[Reader-list] IFS'07 - Displacement of prostitutes - 7th posting Sep'07

[SUROJIT SEN]

Hi All,
  This is my 7th posting of my project Displacement of prostitutes.
   
  Bodmaes Jobdo : The 21st century Version – With the objective of safeguarding  social morality and providing legal protection to sex workers, the Govt. of India has recently decided to bring about some changes in the existing Immoral traffic Prevention Act (ITPA) 1987.(source: ABP-10.03.06)
  The proposed amendment bill has suggested deletion of certain clauses in the existing Act and introduction of new clauses with a specific objective. But questions have been raised from certain quarters as to whether the proposed amendment will be able to fulfill the objective as claimed by the bill.
  Durbar mahila samannya committee (DMSC), an organization of sex workers in West Bengal, has also opposed the bill.
  The bill seeking to amend the ITPA Act is based on the following observations:
  1.     Sex workers are forced to engage in sex trade or prostitution because of socio – economic reasons. Hence they should not be viewed as offenders. The real offenders are the customers who go to brothels. The Act therefore should include a legal provision for arresting the customers and bringing them to book.
  2.     Pimps and agents partake of earnings of a sex worker. The bill treats this as a crime and prohibits anyone aged above 18years from taking share of a sex worker’s income.
  3.     In order to control sex trade and prevent young girls from entering into this trade, the bill has suggested punitive measures for the houseowners in the red-light area. Like the customers, houseoweners letting out rooms for sex trade will be treated as criminals. He/ she may be sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for this crime.
  The proposed amendment change in two clauses in the existing ITPA:
  a)     According to ITPA, as public soliciting is a legal offence, the police can arrest a sex worker for indulging in soliciting in order to attract customers. The amendment enjoins that the customer is equally an offender and he may therefore be arrested by the police.
  b)    Under ITPA, the right to evict sex workers from an area was reserved exclusively for a magistrate of the upper rank. The suggested amendment has extend this right to the local police station.
  In Independent India the first legislation to control prostitution was the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act (SITA), 1956. It was later amended to Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act (PITA) in 1986 and further to Immoral Traffic Prevention Act ( ITPA) in 1987. PITA defined prostitution as 
  ‘ Sexual exploitation or abuse of persons for commercial purposes’.  This Act obviously ruled out the probability of a woman taking to prostitution on her own and viewed the Act in terms of exploitation or outrage only. SITA was, in fact, amended to PITA in order to empower the state to save a woman from being sexually exploited for commercial purposes. Alongside PITA also prohibited a woman from joining sex trade voluntarily. It is important to note that neither SITA nor PITA declared prostitution illegal but treated some activities associated with prostitution as a legal offence. The Act therefore has an inherent contradiction which the recent amendment has’nt also sought to resolve.
  The amendment bill enjoins that a houseowner renting out his/her place for carrying on sex trade is liable to be jailed for seven years. What would this lead to? Certainly sex workers from Sonagachi, Kalighat, harkata and other red light areas would not be driven out overnight and sex trade would continue to go on. Sex workers would rent rooms but the houseoweners would not give them receipts to avoid the legal hazard of the new act. It means that the Act would deprive the sex workers of their right over the rooms they have let in and they would also have no local address. Hence they would not be entitled to apply for ration cards. Given their economic condition, a ration card,  i.e.  the opportunity  to get cereals at a subsidized rate is not at all negligible for an ordinary sex worker. The new Act,  which the central Government is going to enforce, would therefore add to the economic vulnerability of sex workers throughout the country.
  The new Act has no provision for an alternative livelihood for sex workers. It has rather sharpened the contradiction underlying the existing Act. To put plainly, one is allowed to open a shop but the customer who has come to buy goods is likely to be arrested according to law. Is this not a hypocrisy raised to the point of absurdity? Will it not actually affect the daily earnings of a prostitute and throw her in a more vulnerable condition? 
  With the earlier legislations having failed to check or control prostitution, the new Act, in ther name of protecting social morality, is in fact going to bring back the Act introduced by the colonial rulers as early as 1868. It seems to script the same drama of Wicked Punished( Bodmaes Jobdo ).             
   
   
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