Child Prostitution

GLORIFIED INDIA – A DEN OF CHILD PROSTITUTION

‘INCREDIBLE INDIA,’ is the name given to the land of my birth, because everything here is incredible - the wide variety of people, culture, arts, monuments, and architecture. In a country as diverse and complex as India, with 5,000 years of recorded history, it is not surprising to find that the people reflect the rich glories of the past, the culture, traditions and values relative to geographic locations and the numerous distinctive manners, habits and food that will always remain truly Indian.

IFrom the eternal snows of the Himalayas to the cultivated peninsula of the far South, from the deserts of the West to the humid deltas of the East, from the dry heat and cold of the Central Plateau to the cool forest foothills, Indian lifestyles clearly glorify the geography. But sadly, India has a dark secret which was recently revealed on January 29, 2010, when the Supreme Court of India said, ‘India is becoming a hub for large-scale child prostitution rackets.’

A land of Broken Laws, Religion hypocrisy, Gutter politics and Bigger contradiction. Our beaurocracy is one of the worst in world so no wonder when we discover that underneath of Incredible India most of population lives under the poverty line, women exploitation and sex slavery is still exists and is on rise. Yes officially it is illegal but unofficially this crime is going on and no one really bothers to put a full stop on it.

I just can’t put blame on government; even as citizen we don’t do anything about it. Everyone here is too busy in their own materialistic life that they don’t have time to raise their voices about wrong doing of society and government. So much happen every day and that also just around the corner of our homes but we never ever bothered to raise our finger. Our attitude “Sab chalta Hai”  is letting India down and putting our image at stake.

The Court suggested the need to set up a ‘special investigating agency’ to tackle this menace in the world’s second most densely inhabited nation. The World Bank, World Development Indicators say that in 2008 the country had a population of 1,139,964,932, so by now it is probably way above that. According to the BBC, India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2050, while some countries will shrink by nearly 40%, according to new research.

Sadly, despite all the incredible growth of the Indian economy, prostitution is currently a contentious issue in the country with child trafficking and prostitution rampant throughout the land. In 2007, the Ministry of Women and Child Development reported presence of 2.8 million sex workers in India, with 35.47 percent of them entering the trade before the age of 18 years. The number of prostitutes has also doubled in the recent decade. More recent figures have reported that sex workers in India are now around 15 million, with Mumbai alone, being home to 100,000 sex workers, the largest sex industry center in Asia.

Interpolation of census figures by the National Labour Institute indicates

that out of 203 million children between the ages of 5 and 14, 116 million

are in school, 12.6 million are in full-time employment, and the status of

74 million is unknown. Most, if not all, of the 87 million children, not in

school, do housework, work on family farms, work alongside their

parents as paid agricultural labourers, work as domestic servants, or are

otherwise employed.

For the year 2000, the ILO projected 13,157,000 economically active

children, 5,992,000 girls and 7,165,000 boys between the ages of 10-14,

representing 12.07% of this age group.

As many as 100 million boys and girls are believed to be working in

homes and factories across India, many under conditions akin to slavery.

Some infamous red light centers in India are Sonagachi in Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal; Kamathipura in Mumbai (Bombay), Maharastra; G. B. Road in the capital city of New Delhi, Reshampura in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh; and Budhwar Peth in Pune, Maharastra, where often minors ply their trade. The majority of sex workers in India do so because they are lacking resources to support themselves or their children.

Most do not choose this profession out of preference, but out of necessity, often after the breakup of a marriage or after being disowned and thrown out of their homes by their families. The children of sex workers are much more likely to get involved in this kind of work as well. A survey completed in 1988 by the All Bengal Women's Union interviewed a random sample of 160 sex workers in Kolkata and of those, 23 claimed that they had come of their own accord, whereas the remaining 137 women claimed to have been introduced into the sex trade by pimps or agents of various sorts.

A surprising breakdown of the agents by sex, were as follows: 76% were female and only 24% were males. Over 80% of the agents had brought young women into the profession were known people and not traffickers: neighbors, relatives, etc. Over 40% of 484 prostitute girls rescued during major raids of brothels in Mumbai in 1996 were from Nepal. In India as many as 200,000 Nepalese girls, many under the age of 14, have been sold into sexual slavery.

Nepalese women and girls, especially virgins, are favored in India. According to a 1994 report in the newspaper Asian Age, 30 per cent of these women are under 20 years of age, 40 per cent are 20-30 years of age, and approximately 15 per cent of them became prostitutes as children under the age of 12.

Women's rights organisations and NGOs estimate that more than

12,000 and perhaps as many as 50,000 women and children are

trafficked into the country annually from neighbouring states for the sex

trade.

Estimates vary, but a safe guess is that several thousand Bangladeshi

girls and 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked out of the country

and primarily to India each year. It is estimated that Nepalese children

constitute 20% (40,000) of the estimated 200,000 Nepalese prostitutes

in India. Girls as young as seven years are trafficked from economically

depressed neighborhoods in Nepal and Bangladesh, to the major

prostitution centres of Mumbai, Calcutta, and Delhi. In Mumbai, an

estimated 90% of sex workers started when they were under 18 years of

age; half are from Nepal. India is also a significant source and transit

country.

NGOs in the region estimate that some 6,000 to 10,000 girls are

trafficked annually from Nepal to Indian brothels and a similar number

are trafficked from Bangladesh.

27,000 Bangladeshi women and children have been forced into

prostitution in Indian brothels.

In its recent report, the Indian Supreme Court said, “Child prostitution is happening because of abject poverty in the country. This is also because of the very high large-scale unemployment. Our entire cultural ethos is going down the drain.”

The Court also wanted to know why the government is not “invoking rape cases against those exploiting the children in such prostitution rackets.” Working in this field, I realize that the Government of India is taking every step to curb and eliminate prostitution in India, but definitely somewhere down the line, they are not able to implement these actions strictly in many of these cases. Somewhere along the way there appears to be a loophole.

Young girls from poor areas are particularly vulnerable and are often lured, kidnapped, or tricked into prostitution. Once the girl is sold to a particular brothel keeper, she becomes a virtual slave of the industry. She is beaten, threatened, verbally abused, and forced to sleep with many men every day. She will remain a slave until she is able to pay back the money the brothel keeper paid for her.

Those kids are forced into child prostitution without a choice and are left at the end of the day without any money earned. Just imagine the emotional condition of a child with such experiences? Would you every think that they will be normal again? Would you ever think that they will have dreams again? How much will they crave for waking up in the morning without any pain or tears? And all this is because some idiots just want to have a good time with underage girls. Its real sad. its a clear case where the government who actually has so much power, expertise, and values just seem helpless to mere pimps at prostitute centres. When will this change? When can we see a better India? When can we stop the crying of the innocent?

More than Rs.7200 crore budget allocated every fiscal year for women and children, separate commission for women, further more over 4000 women NGOs at tax payers cost; but they are more interested in destroying family system. Pain of the helpless will be of their interest only to get more and more domestic and international funds!!!

Those who sell their kids think their kid will get atleast food. The root cause is poverty. More than 20% of this gaint 1.2billion population doesnt have atleast one meal a day :(. How can we expect those people to know about policing and reporting to police when child is missing? They dont come in the voters list so politicians do not bother. Its a unfortunate situation for India that we do have 1000 of politician but not a single leader to stand up and tackle the real problem of Indian's.

The sexual abuse of children by adults to satisfy their own perversions is a global problem and a growing horde of "sex tourists" travel from country to country in pursuit of easy prey. While Southeast Asia remains the hub of world sex tourism, Central America, racked by poverty and stunted by diminishing opportunities, is rapidly gaining in popularity.

The law does not punish prostitutes who are older than 18 and do not solicit business publicly, but it does punish running a brothel, living on the earnings of prostitutes, procuring or inducing people to become prostitutes, and soliciting in public places. The law, which is mostly used to harass prostitutes, invokes penalties of imprisonment for procuring or trafficking and for forcible detention for the purpose of prostitution while creating a special police force to stop trafficking, special courts to deal with cases, and protective homes for "rescued" girls. The law fails to punish clients or make provisions for the rehabilitation of rescued women. Offenses rarely end in convictions. In fact, police officers extort money from traffickers, prostitutes, and madams and abet the system of prostitution through a scheme of false registration of the girls that creates the fiction that they are not minors and creates a debt paid by the madams that places the girls in virtual bondage. There is a set rate for police bribes, depending upon the size of the brothel. Police also are clients themselves and/or extort money from clients. When arrests are made (to make police records look good), police deliberately target adult prostitutes instead of the minors because it is harder to get the minors released back into prostitution. The police are reluctant to release records about prostitution and are complicit when madams present false affirmations that they are relatives of minor girls to get them released from juvenile remand homes. The girls are recruited from impoverished families in the countryside who are paid for giving their daughters in false marriages. Especially Police people are making a good money and enjoy their company without any expenditure.

Laws related to prostitution in India:

Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girl Act -1956

Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act-1956

Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act-1956

The Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, 1956 ("ITPA"), the main statute dealing with sex work in India, does not criminalise prostitution or prostitutes per se, but mostly punishes acts by third parties facilitating prostitution like brothel keeping, living off earnings and procuring, even where sex work is not coerced.

The prostitution leads to many health problems for the prostitutes like:

Cervical cancer , Traumatic brain injury ,HIV , STD

In a country like India where most of the people indulge themselves in unprotected sex with prostitutes it is very difficult to eradicate the problem of aids. Historically, the AIDS epidemic in India was first identified amongst sex workers and their clients, before other sections of society became affected. The sex workers are themselves taking steps to combat with aids in some brothels in India for example sonagachi a brothel in Kolkata; where the sex workers are insisting their clients for use of condoms in order to avoid aids. But in all the other brothels in India social workers and NGO`S are trying to acquaint the sex workers about the ill effects of AIDS and are insisting them for using condoms

Some people opine that prostitution shall be made legal in India and accept them as a part of society because the problem of prostitution is inevitable. The benefit of legalizing prostitution in India will be that atleast we will have a track record of Sexworkers as for example when dance bar in Bombay were closed most of the bar dancers migrated to Gujarat and Karnataka and other neighbouring state and started their business undercover. Legalising prostitution will see these women, who live life on the edge everywhere, gaining access to medical facilities, which can control the spread of AIDS. There is a very strong need to treat the sex industry as any other industry and empower it with legal safeguards. The practical implications of the profession being legal would bring nothing but benefits for sex workers and society as a whole. Keeping prostitution illegal also contributes to crime because many criminals view prostitutes and their customers as attractive targets for robbery, fraud, rape, or other criminal acts. The criminals realize that such people are unlikely to report the crimes to police, because the victims would have to admit they were involved in the illegal activity of prostitution when the attacks took place, now if it is legal then they will easily go and report this to police. As long as prostitution is kept illegal, and women are persecuted for acts which harm no one, prostitute women will be subject to brutality at the hands of misogynists and moralists -- they are, arguably, the same group. And when prostitutes are treated as second class citizens, and in extreme cases, as less than human, then all women who dare to step out of their social constructs will be labeled as whores and treated accordingly. For these reasons, the rights of all women are contingent upon the rights accorded to the most vulnerable women.

 Many of the organizations, that work for the rescue and rehabilitation of these victims are only trying to arrest the brothel keepers or managers of the brothels who are the last players of the whole trafficking game.

But I also feel that organizations need to trace the locations of the main pimps and traffickers and then they should be arrested and be put behind bars and that’s how we can bring an end to this issue. Child prostitution is growing so rapidly that all the efforts made by different organizations, play just a very small part.

I was shocked and disgust to see how the hell this type of force sex slavery is still going on and people involved in are not getting caught? What’s wrong with our system? We want it all, we want to be super power but unfortunately we are not able to protect these kids from this sex slavery trade. God save Indian Kids!

Can’t we stop this shame? This is not a God made situation, this is a Man made mess for their own sexual pleasure. Our governments do little or nothing to put full stop but as a citizen we are not even bothered to do anything about it.

Ultimately, it would be unethical for prostitution to be legal. They do, however, give us very good reasons to carefully consider how prostitution should be treated and regulated if it were made legal. It is very clear from the fact that  sex isn't exactly like every other commodity, and that we should treat it with some care and earnestness if we want all involved to maintain some dignity.

One must draws attention to issues such as the exploitative nature of the sex industry, the level of violence experienced in prostitution, the need to challenge cultural attitudes to sex as a commodity and – most importantly – the need to support individuals involved with the range of issues they face and help those who wish to exit find sustainable routes out.

A coordinated international campaign is needed to prevent child prostitution, provide services to children who are prostituted until they can be removed from prostitution, and implement effective recovery and reintegration programs. For [such a] campaign to be successful, it will require global coordination, implementation at national, regional and community levels, and the leadership of many health professionals. The prostitution of children and the related health consequences have been accepted for far too long. The time has come to make them unacceptable.