EMPOWERING COMMERCIAL
SEX WORKERS
Ritambhare Hebbar
Edited by
RADHIKA CHOPRA
Supported by UNIFEM South Asia Office
In collaboration with Zonta International (2003)
Violence against women takes many forms, and men, particularly those in the public domain, need to act self – consciously to prevent and resist that violence. Girish Kumar Kulkarni of Ahmednagar in the western Indian state of Maharashtra is one such person who has been working against the trafficking of women.
The district of Ahmednagar is located in the centre of Maharashtra. It is part of the sugar belt, and there are several cane – crushing units located in the district. In the last few years, it has seen a decrease in rainfall as a consequence of which many sugar mills have been forced to shut down. The women migrants from the different talukas (administrative subdivisions) who work on a seasonal basis in the factories for six to seven months of the year face unemployment and many have taken to sex work. Given its location, this district is particularly predisposed to the trafficking of women, as it is an important junction between north and south India. Three main interstate highways run through the district. It is a large stopover for truckers and other cargo distributors. It is also a stopover point for thousands of pilgrims visiting the Shirdi and Shani Shingnapur temples located there. As a military base, Ahmednagar has a substantial populace of army recruits who also form a part of the regular clientele of commercial sex workers (CSW). The highways that intersect the district are full of dhabas (small restaurants) and hotels that have become flourishing prostitution joints, drawing women not only from villages along the highway - the droughts prone regions of south Ahmednagar, Beed, Osmanabad and Aurangabad in Maharashtra – but also from other parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Traditionally, the CSWs came from the Kolati community, who ran brothels in the bylanes of the city. But over time, prostitution has moved beyond the bylanes and spread to the dhabas, hotels and bars that have come up all along the highways. The traffic in women and girls has increased enormously over the years. Action taken against the trafficking of children and women in one area often results in an increase in trafficking in another section along the route. For instance, if trafficking checked in Gujarat, the girls end up in Mumbai via Beed, Dhula, Jalgaon, Nashik, Ahmednagar ane Pune districts of Maharashtra. Sixty percent of the trafficking takes place throught the Ahmednagar district. The kala kendras or dance halls are covers for prostituition though they carry the tag of traditional respectability. Traditionally these were centres that hosted dance programmes, in which dance groups from all over Maharashtra were invited to stage their performances. Nowadays, each dance group consists of a group of girls who perform to an exclusively male and visibly inebriated audience. The girl receives money from the clients during the performance, supposedly as a token of appreciation. After the presentation, clients desirous of a private performance approach the manager of the dance group. If the deal is struck, the clients take the girls to their hideaway. These three sites of prostitutions: the bylanes, the dhabas and hostels along the highways and the dance halls reveal the extent and spread of commercial sex work. Officially, there are about three thousand CSWs in Ahmednagar, and this is definitely a conservative estimate. Unofficial sources peg the figure at more than ten thousand CSWs in the district.
Girish Mahadev Kulkarni and Snehalaya
Since he was a child Girish Mahadev Kulkarni has been known as a man with a mind of his own. He was only thirteen when he organized the Vidyaarthi Sahayak Samiti (a student’s help line) to help children who were forced to migrate with their parents due to the severe drought conditions in the district. The attempt was to keep them in school till the end of examinations. Girish and his friends collected rice for the children and also took advantage of the traditional Maharashtra custom of warlung jevani (weekly meal), in which poor students are invited for a meal each week in a well –to-do house. Girish managed to arrange this for almost seventy–five students. His impulse for social work and social and political causes was evident throught his adolescence.
He was associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyaarthi Parishad (ABVP) between 1983 and 1991. He was introduced to the ABVP while still in school. The organization used to arrange personality camps focusing on physical fitness, social and political awareness about various aspects of life, it held various competitions as part of the youth week to mark Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary. He was the chairman of the University’s student’s union for two years during his post graduation. In this capacity he organized students and also provided assistance to Kashmiri immigrants who had settled in Pune. He tried to arrange school and college admissions for the young Kashmiri boys and girls. Over time, however, he realized that the work he was involved with was highly political and sensitive in nature. The ABVP had taken up the Ram Janmabhumi issue and Girish was not comfortable being a part of the movement. He was unimpressed by lectures and melodramatic speeches which ultimately did not benefit society or improve the quality of life. It was then that he completely shifted his focus to start working among Victims of Commecial Sexual Explotation and Trafficking (VCSE&T).
Girish’s concern for the plight of CSWs was not sudden. As a young boy of fourteen attending tuition classes in a bylane known for prostitution, he was curious about the tobacco-chewing women soliciting and winking at him and his friends. There were times when he had heard some of the women yell out in pain, as their customers beat them up. These images remained in his mind but he also knew that just thinking about it was not enough. Life went on its usual course until one day he witnessed a scene that shook him from within. On his way back from college, he saw people crowded around a young girl, apparently a prostitute, who was being tortured by the brothelkeeper and was struggling to get up to wash herself of the chilli powder that the brotherl–keeper had put in her vagina. No one moved to help her. Girish was terrified. Like the rest, he did not dare to help the woman, as he did not want to contend with the powerful and violent brothel owners in the area. The incident not only brought to light the plight of prostitutes, but also the powerful forces that profited from the flesh trade. The scene he had witnessed imprinted itself in his memory for good. He felt he had no right to call himself ‘sensitive’ if he ignored the incident and went about his life as if nothing had happened. He told a number of people about the incident and simultaneously resolved to work for commercial sex workers and against the trafficking of women.
The task was not simple. An evaluation of the plight of victims of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking revealed the underbelly of the social and political system associated with the flesh trade. There was a long chain of beneficiaries who thrived and continued to prosper on the earnings of commercial sex workers, the brothel-keepers, pimps, criminals, politicians (many of whom own and run brothels), police,, dhaba and bar owners. Working for VCSE &T meant confronting persons at the helm of the system who protected criminal activities and encouraged the trafficking of women.
Girish realized that this was not solely a women’s issue but affected everyone in society. Nor was it something that happened only to ‘other’ women. It could happen to any woman, including one’s mother, sister, wife and daughter. Though poverty is still the main reason why women enter the profession, the process through which they are inducted is far more complex. One the women enter the profession, it is difficult for them to leave. Of the many reasons the most serious ones are the tight hold of brothel-keepers, the chain of beneficiaries who thrive on their labour as well as the inability to cope with the stigma attached to them by wider society. It was clear to Girish that there was no point in asking the women to leave the profession when he was not in a position to present them an acceptable alternative, nor provide protection from people who prosper from their earnings.
Girish began his work by visiting one of the bylanes every evening. The brothel -keepers were suspicious of his intentions. As a man, he found it difficult to authenticate the seriousness of his intentions. The women would also make fun of him and jokingly complain that they did not get young clients like him anymore. Exasperated by these responses, he concentrated on their children rather than the sex workers, as he realized that in fact their main concerns were about the children. Most of them did not know where to leave their children when they entertained their clients in their single-room houses. Often they would hide their children under the bed or just let them roam the bylanes till they finished their business. Girish offered to look after the children when they were with their clients. They came to check him out at the maidan(an open field) where he would take the children to play. Over time, other women started leaving their children with him. Within six months, he was managing around eighty children.
Snehalaya was formally registered in 1990 to work for victims of commercial and sexual exploitation and trafficking in the red light areas of Chitra, Bhagat and Mamta lanes in Ahmednagar district. Girish Kulkarni cannot visualize a life without Snehalaya. For him, this is all that he can conceive of doing. He leaves his house at six in the morning for Sharda College where he teaches Political Science . Clearly, his job as a Political science Lecturer in the local collage is only a means to an end, a means to earn a living so that he can concentrate on his work among the VCSE & T. His lectures get over by eleven and he heads straight for Snehalaya to oversee the developmental activities undertaken by the organization as well as to attend to Child Line , a twenty-four hour telephone service run for children in distress. Snehalaya has been able to rehabilitate over hundred and fifty children in various institutions and has also established a separate shelter home for these children. In the evenings, he regularly visits Dhabas and red light areas with the other members of the organization. His entire day revolves around the activities of Snehalaya and he rarely returns home before midnight. Given this hectic schedule, it is difficult to imagine how he manages to fulfill his other interests and obligations.
Girish’s wife, a pharmacist by profession, helps him run a pharmacy. Her organization had rented a room in his ancestral house .She had heard about his work. It was not love at first sight for her. Girish was always surrounded by women and all of them seemed to be in love with him. She wondered why. But gradually, after months of courtship, she was attracted by his knowledge and his keen desire to make a difference. In retrospect, she considers herself ordinary in comparison to him. Though she has been independent and has managed the house single-handedly, she feels that unlike Girish she still does it for her family and not for strangers. Clearly, Girish is not able to spend enough time with his family, especially with his six-year-old daughter who is asleep when he returns late at night from work. She sometimes calls on the child line and complains that she has not seen her father for days. The family members share a general sense of bewilderment and awe about Girish’s obsession with his work although they are quietly resigned to his ways.
Girish’s parents had the usual expectations for him; they expected him to take up a high-paying prestigious job as an engineer or doctor. His mother had been a teacher for thirty-five years. His father was a physical education teacher. His younger brother is also a teacher in the army school. Girish never really told his parents about his work among VCSE and T. They would hear of his visits to the red light areas from neighbors and relatives. One day, Girish brought two of three children home and announced that they would be staying in the house thereafter. His mother recollects how she had bitter arguments with her son when she had objected to keeping the children of commercial sex worker in the house .She realized he had an almost ruthless dedication to his work which finally made his family accept his decision. Though his mother now refers to the incident flippantly, she had realized then that if she wanted to maintain a relationship with her son, she had no choice but to consent to his wishes with dignity. The rumours about his supposed liaisons with the CSWs disturbed her , but gradually she not only accepted his decision but also actively supported his work.
Snehalaya: Concerns and Strategies
Most of the strategies adopted by Girish and Snehalaya emerged as a part of the process of accommodating crisis situations .Having managed to convince the women to leave their children with him, the question was ‘what next’ .He formalized the evening meetings with children by setting up a night school centre for these children called the Sanskar Kendra in 1990. However, the idea was also to enroll as many children as possible in regular schools. Over twenty nine children were admitted into the municipal primary school. It was while working with children that Girish came across the first HIV positive case in the lane .Not knowing where to accommodate HIV positive children, he kept them at home. From 1993 to 1995, he ran a home for HIV positive children in his house. Finally in 1995, he received a donation of seven acres of land to established a shelter for the children. There are over a hundred children in the shelter, including twenty HIV positive children and twelve women. The home seeks to provide the best possible symptomatic to the victims.
The increase in number of HIV/AIDS cases has forced the organization to address the problem head-on. Besides running a Child Line sponsored by the central government, Snehalaya opened an anti trafficking centre to rescue minor girls from red light areas and from Dhabas located along the highways. ‘Every girl rescued is one girl saved from exploitation and the high risk of getting infected by HIV/AIDS’ is the unwritten motto of the organization. However, the resolve to check trafficking of minor girls has been risky, and Snehalaya has had to contend with the brothel-keepers directly. Most brothel-keepers are former CSWs .As they get older, the CSWs want to ensure their sources of income and therefore start getting young girls to work for them. The challenge for Snehalaya is to seek the support of the brothel-keepers for a cause that directly impact their source of income. This involved, first of all, creating alternative sources of income as well as building the habit of saving among them and , secondly, convincing them that the campaign to stop trafficking of minor girls is about rescuing the girls from the misery that they had endured in the profession and not an attempt to isolate as perpetrators.
Making CSWs and brothel-keepers aware of the value of saving was difficult in so far as it cut directly into the vicious cycle of indebtness among them. Unlicensed moneylenders exploited their ignorance and gave loans at very high rates of interest. Women needed to be trained to think beyond their immediate requirements and about their future. Of the twenty rupees that CSWs earn, they are able to keep only about four to five rupees. The rest is distributed between the brothel –keepers, the pimp, and the police. A large part of the money is also spent on their daily requirements of tobacco and liquor. In 1990, a policeman beat up a CSW for money. Girish took up the issue with the women and initiated the ‘Jawab Do’ Andolan (Give us an answer movement) against the hafta (weekly commission) collected from brothel-keepers and CSWs by the police. The women led a demonstration protesting the hafta. They walked up to the police station, and dumped the cash they had collected from the people as donations on the table of the police Station House Officer. This created quite a stir, since it was the first public disapproval of the police and brothel-keepers. This event managed to challenge the hitherto unchallenged alliance between the brothel-keepers and the police, implicated as they are in collecting hafta.
Following the success of the Jawab Do Andolan, Girish persuaded the women to open personal bank accounts. The women used to store their jewellery in the house, this was invariably stolen. This was the only secure form of savings they knew. The idea was to introduce safer forms of savings among them. Nishant is another attempt to help CSWs deal with the uncertainties inherent in their future. Formed in 1996 at Kamatipura (one of the red light areas of Ahmednagar) Nishant is run by CSWs with the help of women members of Snehalaya. The purpose was to provide an independent platform to CSWs to voice their problems. Self-help groups have been formed to cut into the mesh of private money lending and indebetedness among them. Nishant has been successful in raising awareness among CSWs about the exploitative character of private money lending.
Girish narrates the incident that helped the organization get a toe-hold in the world of the brotherl keepers that made the latter treat Snehalaya as an ally rather than an adversary. In 1996, Snehalaya came across the case of a brothel keeper, known for her insensitivity and difficult nature even among the other brothel keepers, who had kept four minor girls in the brothel. Seizing this opportunity, Snehalaya members decided to capitalise on the discord between this particular brothel keeper and the others. They assured the other brothel keepers that they would deal with her and that all of them should cooperate during the police raid that they would organize. The Superintendent of Police, being a sincere person, rounded up all the brothel keepers in the neighbourhood, as all of them had minor girls in their brothels and held them in prison for three days. They also lost a lot of cash and jewellery, which was stolen from their homes in their absence. This infuriated the brothel keepers. They read this as a betrayal and a dirty trick played on them by Snehalaya. Most of them were powerful and politically well–connected. The brothel keepers threatened to inject Snehalaya members with HIV positive blood if they did not give up their work and leave the area immediately. All the brothel keepers ganged up against Snehalaya and they had the political backing of certain influential persons of the area. Girish recollects how all of them would move in groups and avoid crowded places. Snehalaya had just about started grappling with the issue of trafficking of minor girls in the area around that time; this had to be put on hold for a while.
In the meanwhile, there to four brothel keepers were found to be HIV positive. As the news spread, regular customers stopped visiting the brothels. Afraid of losing their regular clientele, the brothel keepers got together and forced the HIV positive women to leave the area by illegally taking possession of their houses . From then on, Snehalaya members started hanging out in the house of one of the HIV positive women. The house became a base to keep track of trafficking of minor girls. The brothel keepers were highly uncomfortable at first but gradually realised that the organization was here to stay and was not against them but was concerned about their well being as much as it was troubled by the plight of minor girls caught in trafficking.
Snehalaya’s experience with the police has been knotty. It still upsets Girish to think of the way the police misused the information he gave them regarding a brothel which had seven minor girls from Aurangabad. The Deputy Supreintendent of Police seemed sympathetic to the issue and told Girish to do his groundwork before he organized a raid. Girish visited the brothel pretending to be a customer and approached one of the girls who seemed a little more mature than the rest. He offered her Rs 300/- and took her to a room. He asked her how she had landed up in the brothel. The girl told him that her father had sold her to the brothel keeper for Rs. 10,000/-. She could not go back home, unless her father repaid the money he took from the brothel- keeper. Girish assured the girl that he would repay the brothel-keeper’s money and that she should talk to the other girls and prepare them for the raid. He told her that the raid would be held the following day. Girish then tried contacting the Deputy Superintendent who kept postponing action on the matter saying that he was busy with something urgent. He finally agreed to conduct the raid but by then eight days had already passed. On reaching the brothel, they did not find anybody, except for one woman and the brothel-keeper, who was weeping inconsolably. The police gave up the matter saying that nothing could be done, as the girls were no longer there. Girish happened to meet the woman during one of his visits to the red light area, she told him what had actually happened after his visit to her brothel. The police had sent for her on the third day and asked her to hand over all the girls to them. They kept the girls captive in a bungalow in Aurangabad, where they were now. The police took all the brothel – keeper’s earnings, both cash and jewellery. The brothel-keeper questioned Girish about his grand plan, of course she felt that the girls were better off with her than in police custody. Girish feels miserable about putting the girls through the torture and still curses himself for his naivete.
In a recent case, Snehalaya approached the police to take action against a brothel – keeper who had not only kept a minor girl for prostitution, but was also highly exploitative. The girl was forced to entertain more than fifteen customers a day. She was kept in a small room, which was partitioned by a piece of thin cloth. Snehalaya came across this particular case through a woman who was HIV positive and had approached Snehalaya for help when her husband died of AIDS as she had no resources to bring up her child. Snehalaya sent the child to the Bal Asha Trust in Mumbai and asked the woman to stay in their project site with the other women. However, she felt confined in the organization and wanted to leave. Snehalaya members could not persuade her to stay. They constantly reminded her that she was HIV positive and that she might transmit it to others. She finally left and became a prostitute in a hotel where she came across the minor thirteen-year-old girl. They were very close and probably in a relationship.
The woman’s health was deteriorating by the day and she had no source of income. So out of desperation, she sold the girl for 2000 rupees to a brothel-keeper in Shevgaon. She regretted this since the girl was being tortured in the brothel. That is when she approached Snehalaya for help. Snehalaya reported the case to the police and asked them to arrest the brothel-keeper under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA). The police rescued the girl and asked Snehalaya to take responsibility for her. The girl was in a bad condition. She could not even walk properly and needed immediate medical attention. The police asked Snehalaya to make arrangements for the raid at the brothel and arrange for witnesses. By ‘arrangements’ they meant for a car to go to Shevgaon, refreshments, a good feast and drinks. The raid was conducted in the evening after they had been fed and served liquor. On the way to Shevgaon, they were abusive and cursed Snehalaya members travelling with them, saying that they had no other work but to brother about the ‘devious’ CSWs.
The brothel-keeper, as expected, seemed prepared for their visit. She was taken to the police station. Ordinarly, a person arrested under the Mumbai Police Act is not allowed to meet anyone, but she was allowed to see visitors and order special food from outside. The local MLA visited her in jail and wanted to get her released. He started putting pressure on the police. He accused Girish of being casteist. He said that Girish, being a Brahmin, was harassing a scheduled caste woman. The police officer in-charge asked Girish to ‘do something’ about it. He asked him to approach the opposition parties to garner support against the MLA. He feared for his job and warned Girish that if he was transferred following this controcersy, Girish would have to compernsate him monetarily. The Republican Party of India called a Press Conference to publicise the story and soon the story was splashed all over the local papers. The brothel-keeper had fed all sorts of wrong information to the Press and even revealed the girl’s name, Girish was taken by surprise, as he had not known until then that the brothel-keeper belonged to a scheduled caste. Snehalaya did its own research and discovered that the girl also belonged to a scheduled caste. The following day, Snehalaya sent our a press release stating the caste of the girl as well as clarifying its role in the case. The girl by now had received threats and she feared for her life. The brothel-keeper managed to get out of prison on bail and is back in business. She has persuaded the girl’s father to reclaim his daughter. As of now, the girl doing a computer course in a convent and awaiting the settlement of the case.
This and other incidents revealed the lip service paid to the idea of sensitization programmes organized for the police. The prejudices are deep-seated and power only provides opportunities to display contempt for the girls. According to Girish, the police manage to counter and subvert rules to suit their purposes. The ‘raid’ is an instrument of power. It ensures that the brothel-keepers, pimps, dhaba owners and the CSWs play their respective roles in sustaining the racket. Political will also fails, as politicians are at the helm of the system. Local politicians, across political parties, run hotels notorious for prostitution. In case that made headlines, local politicians hanging out in a dhaba raped an ex – CSW. One of the politicians recognized the woman, who was there with her fiance, and started harassing her. After these bitter experience with the police and the local politicians, Girish has realished it was futile to follow the course prescribed by law. The law keepers were encouraging illegal activities. He now prefers to circumvent the official route in dealing with the problem of trafficking.
The officially prescribed route to redressal brings to light the larger structural issues of poverty and corruption. While these issues are at the heart of the problem, they redirect the concern from the VCSE & T to matters of development, governance and the law, matters that become convenient on their most urgent needs and daily problems. After 1996, having established the credibility of Snehalaya among the VCSE & T and the locals, structural issues were taken up with the authorities independently and in collaboration with other organizations working with VCSE & T. Snehalaya has been a part of the National Alliance against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking (NACSET) formed in 2003. NACSET is an attempt to coordinate between various organizations working with VCSE &T over issues that require concerted national level campaigns. It is not a registered forum, but an informal platform for organizations to interact and network with each other. Snehalays has recently launched a twenty-four hour mobile service for rescuing minor girls called Muktivahini. It consists of ten uniformed volunteers trained in self-defence, appropriately armed and with a vehicle on standby to attend to cases of rescue.
In order to provide permanent support to the women and children who have been rehabilitated over the years, Snehalaya has started vocational training in nursing and computers and othef skills such as vermiculture, the manufacture of incense sticks, soap, pickles, candles, knitting, etc. With each passing year, the organization has tried to broaden its agenda, to make the problems of VCSE & T a public or a civic responsibility. Snehalaya has established a Bal Bhavan (a children’s home) in a slum in Ahmednagar, which not only runs a balwadi (pre-school playgroup) but also a Bal Sanskar Kendra (centre for informal learning) for children within the age of three to sixteen.
Mobilising Resources
Invariably, the most important concern before initiating any intervention was to gather resources to start and sustain the progarmmes. Donors fund all the activities of Snehalaya. The Arun Mangal Seva Vikas Yojana (Pune) donated equipment for the technical training programs run by Snehalaya. Initially, Girish would go house-to-house collecting food for the children, approach the business community for funds, and appeal to persons on the occasions of birth, marriage and death in their families to donate in kind or in cash towards the cause.
Many have come forward to donate; there are individuals who have made small but regular donations, while others have offered their professional expertise towards various activities of Snehalaya. Such persons include freedom fighters, doctors, enginees, architects, businessmen and others. There is a person who runs a small bakery in Ahmednagar. He has been donating pav (bread) everyday for the last fifteen years. Festivals are also important occasions for collecting donations for the organization. For his wedding, Girish made it a point to seek donations for Snehalaya. His wedding card carried a request for donation and he personally ensured that every guest who attaended the wedding made a contribution towards Snehalaya. He is said to have visited the homes of guests who could not attend the marriage to collect their share of the donations for Snehalaya. To his family and friends, this incident illustrates the extent to which Girish will go to keep Snehalaya alive.
The list of trustees reflects the diverse fields to which they belong. The attempt is to build alliances with and seek the cooperation of prominent persons and institutions in Ahmednagar to further the work initiated by Snehalaya. This includes networking with Christian educational institutions like the Sacred Heart Convent and Don Bosco School, to educate some of the children in their schools. The President of Snehalaya, Mr. Suvalal Shingavi, a Jeweller by profession, has now handed over his business to his sons and is associated with the organization full time. Initially, he used to make generous personal donations to the organization, but now he also collects donations from his community, the Jains, who are economically dominant in Ahmednagar town. Similarly, there are trustees from different communitities such as the Parsis and Brahmins, and interestingly the organization is known in these communities because of them. Snehalaya appointed two HIV positive CSWs as trustees, when the trust was formed. They were co-opted not just with the idea of giving symbolic represrentation to VCSE & T. They are two of the most vocal and articulate trustees of the organization. They have first hand experience of being in the profession and are therefore often in a better position to assess situations. The public appearance of the highly respected freedom fighters with VSCE&T during rallies and dharnas (protests) is very effective in mobilizing support among the general public. It also builds the morall of the VCSE&T, strengthening the base of their struggle.
Differences of opininon often arise between trustees on a range of issues. Girish narrates a incident when a certain individual offered to donate eggs for the children in Snehalaya. The Jains and the Marwaris in the trust, being vegetarians, took offence. They felt that groundnuts should be given to the children instead of eggs, as it is an appropriate vegetarian alternative. Girish did not want to fight over eggs and suggested that since the Jains and the Marwaris have a problem with eggs, they should take the responsibility of providing the children with groundnuts. Girish sums up his philosophy evocatively saying that there are two kinds of bees, one which sits on dirt and the other that searches for honey. He would rather be like the honeybee. According to him, it’s preferable to learn to live with differences and make the best of it for the cause.
Not surprisingly then, Snehalaya has experimented with various models of rehabilitation. There is no one model that is subscribed to. Ideally, the intention has been to reintegrate. VSCE & T into mainstream society or at least provide opportunities to those who desire to become a part of it. Twenty five girls have been married so far. Most of the grooms are known to the members and the trustees of Snehalaya. For the girls, the decision no marry has been a difficult one. They have looked forward to a new life while also being apprehensive about it. Marriage has been an important milestone in their lives and every effort was made to make this occasion memorable for the girls. The Shree Kshetra Dharmapuri Trust, a well-known trust in the region involved in a number of charitable activities, has borne the expenses of these marriages. Snehalaya has been sensitive to the various religious backgraounds the girls come from and have arranged marriages accordingly. The marriages have been impressive occasions attended by important persons from all the communities in the town. A substantial lunch was organized for all the invitees. Snehalaya is in constant contact with the girls and has helped them cope with financial and marital crises. Having led a different lifestyle, the girls take time to adjust to new surroundings. For instance, one girl’s mother-in-law was upset because she watched too much television. Another girl was being harassed by her parents-in-law for a gas cylinder. In both cases the organization counselled and provided financial and emotional support to the girls. The intention was to also let the families know that the girls are not alone and have a support structure to fall back on. This strengthens the girl’s position vis-à-vis their in-laws. For this reason, Snehalaya also gives gifts to the married girls every year on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, a festival celebrated in January, in keeping with the traditional Maharashtrian custom.
Not all the women are able to adjust to everyday society, and some of the initiatives fail. Many come to Snehalaya in a diseased state. One such instance was when Girish had helped a group of four HIV positive women set up a canteen at his ancestral house. The canteen was quite a success, but had to be shut down because the women running the canteen did not return from their annual visit to their homes. Two of them unfortunately died some months later. Some women despite having stayed in Snehalaya, have preferred to return to prostitution. However, given the overall success of this initiative, Snehalaya had started a project of supplying food made by the HIV positive CSWs to hospitals in the town. The project did not take off because the patients and their relatives were hesitant to consume the food once they came to know that the food had been prepared by HIV positive CSWs.
Despite instances when the women have not cooperated or stayed with the organization, Snehalaya has always tried to project itself as an organization that the VCSE & T can turn to at times of crises. Snehalaya has at least one resource person among the VCSE & T in every bylane and dhaba on the highway, who regularly refers cases to the organization as well as guides women to Snehalaya in case they need help. Sneahlaya has recently initiated a private twenty-four hour helpline for women in distress. Any woman can contact Snehalaya by dialing 332. Posters and stickers about the service are pasted at bustands and in buses to publicise the initiative.
For Girish, there is no one ‘right’ approach or model of intervention as human actions and emotions in his experience have defied uniformity and standardization. Often, human changeability can be disconcerting, and can divert and decelerate the pace of intervention. Instead of getting frustrated, Girish thinks that this inconsistency reflects the deep apprehensions of the VCSE & T. He would rather experiment with various models of intervention to accommodate diverse expectations of VCSE & T than confine their options within standardized models of intervention.
Conclusion
Girish increasingly feels that he should gradually reduce his role in the organization. An organization, according to him, cannot afford to be dependent on one individual. Organizations that are personcentred grind to a halt with the death of the individual. For this reason, Girish has resigned from the trust and had earlier in 1996 stepped down from the president-ship of the organization. He has also delegated the responsibility of running the various projects to particular members of Snehalaya. For him, this is the first step towards decentralising the activities of Snehalaya. Nishant is managed by Mina Shinde; Yashwant, son of a CSW and one of the first boys in the Snehalaya’s boys hostel that Girish ran from his home, coordinates the activities of NACSET, Muktivahini is run by a team of ten trained volunteers, the vocational centre and other training programmes and the developmental work at the project site are managed by the president. Girish runs the Child Line and the helpline for women and oversees the management of the organization.
Commercial sex work (or the tradition of Commercial Sexual Exploitation) is the oldest profession in the world and will continue to flourish despite countless interventions to stop it, but organizations like Snehalaya seek to ensure that women and girls are not pushed into it by force. Their attempt is to create conditions where any woman or girl does not feel lost or alone if she wants help or seeks to move out of the profession. In the present social, economic and political situation in the country, just ensuring that is a challenge.
(Note: This article was written in the year 2002. Since then, the work of Girish has increased manifold and Snehalaya has achieved many major successes. It has recently created legal history when in September 2010, a big group of 20 influential businessmen and politicians have been convicted and sentenced to Double Life Imprisonment anywhere in India for sexually exploiting a minor girl and forcing her into prostitution. The Judge specifically stated that all the credit for this conviction goes to the dedicated Snehalaya Team.)
