Indian sex workers get insured
|
Bharati Dey, a former prostitute, has been granted a life insurance cover which she says is a step forward in her campaign to legalise the profession in India.
Once practising her trade in the run-down quarters of Kolkata's Sonagachi, one of Asia's largest red light districts, she is now a proud holder of a policy from India's largest state-owned life insurance company.
"The policy won't change much in our life, but this small step is a giant leap forward in our struggle for legal recognition of sex work," said Dey. "We live in a no-man's land in India where we are harassed by cops and rowdies," added the 45-year-old. Prostitution is still illegal in India, although it is a thriving underground industry. Voluntary groups estimate that there are about 2 million female sex workers, most of them trafficked or forced into the work by poverty. Over the last month around 250 sex workers in the city have been given life insurance policies by the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India. Prostitutes say it is a breakthrough in their efforts to get legal recognition for their work. Without many official documents, prostitutes are rarely able to open accounts in banks or join the financial mainstream. Dey is a member of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (Indomitable Women's Coordination Committee), a forum of 65,000 sex workers in West Bengal. The committee was set up in 1995 to campaign for safe sex and the legalisation of prostitution. Activists say legalisation could help bring prostitutes into the mainstream and help them fight poverty and discrimination. "We are fighting for legalisation of sex work for over a decade. There are debates and a flurry of misleading promises. But this is the first time that a government company as big as LIC has recognised us as professionals," said Dey. The policies, which are spreading to sex workers outside Kolkata, are not the only advance for women in the industry. In Mumbai, a bank run by sex workers was set up to help prostitutes escape poverty that keeps them indebted to brothel owners. Started by a handful of sex workers in Kamathipura, Mumbai's red light district, it now has hundreds of clients. Mamata Nandy, 35, a sex worker and a policy holder, said recognition by a company like LIC would only strengthen the fight against AIDS and the women's demand for legalisation. "I had a policy before but that was after hiding my profession," she said. "I never entertain any client without a condom. If we could behave responsibly and help in the fight against deadly viruses, why can't we be recognised as workers?" she said. Source: Reuters and HT |
User comments
"LIC for Prostitutes"Author:
santakar chelapila
Time: 04.05.2008 02:29
Comment: A work done with willingness and personal interest can only be called as profession . One has to do a profession which he likes or he has to like the work that he does to amke it a profession . If the sex worker feels that she is doing what she does with her consent and willingness and finds pleasure in doing so it can be trmed as a profession . A work done without one's joy and happiness can not be one's profession . It's a compulsion . Once he/she gets other ways of living life, leaves it . While getting LIC for the prostitutes is a welcome sign , it has to be examined by this section of women themselves whether they should call it as a profession .
|
"Indian Secx Workers"Author:
Kiriti Bhattacharya
Time: 04.05.2008 00:22
Comment: The making of prostitution illegal only helps to drive it underground and makes control of the risks of the trade (mainly trafficing and venereal disease spreading) even more wide spread. It is common sense that sex work should be de-criminalized, and sex education and controls should be in place. Surely we can learn this from Germany and Netherlands. Unfortunately an ill-informed wave is moving across the world which seeks to act in the exactly opposite way - in Netherlands and the UK, despite warnings from social researchers that this will be bring disaster.
How much longer will the people of India allow this hypocritical baying by those in power from West Bengal to Mumbai, which has condemned the 2 million sex workers in India to a life of oppression by corrupt policemen, pimps and goondas. Whe shall we simply accept that making it illegal, sends it underground to rot rather than being accepted and the rosks beng mitigated. What a crying shame! |
Printable version
Back to top
