Untitled Document

Minutes
Sirish's Place. Saturday, April 16,2005. 10:30 am.
Send Feedback on the meeting to Hansa (hansa@go2go2.com). Also send feedback on the article "Just a John" to Hansa.

Attendees: Indrani(Sanlaap), Devyani, Sirish, Jobi, Chimmi, Madhav, Hansa(Asha Sanctuary/Princeton), Venkata(Asha Sanctuary/LA), Gagan, Steven, Brunda, Vidhi (AID-Mn), VG(AID), Ashwini Tambe(Prof at Georgetown), Sameer, Gomati(AID).

Hansa: Indrani Sinha works with Sanlaap. I will just make one comment about Indrani. Yesterday at a meeting with the State Dept, Indrani was introduced as the director of the best organization in the world working in issues relating to Prostitution.
Indrani Sinha: Based in WB in Kolkata. Our organization Sanlaap(Means Dialogue in Sanskrit) the main office in Kolkkata but another small office in Delhi. We are planning to make the Delhi Office bigger. It is mainly a research and documentation Center.
In my work I have seen that with the help of students who are into research, the organization has gained a lot. That is why we have added our documentation unit. We have need for a bigger place in Delhi. The organization has grown over the last few years, we should provide information to researchers. We want to be in Delhi because that is the place of power.
Several girls who are forced in to prostitution have a history of sexual abuse from the family/community. They nave not been able to cope with that and they ended up in the red-light areas. I had worked as a gender specialist in Oxfam. I had other job offers, working as a consultant for international funding agencies and was offered a lot of money. I left everything and started working for women in redlight areas. Luckily there were a friends and well-wishers who supported me all the way.

Q- Devyani.Was there something or some incident that inspired you in your decision ?
A. Yes. As a result of the study on gender, I met a lot of people. What I had read until then and what I saw were completely different. Most of the women did not want to be in the profession. They were poor, had no option and wanted their children to get out of it. Whatever they earn they send to family and they got cheated in whatever they tried to do. This was completely different from what I had read and heard from others that prostitutes are "bad people" who are looking into an easy way to make money. I thought of working from a women's rights perspective. The prostitutes told us not to waste our time with them, and instead to work with their children.
I was not really decided or focused. Emotions controlled me and my decisions. We started education in drop in centers for the children. These children were dropping out of school because they did not have a place to study and they had no back-up service at home. Women often get clients home. We thought it will be nice to provide a place to study. I always felt that mainstreaming was the answer and children should go to a regular school. We started drop-in centers in two redlight areas (RLDs). Within one year we had 16 drop-in centers. We have about 2000+ children. We have govt crèche program for 0-6 children. We provided basic immunization, pre and post-natal care to mothers.
We have 160 activity centers for children, each center has between 10-15 chidren. Next is to put them in schools. As soon as they are 12-13, we have an adolescent youth program. Try to provide vocational training, some go to higher studies, then graduation to placement.
1990 - I was doing Research. 90-92 : Putting the programs in place.
The drop in centers were also for women in the RLDs. In 94, the mothers asked us to take some of the girls away from their homes. Somoetimes a customer would take girls away on requests of marriage. Therefore, in 1993 we started a shelter for girls. We got 28 girls in the year. All of them were sent to school. We realized that a lot of children were forced into prostitution. Most of the girls when they come in are under 18s. We were seeing them all around us. From the children we came to know about new girls. So, we worked with police to rescue and placed them in a govt owned shelter home.
In 96 we got a phone call from state govt., saying 11 girls have been rescued but 6 of them are HIV positive. There was stigma, misbehaving by govt officials, even the other rescued girls were stoning them, because of HIV. It was done by the staff. They were locked up in a small room. That day the deputy director said that you have to take them away overnight. We found out a house overnight, organized a house with beds. Earlier we rescued but they were living in govt homes. This was the first time I felt that we need to give them separate treatement and this is how the shelter home started. I am always gifted with friends and supporters. We needed to rent a place immediately. We also got support from the govt, but it takes time, even if you are helping them. Funding agencies and individuals helped. Got loan for a house..etc. Right now we have 4 shelter homes and 16 drop in centers and requests come from other parts of Bengal and other places for us to start centers there. We were stretched so we dedided that we can train them and help them get funding, but they would have to run the shelters themselves. That is how many more shelters are coming up. It is a constant fight with the govt becaue they cannot undertake new programs. Govt has schemes and constraints. We planned it in a way that would fit the scheme but help the girls. If the govt has SHG programs, use that in prevention. We work with community groups from different parts of the country. We have a prevention program and a rescue and rehab program.
I believe that trafficking is an issue that has to be understood by everybody. Govt institutions at all levels need to be aware of it. One line should be added to every program that if they know of trafficking they should inform. We do a lot of training for other organizations, schools and colleges, police, BSF, etc. Now the country has a very specific interest and they are working out with schemes. They have a national action plan and they are trying to work at it.
87-90 : learning, now again learning. Problem cuts across society and everyone has to focus. I think our role is a lot of service providing, we should play a role in providing information to others. Finally I think we need to tell people because many are not clear about the issues and we should tell them at different sectors. 4 shelter homes, 1 from 0-6, 1 shelter home for very young, have a case/trafficking danger/rehab programs, 1 for 6-18 girls,1 working girls hostel, it is a shelter home, but the girls are working, and they pay a small rent as part of becoming responsible. This home is just a flat and has 17-18 girls.

Q. What are the cases that involve these girls?
A. Sometimes, person is accused of trafficking/rape., etc. So, there is a case and the accused is after the girl, brothel madams are also after them. We have 84-100 girls in the rehab home. Girls from Bangladesh who are rescued in Mumbai get sent to our home. With Nepal/India there is an open border so it is easy to send the girls home. Bangladesh we need to do paperwork. Plus we also have a law against illegal immigrants. If there an above 18 girl who is trafficked, govt might classify her as an illegal immigrant and she will be in jail for 6 months and then pushed back. This is dangerous. They are literally taken to the border and bushed back. There is a lot of land between the BSF and BDR and even there the girls can be raped, robbed, etc. We are trying to stop that and trying to work with the govt. Sometimes, we have to keep them in our shelter for 6 months. They are not in a state of mind where they can take vocational training. It is a terrible situation because of the uncertainty, because every time someone comes to visit the shelter, their hopes of it being for them get revived and subsequently dashed.

Q. Nepal seems pretty organized in this case ?
A. Even Bangladesh is organized but the govt does not want them back. Because of the open border with Nepal we can just to go and drop off the girls in Nepal.

Q. Why does the govt not want to take them back ?
A. HIV risk, illegal immigrants, one less person.

Q. What about other 9 districts in WB ?
A. We found that working in our home, girls came from 9 districts in WB. Some of them are border districts, some not. Tea garden areas. Men-Women have moved, etc. Whenever there is a flood/cyclone, some women are vulnerable. When we heard of this tea-garden crisis, we asked organizations to work there. We only get prostitutes, sometimes, people are taken as domestic workers or construction workers and end up as prostitutes.
Legalization ?
We are against it because we have not yet been able to get information about each child. If this is legalized as income, the demand will go up. The buying and selling will be legalized. It is hard to have safeguards. The situation will be the same. The distinction between brothel and non-brothel areas is not clear. If legalized, the traffickers will never be arrested, and they will never leave the profession. In Nevada, where every individual is recorded, but that is not so in our country. In Bangladesh, it is not legalized, but a girl has to go to court and sign a paper saying that she is working on her free will. Now the trafficker will use that paper to threaten. Moreover, the economy is down, and legalization can have serious consequences. The anti-trafficking agreement only affects the traffickers, not the prostitutes. Hundreds and thousands of girls, sometimes girls who are 12 years old were sexually abused in the house where they went to work. We got cases of pregnant 12 year girls. Moreover Gender discrimination. We are doing a study of 4 districts with high child marriage. We still have child marriage, child labor and there is support. How are we going to stop this and take care of all these children ? I have been to Nevada and talked to women; they did not really have much choice. I think it is a farce in the name of giving choices. But, there is no under 18 in Nevada. In India there is a demand for under 18 girls.

Q. What is effort in sensitization of police/law-makers ?
A. It is slow. In this department they are culturally taught to give everything more significance than women. A girl is not important and particularly these are "Bad girls". Before I worked, I thought that these were greedy girls, so it takes time to get out of these ideas.

Q. Legalization debate is a long one. In terms of HIV, what kinds of mechanisms do we need to do to keep it in check ? How do you do advocacy, and how do you bring HIV aids into the legal scene.
A. On the HIV/AIDS scenario, our govt worked on this because of western funds and they focused on the red-light areas. They wanted to give the burden of responsibility to the women and never focused on the male. Of course there is general awareness program for the male but not fiercely. There are a lot of male buyers who do not read or write and do not follow health pamphlets. The whole program of awareness is geared towards women. In our country we cannot have all the money on HIV programs go to the RLDs. If a man has HIV, how do women who come in contact with him deal with it ? Many of them are housewives. I think the HIV/AIDS awareness should be for everyone aggressively. We are just giving the burden on a few women who are prostitutes. If a girl is 35-40 years old, she does not get many clients. She cannot make choices on use of condoms. Empowerment has to start from gender discrimination. All the girls who are HIV positive are minors. The traffickers and brothel owners kept them. They did not tell them about AIDS. These girls bring in the maximum money and take AIDS. We have seen that there are lot of people who need to be informed, but we cannot do all. We believe that only if a lot of people talk about this, changing laws, children, working with govt, etc. can it be effective. What we are doing is that we are mainly focusing on the care and protection homes in the country. None of the district magistrates have any information about trafficking. We felt that we need to sit with them. The Panchayats can do a lot. This person can annul child marriage, prevent trafficking. This can be done only by the Panchayat or community based organization. In the villages, the girls are trafficked in groups. They were being offered jobs in Delhi and there is a person in the village known to provide these jobs. They also offer advance to the family and then the money starts flowing. Then the family finds out about prostitution, but because of stigma and flow of money they do not talk about it in the village. We have seen people make houses, on prostitution money, and do nothing to help the girl. If the Panchayats can keep a check on that, it will be great.

Q. If a village comes to know, why don't the villagers stop it ?
A. The villagers do not talk about it because of stigma and they are getting money.

Q. What are options with family ?
A. Very little.

Q. Some of the girls are given jobs, working.
A. But some of these jobs turn into prostitution. Not all experiences are bad. Sometimes girls also decide to go back to prostitution just to earn, They say that they are bad, etc. so there is no point stopping.

Q. Why is the question of legalization coming up again and again ?
A. When the DFID funding HIV/AIDS in India, legalization issue is not there. They are calling it sex work as work. What they are saying is that the same group who is working towards it, they are going to take care of trafficking. Sex work will be in an area where there is trafficking. Prostitution is becoming more amorphous, distributed. We have not taken any care of the clients and the clients demand. If you look over there, demand is for a small girl; this is the understanding in the country. Even in villages, a 40 year old person will marry a 20 year old girl. I agree with legalization, if she is above 18 and informed choice and how do we control that in our country. There are many groups that advocate legalization.

Q. Who is making money and how much ?
A. Traffickers make one-time money. Two different levels we have people who bring the people from the village. Then the trafficker takes them to the brothel and the brothel madam has to make that money from the girls. Sometimes, the brothel owner uses a prostitute's debt to force her to get more girls. So, the prostitute goes back to the village dressed in a nice sari with ear-rings and recruits girls. Girls get lured because of various reasons. Sometimes families send girls knowing that they will become prostitutes. But the girl herself does not know.

Q. When you try to go from Mexico to US, there are a lot of pamphlets which tell the people what to do and what not to do ? Is there something like this at the supply side.
A. We are starting a soap opera with stories of trafficked girls. We do a lot of talk shows, spots on TV, etc.

Q. Do you do things like Maiti in Nepal which takes out marches with the girls ?
A. We try to work with community based groups. As part of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, we are training all the organizers to teach about trafficking. We are making awareness in villages. At this point in India, we cannot stop sending children for labor.

Q. Target population for TV ?
A. Everyone sees TV, even in villages.

Q. How did you kick off the first study before the organization ?
A. I used to do consultancy, work for Oxfam. When I was doing that, I realized that I wanted to do something else. We were getting a lot of stories about girl children being abused. I found that particularly in child labor, we thought there should be sexual abuse. There was a girl who lived in my house, and she was just about 18. When she first came in, I hoped she was under 18. She said she was, but added that she had been working for 5 years. She told me that she leaves home at 4:30, takes train to Kolkata, works various houses. She also told me about how there were 100s of girls like her. One day I went back with her. She was living in a settlement for Bangladeshi setllers. Everyone worked, no question of school. First kids go with their mothers to work, then they get better, then there will be marriage, etc. This girl had been married to a spastic without her consent. She just left the house and came back to her family. I really wanted to know about her. I met her friends. Everyone worked in peoples houses. I asked her about how people behave with her, how men behave with her. Then I heard about sexual abuse. This inspired me to start something. The organization was not registered and could not get funds. I asked my friend Kamala Bhasin and I got money from Netherlands embassy. For 1 year I traveled to South and North 24 parganas and met 1600 families. You have to move around and find people, hospitals, legal homes, nursing homes. I wanted to find out who it is happening and how it is happening. There are hundreds of illegal MTP centers. In the villages, there are many quacks doing it. I learnt about all these activities. I learnt about people doing with traditional medicines. Very dangerous. We have laws but we do not practice them. Even hospitals do not follow proper procedures. Many of these people have been stigmatized and gone into brothels. I wrote and article titled "the three o clock train", about these people, what they talk about (their saris, husbands, abuse, their employers) and about their stories. It took me 1 year 3 months, as a research, it was not technically sound. At that point of time, it was my emotion and need to find out what to know. In the report, we did not have many charts, etc. It was not only the girl, but you have to talk about the family. It can be just the girls mother and sister or so. In very few cases it was the girls only.
Training of BSF persons? We talked about gender, gender discrimination, etc. Police in lower levels come from less educated families. They try to get their sister married off. We mostly do awareness. We talk about trafficking, gender, etc. and also with HIV /AIDS. These are all coordinated with the government. In the police, we have 2 police training institute and we are part of this. We regularly hold classes; but with BSF we still have to organize that. They call us for every training. Three kinds - new personnel, on job and .. We have covered (inWB), we have covered all police. I was in Kosovo on a UN missions. I was there in August, on August 15, there was a program, and 3 people said they remembered me.

Q. The image of police in India is pretty low. Has this changed ?
A. From 1992, I have seen that the police will come to a RLD. They have to make regular raids. During those raids, they will collect money, harass women, take women. Take women soliciting and take them far away and leave them for about 15 rupees. This has stopped, because the women will inform us. But giving information of raid, and taking money separately has not stopped. We have some very very bad police officers who are against us. If there are 27000, 20000 will be for us. The police are very receptive, funny, questions, talk about dowry. For example after one presentation, a policeman said that all this is good but he has to get his daughter married so he needs to generate dowry. You cannot do away these traditions in one class.

Q. Given that we are talking about gender, economic, cultural effects, do you see trends ?
A. At least with Govt, the SSA has become a very important program. That has got many people talking about education of girl children. I will not be able to say that we are 70 % successful, but the thrust has been given. The SHG, some areas have done very good work. But the kind of problems we have, the answers are not there. There are many other factors.

Q. Invariably when I see sexual exploitation, I think of it as part of the larger problem of our exploitative economics.
A. There is a need for organizations like ours, telling the Govt and organizations about some effects that they do not see. In Rajasthan, during the road construction, I undertook a study to see if the communities were being affected and whether that lead to trafficking. I saw that there were a lot of tribal population who were brought as road construction. They did not go back to wherever they came, because they were nomadic tribes. During the road construction was done, the village is still there. The men do not have work, the women are doing prostitution on the highway. These were tribal communities. I tried to look at the tribal development projects, what money they had and how much was going back. I pointed this out to the govt and told them that they should talk about schools, employment. They did not publish my report. They did take up some projects. I am looking at culturally approved prostitution in the Rajasthan, MP and UP, Bediyas, Kanjars, Nats, etc. Traditional prostitution that is socially accepted. The tribal board that is supposed to look into this. I found out that there was this small community school run by an organization, but the govt was not funding them. We try to tell the govt to be active. People do a lot of studies.

Q. Have you worked with Swanirvar because they are a lot into local panchayat?
A. Yes, I know Swanirvar and we are part of a technical group. They are big into village panchayat. That is the platform for asking govt to put a line in every development program about trafficking. If you are already working with Sujitda, you should ask him to focus on trafficking. Village empowerment also part of Panchayat.

Q. What kind of support are you looking for groups or organizations here ?
A. Now we need to implement our knowledge and try to get new knowledge. Girl child domestic labor we are trying to write up about sexual abuse. We are trying to set up a crisis center for that. The sexually abused girl child from a family will not stay with you. They need counseling, legal aid. Lot of people doing crimes are going free. Nobody goes against them. New project for us. What I am thinking is a crisis center/hotline, continuous legal aid. A recent case. A child working in someone's house and a neighbor was sexually exploiting. The family came to know, now the man is in jail. Now, his family is doing a lot of funny things. The girl is only 10 years old. Medical termination couldnot be done because it is more than 4 months old. Now we need to counsel mother and sister. Now the accusers family is threatening. But the police has not arrested the person who employed the family who was employing. Child labor is overlooked.

Q. We should publicize such abusers.
A. When the rape case is going on, the media publicizes the girls name. We try to change that and refer to case by the man's name. The police are still upset at me because I referred to the case of a policemen raping a girl as the policeman rape case.

Q. Kolkata mayor wanted to have compulsory licensing for brothels ?
A. That was for a few votes. Before legalization, we still said that women in RLD should get together. If you read without "Guilty without Trial", I used sex worker phrase. I did not know at that point, but I thought that these were women whom I could not give an option to. It was a small research project of WHO, where they wanted to involve women in prostitution to become peer educators. At that time, DFID poured crores of rupees. They started talking about legalization. It cannot happen in a set up like our country where there are no options. What we were trying to very gradually bring women together, suddenly there was a lot of money, through school of tropical medicine. When DFID money came in, they were still there. They went on the "whatever" ride and started talking all sort of nonsense about legalization, without trying to understand our culture. All these women were given jobs as peer educators and receiving 6000 Rs. This was big money for girls over 35 who lost clients. At that point they did not think that one day this money will be finished and they would not have jobs. Part of money came from School of Tropical medicine. The top person is still a govt officer. The third part of the project, all the funds are given by the govt. Now there is less funds. According to DFID, it was empowerment through awareness. They had talked about condoms, but they did not talk to clients. Burden was left onto the women. Older women do not have choice. Younger girls were not part of this program.

Q. Is there a space for unionization ?
A. They are doing it themselves. Actually because of a lot of anti-trafficking and anti-legalization campaigns, self regulatory board came into being. 75 % will be women in prostitution and 25 % others. Every RLD will have this regulatory board. We are also supporting that. We think that if every woman can have that understanding of trafficking.. They have not yet been able to do it very well, not so organized. The membership was already people who advocated for legalization. They kept small girls in their homes. Sometimes, big money can spoil the working system of such groups. Big money can create a barrier between organizations like us and the legal system.

Q. Also there are a lot of organizations interested in DFID money sprout up and block grassroots groups like us.
A. We are anti legalization organization. Still there are some people like us who have been in touch with other feminist groups and pro-legalization. There are my own staff who tell me why I go and talk to these people. There are people in the other organization who are closed. In a meeting in Jadavpur University, we were invited and DMSC (pro-legalization) was also invited. There was one very feminist group, who insisited on saying that sex-work is work just like the work that they do. When I pointed out that she should also mention that they should have choices, she became quiet.

Q. There is a lot of focus of this issue in the US because of "Born into Brothels" ?
A. When Zana came to India in 97, she told me that she wanted to work with children and she wanted to teach them how to give photograph. She spent a lot of time in the area with the children through our drop in center. We do not have shelter for boys. I was the only one who knew about the boys in the drop-in camp, so the only way she could have gotten to those kids was through me. Suddenly one day the women from the brothel came and told us that children were given cameras and started photographing us with clients. This started affecting our work and relations with the prostitutes and then in 1998 there were a lot of photographs taken and we got calendars from Amnesty international. Then Zana Brisky came to me and said that there were some staff who were interviewed and she wanted permission to show their scenes in a movie. I have only seen the scenes in the movie in which our staff is interviewed. I am on the credits for the movie but I have not seen much of it and Zana will not send me a copy. I get letters from other groups, who said that children left because their photos were publicized. I was afraid that she was going to start another school with the half a billion dollars raised. I have not seen the movie. That was some statements about how nobody helps these children which was completely wrong. When Zana tried to take 12 children, we refused because we do not like to differentiate between children.

Comment : I think some of the things said in the movie were preposterous. Kolkata prostitution is one of the best documented and one of the best known.

Talk by Indrani Sinha