prostitution24

By Sarika Misha

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.