Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, it is said. Every day we read so many articles about it, some favouring prostitution, while some are against it; some calling it against our culture, while some refer to the Vedas to claim that it isn’t against Indian culture. Whatever the Vedas may say, today, more than half India’s population is against this prostitution. With the culture of silence that has developed around the issue, whatever the layman knows about it is either through prejudices that have been passed on or articles in the paper that catch one’s eye. Till now we have been indifferent towards this issue, acting as if it doesn’t even exist, forcing the sex workers to live in misery, but now we need to acknowledge it, analyse it and discuss it.
This profession that is considered to be a blotch on our society, is actually estimated to be an 8.4 billion dollar industry, just in India. Many of the hypocrites who complain about how sex workers have blemished the culture, are the ones who feast on them for without the requisite demand, the sex industry would have never thrived. Going further, we refuse to accept the plight of these sex workers. The only thing that we have done for them is label them as ‘prohibited’. Denied even basic human rights, their lives are nothing but a continuous struggle.
The National Commission for Women recently stated that prostitution should be legalised in India, reigniting the old debate. In a country where the word, “sex”, is considered a taboo despite rapes and sexual crimes being ever so frequent, legalising prostitution was bound to raise many eyebrows. While some thoroughly oppose it, others believe that legalisation can reduce the incidence sexual crimes. There might be substance to the latter argument. With the closure of brothels in 1959, Queensland, Australia experienced a 149% increase in incidents of rape. Most sexual offenders are psychopaths, and a possible psychological explanation lies in that sex is a human necessity with depravity pushing a person to commit such crimes. An example of this manifestation is the recently viral article, in which a tourist shared her experience of how a man masturbated to her in a bus in India. By legalising prostitution, this depravity can be controlled and hence it can reduce the incidence of such crimes.
Our personal like or dislike toward this profession is immaterial with regard to whether or not it should be legalised. The difference between the two matters lies in the truth, which is, that whatever we do, we cannot eliminate prostitution. It is a reality that has always been there, because of which it would be better to legalise it in order to at least protect the rights of the sex workers.
It is disconcerting to even think that there exists a world so removed from the one that we live in, where little girls no older than 10-11 years are sold into the menacing lanes of a red light area. Around ten million children are estimated to be part of the sex trade. Once they are in it they have to trade their existence for survival for the rest of their lives, as there is no escape for them. They are harassed, beaten and left wounded with no one to take care of them. They get pregnant at such a young age, go through abortion and get pregnant again. Their kids, too, go through a tough life devoid of the respect and security that they deserve. Hence, legalisation would ensure that only consenting adults get into this trade and no other, especially a minor is forced into it.
Sex workers are the most marginalised members of society. They are mistreated and harassed throughout their lives, and receive no protection or justice from the law, as they are engaged in an activity that is illegal, and hence do not exist within the official radar of the state, with no official identity documents or even a bank account. What they require is protection. Legalising their profession would ensure their security. They are exploited by pimps, clients and obviously, the police. Once it is legalised, pimps and brothel owners would be held responsible for the treatment of these sex workers. Mandatory h checks will also reduce the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. It will ensure better work conditions, better wages for them.
Legalisation will be able to provide a life for these women, a life of security and respect, which is what they deserve instead of being criminalised for the choices they make or, more often than not, are forced into.
By-VARTIKA CHAUDHARY
Tuesday 9 February 2016
WILL LEGALISING PROSTITUTION LEAD TO LESS NUMBER OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT CASES?
CAN RELIGION BE THE BASIS OF A STATE?
Recent events like the Dadri lynching and the killing of Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi have clearly put the secular credentials of the country under question. Incidents like the Trilokpuri and Muzzafarnagar riots in the past have also dented the constitutional principles of the state. These incidents not only weaken the very principle of equality but also bring in a feeling of discrimination and marginalisation within the society. A statement by President Pranab Mukherjee, in October last year, underlined the importance of retaining diversity and tolerance. He re-stated the same opinion in his visit to Israel in which he mentioned that religion must never be the basis for a state. Israel, in which the majority of the people are Jewish has been at war against Palestine which started because of communal hatred. Recent attacks on people who consume beef has only aggravated the seriousness of the issue. This issue has sparked tensions among the intellectuals of the country with many litterateurs previously returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, concerned about the silence of the government over the rising intolerance.
“Despite being a Muslim, APJ Abdul Kalam was a great nationalist and humanist.”
The above statement came from the Union Minister of Culture Mahesh Sharma during an interview with India TV. Was it really necessary? Statements like these instil fear not only among the minority communities but also among the majority, as these statements trigger widespread communal riots which are tragic for the whole society. Communalism has taken the centre stage from the beginning of the new government’s tenure which was selected with the hopes of development and stability and it has succeeded to some extent but the rise of communal tensions have overshadowed the efforts of the BJP government, and Mr. Narendra Modi being the prime minister of India will certainly not want this to happen. He has launched many successful initiatives so far, such as the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”, “Digital India”, etc, and it is high time for him to act a little more seriously with regard to the issue of rising communal sentiments. Nirmala Seetharaman (a colleague of Mr. Modi) also put forward a controversial statement in which he seemed to be debating on the existence of communalism instead of opposing it.
The Modi government’s response to all these incidents has been lukewarm and disappointing. Instead of promising concrete measures, he blamed the state governments for the riots and avoided taking the onus. Using the same clichéd arguments of law and order and merely expressing sadness will not help the issue. Instead he should condemn the controversial statements made by BJP ministers, recently, and also acknowledge that communalism of the majoritarian kind will not be tolerated. The intellectual community of the country (especially those returning their Sahitya Akademi awards) is losing the faith they had in the government and the BJP has to take steps to stop this chaos and bring back the faith people had in the party, the faith that it would bring in economic development, not communal violence. Secularism is the backbone of the country’s constitution and what needs to be debated is how to separate religion from state instead of fuelling debates on communalism.
The Real motive behind Mark Zuckerburg’s IIT Delhi visit
Mark Zuckerburg visited IIT Delhi on 28th October 2015. His visit may very well be one of the most important highlights of its academic year. Mark is a youth icon for achieving so much in such little time and engineering students look up to him as no less than a demigod. He has achieved all the three things that every student and entrepreneur aspires to achieve, namely: fame, respect and money.
So, as expected tickets to his town hall event were hard to come by. Only one in six students were able to attend the event as even IIT Delhi’s Dogra hall was only able to accommodate about a thousand students. With a student population of over six thousand students, students were desperately trying to arrange for passes or exchange them for money.
Dressed in his signature round neck t-shirt and jeans. He looked like an average youngster but, indeed, he is the CEO of a 250 billion firm. There was clearly a gleam of excitement on the faces of students, a bit of curiosity and of course respect when the 31-year-old entrepreneur from Silicon Valley began speaking.
But, was there an ulterior motive rather than Mark’s vision of India becoming facebook’s biggest market. Facebook supports internet.org and for a long time, has been pushing for its implementation in India. Internet.org is about providing access to free internet but you can use the internet mainly to access facebook.com only. It violates net neutrality, according to which unrestricted access must be provided to all websites and access speeds must not be throttled down.
After facebook’s Digital India fiasco in which it injected a small script, wherein people who supported Digital India initiative online also unknowingly supported internet.org. According to the company spokesperson internet.org was a variable that the developer had used but seldom do developers use such complex variables. So clearly, Facebook had been caught red handed.
His visit to India may very well be to sugar coat internet.org and to persuade people to support internet.org so as to then seek approval from the telecom authority citing existing support for the same. But the fact remains that internet.org is just a marketing gimmick to hook more people to its platform and not about providing freer access to the internet.
Today’s youth is much more intelligent than Mark and his team perceives them to be, and students could clearly see that the townhall event that he announced with much fanfare and excitement was nothing but a marketing gimmick for the internet.org initiative. With no clear national framework on net neutrality, intenet.org may very well be a grey area that large corporations such as facebook exploit for their selfish motives.
By - Archit Aggarwal