INDIA’S SUPREME Court has asked the government to consider legalising prostitution if it is unable to curb it effectively with punitive measures.
“They have been operating in one way or another and nowhere in the world have they been able to curb it by legislation,” the court declared on Wednesday in response to a public interest litigation filed by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) seeking to check child trafficking.
The NGO contended that underage girls were being sexually exploited and an adequate legal framework was needed to prevent this.
“When you say it is the world’s oldest profession and you are not able to curb it by laws, why don’t you legalise it?” judges Dalveer Bhandari and AK Patnaik told a government solicitor.
Child trafficking and prostitution, they declared, were flourishing because of poverty, adding that legalising it would only help monitor the trade and rehabilitate sex workers.
Although illegal, prostitution is a thriving business across India. According to a government-commissioned study the number of sex workers increased from two million in 1997 to three million in 2003-200404, triggered largely by poverty. Many prostitutes were underage, entering the sex trade in their teens.
The southern state of Andhra Pradesh and Bengal in the east account for around one-quarter of all prostitutes in India.
Last year, several hundred sex workers in Bengal’s capital, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), for the first time received life insurance cover from a state-owned corporation.
At the time, they claimed it was a step forward in their long-standing crusade aimed at legalising their profession.
“The policy from the Life Insurance Corporation of India may not change much in our life, but this small step is a giant leap forward in our struggle for legal recognition of sex work,” Bharati Dey of the Indomitable Women’s Co-ordination Committee in Kolkata said.
Mamata Nandy (35), a sex worker and proud insurance policy holder, said the measure would also help the fight against Aids.
According to UNAids, India has 5.7 million people infected with the virus, a higher incidence than anywhere else in the world.