Last year, I met an enthusiastic, resourceful young person who tried to convince me how important it was to start a school exclusively for children of sex workers. I heard her out, but it was a task for me to convince her of our perspective at Prerana, that the approach of exclusion will only result in further isolating the community.
This approach may result in further labelling these children. It will go against mainstreaming, and our collective effort has to be in the direction of mainstreaming these children. We believe that it is important to let the children decide what, how much and when they want to disclose their lives and backgrounds.
Inclusion based on rights is very rare to see and experience, while opportunism is veiled behind the charity. Someone recently approached me and offered to help rehabilitate women in the sex trade, as there is a lot of talk on how the lockdown has affected them. This person shared that we could train these women as bedside assistants in hospitals for COVID-19 patients and reserve all seats exclusively for them, adding that we should identify the “good” and “hard-working” ones.
Even now, many people think sex trade and women in the sex trade are a necessary social evil to be kept in the backyard. They want to work with this group using a barge pole. Their suggestions are always to create separate and exclusive programs for them. Even today in 2020, I hear people say “let’s have separate child care institutions for children who are sexually assaulted, children rescued from the sex trade, and children born to prostituted mothers”.
Our field experiences tell us that the women don’t experience any inclusion, and so they often ask us questions like: “If I leave the sex trade where will I go? Who will let me live in peace? Will they accept me if they get to know I was in the sex trade?”. Even the children and youth we work with experience this during their interactions with their peers in schools and colleges.
The stigma associated with the sex trade, with HIV and being from areas like Kamathipura (Mumbai), GB Road (Delhi), Budhwar Peth (Pune) creates problems too. Very few people are prepared for inclusion. I feel they can’t handle inclusion, and also, the culture of inclusion is still very new to many individuals, societies and communities. We still see a mindset that believes that this group is a “bad influence” on others. Our culture also often perceives as anything related to sex as bad or immoral or corrupting.
Over the past 3 decades of our work with marginalised communities, we have seen many positive changes. I think it’s important to acknowledge all those amazing individuals and organisations who in the true sense, have embraced and practised inclusion while working with the victims, survivors and their families. They are small in number, far and few in between.
While trying to change the broader social misconception that re-victimises a survivor of crime, there is also a need to empower the children and youth to fight discrimination simultaneously. I find today’s youth can understand the severity, unfairness and discrimination faced by these children and youth. The youth has joined the fight against unfair discrimination and experiences at each level and I believe they are the best partners to fight the discrimination collectively.
We need to actively evolve a mindset that believes in integration and not segregation, isolation and exclusion. We will have to take a very conscious effort to evolve it and create a culture of inclusion.
By Priti Patkar
The author is the co-founder of Prerana, Mumbai, and has been working with child protection in the red light areas of Mumbai for over 33 years.
This post was first published on Prerana’s online resource centre. To know more about human trafficking and issues of child protection in India, read here.