Types of Commercial Sex Workers
“Cage girls” in “Pillow houses”
The worst brothels are called “pillow houses”, where prostitutes are separated by cloth dividers in tiny rooms. Visitors are charged $3 for a few minutes, and strict vigil is maintained to discourage prostitutes from talking to their customers.
Payment is made to the brothel owner who keeps the money, and allows as many as forty visitors a day during “peak” season.
Point of no return
Escape is never an option because there is a nexus between criminal gangs, pimps, brothel owners and the local police who share the major part of the CSW’s income. What trickles down to the hapless woman is a mere pittance. It is an open secret that all important red light areas in India enjoy police protection, which means the policemen themselves go to the brothels for tea, snacks and girls.In return for favors they inform the brothel keepers in advance about the raids that are scheduled to take place. A girl who escaped from her brothel and went to police was reportedly raped by them, and brought back to her owner the following day. Most prostitutes do not even make the attempt to escape because they have nowhere to go, they are illiterate and have been smuggled into the city.
Call Girls
Call girls are commercial sex workers who are part-timers and are usually more educated, carry cell-phones, and are well groomed and cannot be compared to those living in brothels. They have more mobility, earn higher incomes and have some freedom in choosing their clients who are mostly from the middle and upper classes of society. A study of 150 call girls, 20 clients and 10 “madams” in Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta, found that 80% percent of their clients were married. Many of them had suffered from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) at least once and had experience of induced abortion.
Generally call girls are known to take good care of their health and visit doctors whenever necessary. Almost all of them want their clients to use condoms, though they most often comply when clients offer a much higher amount for condom-free sex.
A subsequent study among call girls in Delhi in 1993 showed a high number of their clients preferred oral sex to vaginal intercourse. Some of them belonging to the upper-middle class were aware of AIDS and rejected clients who refused to use condoms.
Escort girls
The costliest end of the supply chain operates with high-class escort girls recruited from women's colleges and from India 's burgeoning fashion and film industries. These CSWs offer services for large sums of money and usually operate by way of a discreet introduction service. The boom in Internet services has seen the emergence of several snazzy websites, openly advertising escort girl services.
Devadasi system
Devadasi tradition or “sacred prostitution” is a form of sex work that dates back several centuries with the ritual found in written records even in the 12th century. The tradition involves a religious rite, in which girls and women are dedicated, through marriage, to different gods and goddesses, particularly to the goddess Yallama in a small temple in northern Karnataka. It is seen now as a ruse to do temple duties, which mainly involve providing sexual services to priests and patrons of the temples. Though abolished now as illegal, the practice continues in areas in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to this day.
A US sponsored study comparing the sociodemographic characteristics and sex work patterns of women involved in the traditional Devadasi form of sex work with those of other female sex workers (FSW), in the Indian state of Karnataka, showed that, of the 1588 FSWs interviewed, 414 (26%) reported that they entered sex work through the Devadasi tradition. Devadasi FSWs were more likely than other FSWs to work in rural areas (47.3% vs. 8.9%, respectively) to be illiterate (92.8% vs. 76.9%, respectively), were more likely to be home based (68.6% vs. 14.9) and were less likely to report client-initiated violence in a year (13.3% vs. 35.8%) or police harassment (11.6% vs. 44.3%).
Gigolos: Role Reversal?
Call it role reversal, or Western influence, or proof that sex revolution in India is in full swing— Indian gigolos or male prostitutes entertaining women for money have come to stay. Earlier, a large percentage of male prostitutes were the eunuchs or hijras. Now it can be a well-dressed male frequenting Internet community groups, coffee houses, swanky restaurants and multiplexes.In a 30-minute CNN-IBN special investigation report on the gigolo trail in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi, these men, most of whom are in decent jobs with the IT industry, said that it is the easiest way to make money and also to no-string-attached sex. These men say they easily earn between Rs. 5000 to Rs.10, 000 per client and their clients include elderly women, women with successful careers and even housewives. One gigolo who was interviewed said that he wanted a house, a car, a comfortable life style, with an LCD TV and an in-built bar in his residence with the extra money he earned.
A recent survey has shown that some Indian women are hiring gigolos for oral sex, prefer having sex with a younger man, some wanting threesomes. Many reasons are put forward by social analysts for the rise of the gigolos in the hitherto conservative Indian society—for instance, the rise of a new class of “alpha women” with financial independence to buy everything including sex, women waking up to sexual freedom and ready to break free of unexciting relationships or wandering husbands.
Child Prostitution
The ugliest face of the sex trade in many Asian countries is child prostitution. A 2004 UNICEF report estimates 500,000 child sex workers in India alone. Given the phenomenal increase in sex tourism, the number is bound to have risen to frightening proportions. Poor families are tricked into selling their children to such work for meager sums as 4 or 5 USD. Their family members thrust sometimes girl children who are victims of incest into this trade.
A prevailing myth that having intercourse with a virgin cures sexually transmitted diseases (STD) continues to create a demand for very young girls.
Police as Pimps
Apart from the many child prostitutes working in Indian brothels, many more are tempted into the sex trade by sex tourists and pedophiles who offer children money and other rewards for sexual activities. Just one Indian city Goa, sees as many as 10,000 pedophiles visiting each year. Seventy percent of the children who are victims of such sex acts do not tell anyone. Though according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, many other international treaties and agreements and local Indian laws, child prostitution is strictly illegal, offences rarely end in conviction.
The crime ring is well organized and police officers extort money from traffickers, and offenders and abet the system of prostitution by falsifying documents to prove that the children are not minors. In one case, a ten-year-old girl prostitute who was rescued by a hawker after many attempts was returned to the brothel keeper by the local inspector on the same day.
