Prostitution – Are we incisive to the problem?

Prostitution, one of the oldest professions of the world has been a center of debate over the centuries. The problem seems to be severe especially in Indian Subcontinent where illiteracy and poverty are the biggest social devils adding fuel into the burning problem. For India, issues are more political because of human trafficking through porous boundaries of neighboring countries and are alleged to be putting the country’s internal security on stake, but political parties are chary of taking any stern action because of vote bank politics and are indulged in providing shelter to those illegal migrants. Human right institutions keep on voicing their concerns over the plight of prostitutes and also over the Indian laws which are fairly ambiguous and do not offer any legal support to them. According to The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (PITA), sex work in India is neither legal nor illegal and law allows it to thrive legally but remotely from the society and public places. The word “Remotely” makes woman prostitutes vulnerable as they get obscured from society and absence of legal status doesn’t allow them to access security, health, financial or other sort of assistance in times when they need it most. IPC which predates the PITA is often used to charge sex workers with nebulous crimes such as "public indecency" or being a "public nuisance" without clear explanations. To see the problem in right perspective, we should set the trafficking issues apart from prostitution because trafficking is something which could be a security concern and need to be handled by law enforcing agencies, but the prostitution is undoubtedly a social problem and shouldn’t be considered as criminal offence. The problem lies when society considers prostitution as social stigma and works as deterrent against their confluence back into the social order. Statistics insinuate that more than 80% victims are forced into this trade either deceitfully or under duress and once trapped into the web they have no means to step back into the normal life. In spite of extending help to duped sufferers; PITA provides further exploitation by not repelling brunt of IPC provisions. If we go back in the past, we would realise that such practices have always been part of Indian society for ages and are hard to eradicate by any law. We used to have prostitution practices like Devdasi / Nagarvadhu in ancient India and they were socially accepted. Let me clarify that I am not advocating the profession but I want laws and society to be generous towards the problem. The flip side of the problem is that it is also spreading deep down in societal layers in other forms; of which call girls and paid adultery could just be an example which is tough to restrain by any law. It’s a fact that Sex and money has always been of prime importance for human being and all the efforts of dissuading fascination to sex forcefully or through law have gone in vain. The better way to deal with the problem is to provide provisions for prosecuting the people who are involved in trafficking and not to victims. Legalise the profession for those who are consciously coming into the trade and earn taxes which could be used back for their betterment like health and financial issues, try to develop a parallel infrastructure for counseling and rehabilitation of those who wish to be part of society once again and last but not the least; we as a society should introspect and take the onus on us because pimps, prostitutes and customers are all emerge from this so called civilized society and the bucks can’t be passed on to anyone else.