By Sujoy Dhar
KOLKATA, India, Apr 13 2004 (IPS)

Bold plans by the mayor of this eastern Indian city to legalise sex work – the first time a public official has called for such – have triggered a debate between those who say it is time to legitimise its existence to protect human rights, and others who argue that it cannot even be done under the law.

According to Mayor Subrata Mukherjee, sex workers in the Sonagachi red-light district perform activities that fit into the sociological definition of work and it is futile to undermine this perception.

”The sex workers of Sonagachi have been plying the trade for over 200 years. Once upon a time the ‘baijis’ (female escorts) used to have some sort of permission to ply their trade without too many hassles,” said Mukherjee.

”It is not upon me to see who is doing what trade, whether it is moral or immoral. It is the government that has to see to that. All I know is that if you want to do trade you have to obtain a licence,” he added.

The mayor said the Kolkata Municipal Corp would issue the sex workers with licences after a health check, required every three months for renewals.

There are about 80, 000 sex workers in Kolkata, according to Geetanjali Gangoli, a research fellow at the British-based University of Sunderland’s International Centre for the Study of Violence and Abuse.

She pointed out in a recently published research paper that brothel-based sex-work in Sonagachi follows a fairly organised system.

But Mayor Mukherjee has no point of reference with regard to his plans to legitimise sex workers in his city. Many non-government groups have called for legalisation before, but this has not yet been done in the country.

Mukherjee faces two big challenges in this campaign.

First, Indian laws, under which soliciting is illegal, leaves sex workers vulnerable to extortion and violent abuse – from the police who take bribes to let them do business, and from pimps who control the flesh trade.

Second, if prostitution is recognised as a legitimate work, it would imply the decriminalisation of the infrastructure of the trade – brothel, brothel-keeper, procurer, pimp, which form essential elements of the work.

Former Calcutta High Court judge Bhagawati Prasad Bandopadhayay has dismissed Mukherjee’s plans as unconstitutional. ”In order to fill a trade licence form, one has to write their profession. But in the Indian Constitution, Article 23 states that the flesh trade is a punishable offence,” he pointed out.

Added Bandopadhayay: ”In a 1953 test case it was decided that any trade using the body of children and women falls under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act or ITPA.”

”So how can a sex worker get a trade licence when it is clearly stated that neither the state or national government or any corporation can violate the provisions of the Constitution,” he asked.

Mukherjee, however, disagreed with the former High Court judge. ”There is nothing in Article 23 that stands in the way of recognising this profession as a legal work. There are certain provisions in the ITPA that police use to arrest the clients of sex workers,” he retorted.

”What they (sex workers) need is the right to work and for that, amendments in state and union laws are needed,” added the mayor.

But for Mukherjee’s plans to work, according to Smarajit Jana, assistant country director of Care India, the ITPA must be amended. ”All the activities of sex-workers must be decriminalised so that they are no longer subject to police regulation and harassment,” said Jana.

Likewise, he added, laws against brothel-keepers, pimps, traffickers, landlords of premises used to conduct prostitution and clients need to be made more stringent.

Added Jana: ”The Labour Ministry should include sex work as a profession in their list of legal occupations.”

Indrani Sinha of Sanlaap, a Kolkata-based NGO espousing human rights for sex workers, said Mayor Mukherjee’s proposals were fraught with dangerous consequences and reduced the arguments into a legal debate.

Sinha accused him of ignoring the fact that large numbers of women were lured into prostitution because of ignorance and poverty. ”Prostitution is an institution rooted into women’s inequality. It starts from injustice and abuse. If it is legalised, we will legalise inequality and violence,” she said.

Added Sinha: ”The tolerant legal climate would only make it easier for pimps, brothel owners and traffickers to attract women to work.”

In Mukherjee’s plan, the Kolkata Municipal Corp will only grant licences to brothel-based sex-workers and not free-lancers.

But University of Sunderland’s Gangoli pointed out that Kolkata, too, had numerous informal or ‘flying’ sex-workers.

”With factories and alternative means of employment reducing in the city, middle class housewives and students act as ‘flying’ sex workers. Full-time sex workers express hostility towards freelancers, seeing them as poachers on their territory,” she added.

Gangoli said full time sex workers saw the Sonagachi red-light area as a space they ‘owned’ and had partial rights over.

Amid the debate over legalisation, a sex worker turned activist who only wanted to be known as Sadhana said there was an increasing awareness among sex workers in Sonagachi that they had a right to dignity, safety and health.

”Sex workers are like any other working women but we are exploited, marginalised and discriminated against. Our working conditions need radical changes,” she said. ”We want better medical cover and an opportunity to live with dignity.”

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