Financial Security for Sex Workers in this Pandemic.
2020 has been a hard hitting year for almost every professional field. Nothing will be the same as we know it. Where companies like OYO, Amazon, Cadbury have been laying off their employees left right and center, Twitter and Flipkart have advised their employees to work from home for the rest of the year, there is a less privileged and wrongfully part of the society that has faced relatively more adverse damage from this pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Sex workers or another word for them; prostitutes.
Prostitution has already been regarded as a job that requires euphemisms to explain it. Not only has it been regarded as something shameful as far as my memory goes, it is also illegal in the nation. That being said, even the government is very well versed with the fact that an unavoidably large part of the Indian population is a part of this profession. A 2014 government estimate said India had 2.8 million sex workers, with most in the states of Maharashtra, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, while a 2016 estimate by the United Nations said India had about 657,800 sex workers.
Some well known residential areas where sex workers live are GB Road in New Delhi, Sonagachi in Kolkata, Franklin Road and Kamathipura in Mumbai. There are families here, just like any other family in your house or mine. Under the PM’s Garib Kalyan Yojana, a financial package to reduce the impact of COVID-19, Rs 500 per month would be transferred to women’s accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana for three months, the government had said on March 26, 2020. However, very few sex workers even possibly know of the Jan Dhan Yojana. However what the government doesn’t seem to realize is that these sex workers are not alone. This implemented scheme is not enough to sustain a family.
An underlying problem for the sex workers in India is the illegality of their profession. They have kids to raise, and mouths to feed. Sex workers in brothels in well established places like Kamathipura and Sonagachi live with a ‘mother’ or the owner of the brothel, and a lot of what they earn on a daily basis goes to the owner. Considering the health risk on the clientele, now that there is a pandemic going on, business has really gone down for brothels, negatively affecting the sex workers and their families.
Organisations like KatKatha and Prerana have been working diligently with sex workers, providing them with substantial food packages and financial aid, providing them with temporary and alternate job opportunities, and their kids with a chance at a better lifestyle.
A public interest petition was filed in the Delhi HC on 10th May, urging the government to reinforce some schemes and modify some laws to provide sex workers with the financial security and economic fallback every citizen of the country would get. The petitioner, advocates Anurag Chauhan, also urged the High Court to constitute a committee for rehabilitation of sex workers in Delhi NCR.
The petition was filed keeping in mind sex workers, members of the LGBT community who would be deprived of financial aid during this time.
“There is no particulars or details found regarding grant of any financial aid and scheme to sex workers and LGBT community people by the Delhi government, despite exercise of due diligence by the petitioner and other people in the society,” the petition quoted.
The petition was taken to court and pleaded, however no steps have been taken. This is testament to the fact that no matter how hard the country tries, some groups of the society will always be marginalized and left to curb with a situation as dark as this on their own.