How govt's bill for trafficking victims will make sex workers less safe

According to the Indian government, 4,980 victims of sex trafficking were rescued in the country in 2016.

Hoping to protect women from sexual exploitation, Indian lawmakers are pushing a bill that amends the criminal code to harden legal and financial penalties for sex trafficking.

The “Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill,” which passed the lower house of India’s parliament in July 2018 and may become law in 2019, seeks to make combat this lucrative, illicit trade.

Not everyone thinks harsh deterrence will work.

Days after it passed in the lower house of India’s Parliament in July, two United Nations experts said the bill leans too heavily on the criminal justice system. Without more of a “human-rights based and victim-centred approach,” the UN special rapporteurs on human trafficking and modern slavery warned, India “risks further harming already vulnerable individuals.”

India’s sex trade

According to the Indian government, 4,980 victims of sex trafficking were rescued in the country in 2016.

Sex workers in India oppose the bill that’s ostensibly meant to protect them, saying it inaccurately conflates human trafficking with consensual sex work.

In major Indian cities like Kolkata, Hyderabad and Sangli, sex workers are well organized and politically engaged. Yet no sex worker groups were consulted during the drafting of the legislation.

Community leaders argue that the anti-trafficking legislation promotes a dangerous idea that everyone in the sex trade is either a victim or a criminal.

“If this bill becomes law, the police will harass us even more,” said Kajol Bose, secretary of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, one of India’s largest sex worker organizations. “The number of raids will increase and the number of clients will decrease.”

I believe Indian lawmakers could improve their bill by looking to the strong systems already in place locally across India that prevent forced prostitution.

I conducted anthropological research with Kolkata’s Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, which has a membership of 65,000 people across the state of West Bengal.

The group is based in Sonagachi, Kolkata’s iconic red-light district, which is tucked behind a main artery in the northern part of the city. This bustling and congested labyrinth of narrow alleyways lined by houses, most of which operate as brothels, is home to some 10,000 sex workers. An estimated 20,000 male customers visit Sonagachi daily.

Most Sonagachi brothels are managed by female brothel owners, or “malkins,” who keep half of their employees’ payment.

Most of the women I met working in Sonagachi came from poor, rural villages in India, Bangladesh or Nepal.

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