Caught in the flesh trade
(Published in new Indian Express on November 2, 2003)


Lakshmi eloped with a man when she was just 15. They led a happy life in Chennai till their first child — a daughter — was born. A few days after that, he left her. She had to pay the rent for the premises and take care of her daughter. With an infant in her hand, nobody was willing to give her a job. So Lakshmi picked up odd works that came her way. That was when she met a flower vendor (a lady) in the neighbourhood who offered a job as a domestic help. She was told that the baby too was welcome. Lakshmi readily agreed. And before she knew it, she landed in a brothel. The flower vendor received a hefty sum for this good-looking “family” girl. They are much in demand in the flesh trade. Rani’s story is similarly saddening. The 13-year-old school dropout belongs to Madurai, Chennai. Her parents are agricultural labourers. She took care of the domestic chores while her mother was away at work. The monsoon failure and the subsequent drought drove the family into abject poverty. As the eldest among the siblings, Rani internalised the harsh reality and wanted to help her parents. She, however, didn’t know how she could help. That was when an acquantaince, a lady, offered to help her out. Rani was offered a job with which she could earn around Rs 1,000 per month. An incredibly high amount for her. She immediately agreed. She was brought to a bungalow where her “employers” used sedatives to “tame” her. Later on she was shifted to Kodaikanal with other girls to entertain the customers under the strict vigilance of the agents. Young girls always fetch bigger sums. In both instances, the girls were trafficked and thrown into the flesh trade. These are not isolated cases. Trafficking in women and children is happening across the world and is an estimated $9 billion industry according to calculations done by the UN and its agencies. It is estimated that in India alone 7 lakh children are trafficked, every year, for various purposes. The alarming factor is that the comparative age of the children trafficked into the sex industry is progressively decreasing. The issue is beginning to bother policy makers and civil society institutions in a big way. So far, there have been two World Congresses against trafficking, one each in Sweden, Stockholm in August 1996 and Oklahoma, Japan in December 2001. The factors behind the rapid rise in human trafficking are the increasing levels of poverty, apart from ignorance of rights because of illiteracy, a mindset that discriminates against the girl child, unemployment, tourism, migration, social and religious customs, consumerism and attraction to the glamour world. Trafficking is done systematically. Recruitment or procurement is the first step. A broad network that operates at the ground level is integral to this. Apart from them, there are part-time traffickers (who have regular jobs and indulge in trafficking as a part-time job), occasional traffickers (who do trafficking as and when they get a chance) and one-time traffickers. All these people may not even be part of a large network. Next comes the issue of transporting the victims, followed by their transfer to the various brothels or to other traffickers. Sometimes the brothel owners themselves are traffickers. The last stage is the exchange of money between the trafficker and the buyer. The buyer then “owns” the victim and she is pushed into the flesh trade. There are various means used to force a person into the trafficking chain, including that of threat, coercion, fraud, deception, or abuse of position. The victim’s vulnerability — financial or emotional — is central to all these instances as it’s the indebtedness of the victim or her family that is most often the starting point of the trafficking chain. And needless to say, those trafficked for sex undergo severe physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Trafficking is a very lucrative business as in drug or weapon trafficking. However, trafficking in drugs or weapons involve huge expenses and are far more dangerous acts to indulge in than trafficking in women and children. The investment involved in human trafficking is restricted to the price to be paid at the “procurement” stage and the expenses for transportation of the victims. The “procurement” cost is what is paid to the agents or the facilitators at the lower rung in the network; they are the persons who help in luring the away girls from their locations, making use of their vulnerability. The net profit is, invariably, more than 100 percent. For instance, a trafficker pays his agent anywhere around Rs 5,000 to procure a girl and spends Rs 1,000 more as cost of transporting her to the destination. The money earned by the trafficker when he “transfers” her to the brothel is about rupees one lakh or more, which works out to a big profit. The person who buys the girl, engages her to entertain different customers, over a period of time. All that the victim gets in return, as it was revealed in a recent study by the author, are food and clothing. Running away from this situation is just impossible. All the brothels have their own gangs to prevent such a situation. The girls do not have any choice but to entertain 20 to 25 customers per day. It is only natural that they become physically and mentally strained. The owners then drug them. While the drugs are administered initially by force, it becomes “voluntary” after a stage. Soon, the victims are also addicted. Out of 200 sex workers interviewed for a study in Chennai city alone, 90 percent were alcoholics. All of them, it was observed, had entered the business at a very young age. Legalities According to the IPC section 366 A, procuring a minor girl and forcing her or seducing her into illicit intercourse with another person is punishable with imprisonment up to 10 years. Those found guilty of this offense are liable for fine (also read section 372 IPC — selling minor for purpose of prostitution). The law is also clear that having sex with a minor girl (girls under 16 years of age) with or without her concern amounts to rape. Given this, sex with girls who are just 14 or 15 years of age is by itself a crime. Despite this, we find several girls in this age group being forced to “comfort” as many as 20 or 25 persons a day on a regular basis. Legally speaking all the men (customers) must be charged for rape. But it hardly happens. The first lessons the victims are taught here is to lie about their real age as and when they are caught in a police raid. They all declare their age to be 18 years or even more when they are taken before a magistrate by the police (for remand). The study also revealed that their statements regarding their age were taken as given by the police and courts! The victims are fined (after they admit to have indulged in prostitution) and they are taken back to the same old places by the same old masters (or mistresses)! Thus their own vulnerable state and the ineffective implementation of the law render them into a hapless lot. Access is an important factor in trafficking. Who is a trafficker? It can be anybody; husband, boyfriend, parents, relatives, friends, colleagues, recruitment agencies, an acquaintance. Strangers too manage to lure away girls at times. In all these cases, barring that of strangers, the victim’s proximity with the trafficker is the major factor. In one such case, the brother-in-law of a girl was arrested along with her. He was booked under 4(1) of ITP Act (pimping). This educated girl belongs to Kerala and was jobless. Her brother-in-law took her to Chennai on the pretext of finding her a job. No one suspected his intention. In the notorious Suriyanelli case involving the rape and abuse of a 14 year old girl, it was her lover who dumped her into the flesh trade. Rather he was also part of the network. Many unemployed girls fall into the dragnet of the “recruitment” agencies. Usually nobody checks the authenticity of the agencies. This makes their job easier. There are instances of celebrities turning traffickers. Take for example the reports involving an ex-Olympian from Austria. A skating gold medallist has been sentenced to 18 months in prison on charges of human trafficking. He was a member of a gang that recruited women from the Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania. Trafficking in women and children is a huge and vicious network. It happens within the state (from rural to urban areas), across states and from one country to another. In India, this human trade is worth crores. There are agents and sub-agents functioning at various levels and possess the best of the communication equipment. Our study revealed that girls from Kolkata are brought to Chennai via Mumbai. They are on contract to spend a fortnight in Chennai, taken to Bangalore and spend the following week there before returning to Kolkata. These girls are all in their teens or their early twenties. Their clientele come from the middle level professionals in various fields and also the rich and mighty. Many countries have begun to take steps to tackle this problem and new laws have been enacted. Countries like Thailand, Philippines have initiated tough measures to prevent child prostitution. Sri Lanka too has taken radical steps to tackle sexual abuse of children. The US Congress had passed an Act recently. Prevention of Trafficking in Women and Children is now a serious concern for the governments in Europe. But most of these countries are only the destination points for girl children being trafficked. These are not the place of origin. It is the third world countries and the Republics of former Soviet Union that have emerged as the countries of origin. Though we have provisions in the Indian Penal Code and also the ITP Act, with which the guilty can be punished, they have proved to be inadequate to deal with the traffickers. As far as the ITP Act is concerned, it is used more to victimise the victims; in other words, the provisions apply more stringently against those who have been pushed into the flesh trade than those behind the cruel game. The traffickers, invariably, go unpunished. Hence we need an exclusive law to deal with trafficking. For the present, the least that can be done is to ensure that the existing provisions are effectively implemented. The most important factor is the role of civil society and the society. We need to campaign against the dominant attitude towards women at one level and think of a movement that will internalise women’s rights within the larger question of human rights.

Ban on Dance Bars

Ban on Dance Bars
(I wrote this sometime back...)

The decision by the Maharsthra Government to close down the dance bars has triggered a controversy. And much of the debate has been on aspects of moral policing and the state. Such a debate is not unprecedented, particularly in Maharashtra. The BJP and RSS along with the parivar outfits are known to have raised the need for such bans in the past. And it is the Congress government this time. The debate, as usual has centred around issues of moral conduct against human rights. Both sides have loaded their guns with arguments. It is very difficult to decide as to which of the two sides is ``correct’’ and the positions have been determined by whether one is a liberal or right winger.

A statement has been made that these dance bars corrupt the moral fiber of hundreds of youth (and it is made out that it intact otherwise), that they encourage anti –social activities, threaten the local culture, encourage immoral habits as the dance bars are also a breeding ground for prostitution. It is, on the face of it, ridiculous to argue that closing dance bars will solve all these problems. What happens in these dance bars? All that the dancers do is to imitate the dance numbers from commercial cinema; the girls are clad in similar kind of costumes as the dancers do in cinema.

Now, we have not banned “choli ke peeche kya hey…” in which Madhuri Dixit literally reveals what is asked for in the lyrics. Or such numbers from the Bollywood hits where pelvic gyrations are becoming a rule and are vulgar in all senses of the term. It is a fact that in most movies the heroine is seen dancing to seducing numbers wearing as little clothes as she can; or take the case of the many advertisements films or the hoardings in our towns now where too clothes are worn not to conceal but to reveal as much as the human body.

We also have programme beamed into our living rooms by Television channels where gyrations are shown as dance numbers. For instance one Malayalam language channel, recently brought the dance girls from Russia (a cheap proposition after the break down of the socialist system there) to do belly dancing on the occasion of celebrating one of the milestones in the channel’s life. The costumes they wore seem to set new standards for ramp shows. The point is that, no government thought of banning them.

Let me make it clear that I am not attempting to take sides on the issue of the closure of dance bars Maharashtra. At the same time, it is necessary to delve into an aspect that the ``liberal’’ position on this issue (to oppose the closure) has conveniently glossed over. For instance, let it be clarified here that running dance bars is a very lucrative industry rather than any effort to promote a liberal culture.

The president of Bar Association of Mumbai, Manjit Sethi’s outcry that the bar owners have to pay several lakh rupees as license fee to get a bar license and that they also spend a fortune as monthly fee at the police commissioners office besides the extortion money to the local police and goons is evidence that it is big business. And despite all this, the fact is these bars fetch them a huge profit. All will agree that they are not running a charity to protect the dance girls; over a lakh of them in the State.

Let it also be stated that for the dance girls, it is certainly not a pleasant or enjoyable experience to dance surrounded by men who ogle at them; many of them in an inebriated state, throwing currency notes at them when they think the girl danced very well. If you call it entertainment, it does smack of entertainment in the medieval, feudal setting. Like the Greeco-Roman past-time where the of the citizens and the rulers were privileged to watch slaves fight between themselves and with wild animals, the middle ages generated developed dance bars where women were objectified.

It is possible to argue that these girls in the dance bars are aware of what they are doing and it gives them a livelihood and that they are in the dance bars not because they were born in such families (as it was, we are told, in the middle ages). One of the arguments is that they are all above 18 years of age and are mature enough and also have the right to chose what they want. But then, let us attempt an honest answer to the question as to whether these girls are there as a matter of choice.

Mumbai’s dance bars are one of the destinations of the girls trafficked from villages and small towns across the country. Many of these girls are trafficked into the bars from places like Bangladesh, rural West Bengal, from villages in the Southern States and from the tribal areas of Orissa. And they do not spend the rest of their lives dancing in these bars. A study recently for the National Human Rights Commission involved interviews with girls arrested by the anti-trafficking cell of Government of Tamil Nadu.

It was found out then that the girls caught by the police in Chennai city were mostly from the rural areas of West Bengal and elsewhere; they were taken to the Mumbai dance bars initially and later on sent to places like Chennai and Bangalore on a contract basis (15 to 20 days) by organized gangs. These gangs, as it was revealed by the study (the report has been released) are well connected and have agents in every major city. Some girls are sent as far as Coimbatore to cater the need of the customers there.

Once the contract period is over (and if they are not caught by the police) they are sent back to Mumbai and a different group will be brought by the gangs in their place. This continues uninterruptedly. The anti-vice squad in Chennai has a record number of such arrests; around 5000 women sex workers a year.

It is in this context that we should place the demand of the Bharathiya Bar Girls Union. Varsha Kale, president of the union demanded that the government formulate a programme to rehabilitate the girls before closing down the dancing bars. And the government, it is reported, agreed to rehabilitate; but only the Maharstrian girls in the industry. It turns out that only 4 percent of the dancing girls are Maharstrians. Nobody, including the liberals, is prepared to see this simple but revealing statistics.

Where do these girls came from? How did they reach Mumbai? Who brought them there? Were they taken to Mumbai and employed in the bars willingly or were they forces into it for want of another option? Do they want to go back to where their homes?

Rather than making it appear that to run and dance in night clubs as an issue of human rights (as it is made out to be by the liberals) it is worthwhile that the idea of human rights and the Right to Life is addressed to in a composite and honest fashion. So that, the idea of life with dignity, which should necessarily include the right to livelihood is taken up. Meanwhile, the National Human Right Commission and National Commission for Women (who will now have to act on the representation from the Bharathiya Dance Girls Union), will justify themselves if they look at ugly side of the industry and recommend measures for rehabilitation.

On Rape and Capital Punishment

Who remembers rape victims
(This was published in New Indian Express on August 22, 2004)

What do you do when a child plays with a matchbox? You keep away the stuff from the child's reach since the child does not know how to handle a matchbox safely. Likewise, a rapist should be castrated, as he does not know how to use his masculinity. This was what a psychiatrist prescribed while discussing the ways and means to deal with rapists. The kind of media attention Dhananjoy Chatterjee got in the last couple of weeks made one sit up with some unease. Even Benjamin Molois, the South African freedom fighter and poet, whom the apartheid regime had sent to the gallows in 1985, did not get as much attention in our media. Dhananjoy is neither a freedom fighter nor an activist convicted for any great cause. Here was a person held guilty of murder and rape. He was given an opportunity to defend and prove his innocence and he did make use of all the legal avenues available. And more than this, it is also important that the crime, particularly the grisly nature of his act is recounted while his execution was discussed. Here was a man who had hit a 14-year-old child's head against the wall and killed her. The pervert had also raped the child. For these, he deserves the maximum punishment. Let me confess here that I am against death penalty; whether it is by hanging, by lethal injection or by the electric chair. Capital punishment, in my view, militates against progress and civilization. But then, the problem is that a life term according to our law will mean imprisonment only up to 14 years in jail. Not a day more. Thus the expression 'imprisonment for life' is a misnomer. Similarly, there is no provision in our penal codes for castration. This might sound a little too uncivilized or even borrowing a leaf out of the medieval justice system! But the trauma of the rape victims and the precarious feeling that women go through even when they imagine of being raped, the sense of insecurity that women go through, will perhaps lend a sense of legitimacy to this return to middle ages! Recently, as part of the field research for a study, I had the not so pleasant experience of interviewing some of the rape victims under 16 years of age in Chennai. One of the victims was a nine year old. She was frail. It was evident that the girl was famished. Her mother earns a living by working as a maidservant in the neighbourhood and her father is a coolie. On a rainy day, this child was playing alone outside their tenement in the slum cluster. There was hardly anybody around. A man in the locality, who knew about this girl's fascination for a ride on a two-wheeler, invited her to go with him. The innocent nine year old seems to have been overwhelmed by the invitation. She was taken to a deserted place and raped. He left her there bleeding profusely. She was almost dead but managed to drag herself to the roadside. An auto driver saw her and took her to the nearest police station. The cops admitted her to a hospital. When I met her it was a year after the crime. The family had to shift their residence. The child is traumatised and refuses to go to school. She is scared of all men and wants her mother with her always. She urinates involuntarily even at the slightest shock. Listening to her story left us in such an angry state that the lady police official who accompanied me simply muttered, "That should be shot". For a moment she had imagined her daughter in that child's place. Then there were cases of a mentally challenged girl whose family had migrated to Chennai from Andhra Pradesh, and that of a 15-year-old school dropout who was raped by someone who had a score to settle with her uncle. In all these instances, the trauma that these girls and their families had gone through was tremendous. They had to move out of the localities and shift residence. The social stigma that the victims and their families are put through forces them to move away from their homes, particularly when they are poor. For all these reasons, many instances of rape are not reported to the police always, though there is a certain amount of attitudinal change visible among the police towards the victims in recent times. Another disturbing fact is that the conviction rate (among the cases that are reported to the police) is very low. Dhananjoy Chatterjee was convicted and sentenced to death because the court was convinced of the heinous nature of the crime. The media, meanwhile, made Dhananjoy look as if he was the victim. The daily bulletins in the media about his life in the condemned cell, the graphic description of how he spent the last few days or the emotional presentation of how his family reacted together conveyed the news in such manner that the grisly act for which he was convicted was forgotten. While opposing the death penalty, those involved in the campaign against capital punishment will serve their cause better if they initiate a debate on the need for more stringent punishment for such criminal acts as rape. The maximum scale prescribed by Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code is imprisonment for life. In other words, up to 14 years in jail.