by the police during
raids will be questioned only by women police officers and if none is available they can be
interrogated only in the presence of a female representative of a recognised welfare
institution or organisation. To make a search or conduct a raid too the police officer has to
be accompanied by at least two police women.
VIII. Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation of the prostitutes is a big problem because people donate for different
causes like handicapped people, blind etc but when it cames to helping these girls not
many are willing. There is a stigma attached to this profession once rescued the girls are
sent to the Remand houses or the protective houses which are overcrowded, mismanaged,
without facilities or vocational training and living conditions threadbare. The Government
gives an aid of just Rs. 75/- per girl per month. So the girl realises that the life before was
better and so when the pimp comes to claim them as a brother or a sister she readily goes
with him or her to the old life.
IX. Conclusion
Our society has not only turned a blind eye to minor girls being enticed into prostitution but
also is directly responsible for the continuance in growth of child prostitution. First the
demand for virgin prostitutes, and secondly it abets child prostitution by failing to provide
adequate facilities for orphan and destitute children. Unless so called respectable sections
of the society rise in revolt against exploitation the future of younger generation looks
bleak. We have to forget the idea of once a prostitute for ever a prostitute and think how
can a child help what has been done her by an unthinking adult? We have to overlook their
past and rehabilitate them as one of the agencies in Bombay called Savadhan headed by
Mr. Gupta is doing. They have got 30 of prostitutes who were rescued married to
respectable people of the society. The IHO has been clamoring for women police to patrol
red light area because policemen themselves exploit the inhabitant of the Red light area.
The Government should divert more funds for rehabilitation and private charitable
institutions should also contribute what we achieve in science and technology will be
negated if we cannot protect our minor girls who are being exploited. The Government
should severely punish the people connected with this inhuman practice should be totally
banned for the good of the future citizens of our country.