Satyarthi’s Nobel should put focus on rehabilitation of sex workers’ children

Be it Kolkata or Delhi, “mainstreaming” the children of sex workers has never been easy or smooth. There have been many efforts – by NGOs, respective state and central governments, and even private individuals. But a clear solution has not been found yet. Should they be kept away from their mothers and put up in residential schools? Or should they continue to live with their mothers and attend day schools? Should there be special schools for them? Or should they be integrated in “normal” schools?

It’s a huge group and we, as a society, can ignore them at our own peril. In 2007, the Ministry of Women and Child Development reported the presence of over 30 lakh female sex workers in India, with 35.47 percent of them entering the trade before the age of 18 years. As per a survey report by Bhartiya Patita Uddhar Sabha (BPUS) – a Delhi-based NGO working with sex workers for more than two decades – conducted between 1990 and 1995, there were 23.88 lakh sex workers in India, operating in 14 regions (Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Goa and Tamil Nadu), and the number of their children amounted to a whopping 51.49 lakh.

In Delhi, on the infamous red-light district of GB Road, the head count of sex workers’ children in 1990-95 was found by BPUS to be 4,500. Unfortunately, there have been no formal surveys by government agencies to assess the number of children of sex workers. That alone should point to the level of ignorance and neglect the section has faced, over the years. But the Nobel Peace Prize announcement for Kailash Satyarthi of Bachpan Bachao Andolan may actually shift put attention to the plight of this group… even though in India, we have few leads on how to go about it.

A cross-sectional study conducted in 2007 in the brothels of Mumbai, called “Child Rearing Practices Amongst Brothel-based Commercial Sex Workers” by Pravin Yerpude and Keerti Jogdand, demonstrated that admission in residential schools, along with special rehabilitation centres, help these children integrate with the mainstream society. The role of NGOs and local peers was found to be very important.

A couple of recent examples have also proved that this methodology is largely effective. Sheetal Jain, a 19-year-old girl from Kamathipura in Mumbai, told The Indian Expess that she used to watch the film Chandni Bar and weep buckets. It somehow brought her face to face with what she always knew – that a sex worker’s child grows up to be a sex worker. But luckily for Jain – who even admits to being physically abused by the man who married his mother for a few years – life turned on its head when she came in contact with Kranti, an NGO working in her area. She was counselled, she got to share her experiences with her peers from the area, and her creativity was also polished. Jain is now studying in the US, at the prestigious US Drum School in Washington DC.

The case of boys is even worse. Most of them, who continue to live with their mothers and see customers visiting them on a daily basis, turn into aggressive teenagers. Many of them end up as pimps or petty criminals, says Gitanjali Babbar, a 20-something who runs an informal school for children on Delhi’s red-light district of GB Road. Babbar says whenever she visits the brothels to get children to the schools, the didis ask her very pointedly – ‘You NGO people can’t think beyond distributing condoms. Have you ever thought what else we may want? A good life for our children, for example.’ The commercial sex workers dream of a bright future for their children. They should be supported and guided to make this dream a reality, at all costs.