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				Chandravel Samy
				TRY, Chennai 
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Credits: Rohini Muthuswamy 

[Will be completed soon]


Chandravel: I have studied at Madras School of Social Work. 7 of us
	    joined to for TRY.  I was working as a social worker at
	    CAN. I was working on the problem of HIV in commercial
	    social worker.

	    TRY was formed to address the problems of sex worker.  

	    I would like share some thoughts on this issue:
	    
	    I have observed that having a professional qualification
	    is not a requirement for working on this field.

	    I would like to hear solutions from each one of you.  I do
	    not know much about the statistics but what I am observing
	    is that I can not really claim to have transformed the
	    life one person.

	    I been sharing some solutions in the past Asha conferences.


	    In TN, there is no clear policies.  There have been plenty
	    of discussions but there are no clear-cut policies.

	    In TRY, we are focusing on some specific areas of Chennai
	    where there is a concentration of sex workers.  However,
	    what I find is that the now days there are CSW through the
	    city.

	    Prostitution in Chennai are in three classes- 

		Elite people- where no one knows openly but it is
		going on silently.  
		
		Cinema /starlets class- done pretty openly. 
		
		Commercial Sex Workers
		
	    However the problem for all these classes are the same.

	    In different states, they are development is progressing
	    in different ways. Technology is developing and at the
	    same time a number of diseases are proliferating.  There
	    are several interrelated issues. 
	    
	    I want to talk about CSW in particular.

	    I firmly believe that, say in the case of child labor,
	    there are lots of people involved whose work is
	    interrelated, and they all have to be tackled to solve.
	    Similarly in case of commercial sex work, we need to take
	    into account the actors: government, pimps, the women, the
	    customers.  Unless there is a realization in all these
	    people, how can we eradicate this?

	    What he heard in the morning, is that NGOs have help from
	    the community [actors] but not from the others. Even if
	    one does not support in eradication of this, we can not
	    tackle the problem.

	    The way to deal with this problem is to tackle all the
	    vested interests in this problem.  Each NGO should
	    concentrate on one small area and then deal with all the
	    issues simultaneously, then the problem can be solved to a
	    certain extent.

Q: Can you give us a gist of what you do?

Chandravel: 
	    
	    we bring the child, orphans or semi-orphans, to our
	    home. We admit them to the school.  If they are
	    traumatized, we treat them using therapy.  We do not give
	    priorty to the education but we prefer to give them good
	    values because we believe good values will lead to
	    education.  

Q: I want to congratulate him for being so modest and articulating so
   well about the problem.  

Chandravel: When a child keeps on observing through the night, the
	    arrival of customers at his hut, what will be his mental
	    state.  TRY does not believe in giving education but
	    rather in dealing with their trauma.  Her whole world view
	    is changed. TRY doesnot want to make the child an IAS
	    officer but if we can change the world view of even one
	    child, I would be happy.  

Q: White-collar prostitution has been increasing in Bombay and Pune.
   Is it happening in Chennai?  

Chandravel: We have prepared a report on this for the govt. What they
	    find is that it is completely ad-hoc.  It is not for fun
	    or anything. All the technologies is aiding to spread this
	    rapidly.  

Q: what do you mean by inculcating values?  

Chandravel: Distinguish between right and wrong.  

Q: It is kind of tricky area.  How do you distinguish between right
   and wrong without condemning the family background.  

Chandravel: The affection between the mother and the child is never
	    severed. But to make aware the child of the flaws of the
	    system.