In Varanasi, an effort to bring justice to sex workers

Pondicherry: In the 35 years that Guria India founder has worked on issues of sex work, child trafficking and forced prostitution in red-light districts, Ajeet Singh has never seen a government sincerely engage in favor of this cause.

“New laws could be passed, but their proper implementation has never been a priority,” he says in an online interview.

Guria India is a non-profit organization working in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh to eradicate sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children. Over the past three decades, Guria has successfully established a compensation fund in UP for rape survivors, set up a medical board for age verification in rape cases, jailed 41 traffickers in a child trafficking case, to put an end to child prostitution. in Varanasi city and achieve many other commendable milestones.

These children and women do not constitute a vote bank, on the contrary, they are used by a vast network of pimps, traffickers, pimps, brothel keepers, politicians and even police officers – and their vote is therefore easy to ignore. It's this complex connection that organizations like Guria must combat, Singh says.

Failures: governmental, constitutional and human

Beyond the simple lack of proper implementation of laws, Ajeet Singh believes that the constitution itself has often been ignored by most ruling parties.

According to him, only the rule of the elite persists, where one can forget any commitment to the women of India's red light districts. Singh adds that the Congress's new rhetoric suggests that they have learned from their past mistakes and that if voted to power now, they might adopt a more progressive stance, instead of perpetuating religious orthodoxy and a form brutal Hindutva.

But it's not just the government that's to blame. “There is such a deep decline in society that people allow such injustice to go unchallenged,” says Singh, adding that ordinary people also accept this system silently.

The role of NGOs

Having dedicated his entire life to the liberation of women and children from the red light districts, Singh is disappointed with the attitude and approach of many modern-day NGOs and activists. According to him, the work of an NGO begins where that of the government ends. However, he feels that there is a mechanization among NGOs where they only work to the extent necessary for the few selected projects they have undertaken and “as soon as the clock strikes 5 p.m., they think that their work is finished”.

Providing minimal assistance, whether it is food and security, or condoms in a red light district, does not solve deep-rooted problems, and to work in such a field one must immerse oneself in this life and address all aspects of the problem.

It is these ideals that Singh incorporates into his work at Guria. From the age of 18, when he adopted the children of a Muslim sex worker, to today, he has carried out numerous complex operations to save thousands of women and children, and has put many brothel keepers behind bars.

Guria is proud to have an end-to-end system that takes care of all aspects of this pervasive problem. Singh and his team are pioneers in this field, but he recalls that in their early days, they “I didn't know how to hold the snake, neither by the tail nor by the neck.

The NGO uses a three-step process of pre-rescue, rescue and rehabilitation of victims, which involves identifying rescue locations, identity of victims, obtaining legal warrants, allocating shelters, collecting evidence, put in place preventive measures and ensure the rehabilitation and reintegration process goes smoothly. He also conducts mock trials to prepare victims, prepare them for witness protection programs, to testify in cases, etc. In the post-rescue stage, the organization implemented non-formal vocational training as well as art therapy and other practices to ease survivors' transition to ordinary life.

In the past, Singh worked undercover as a pimp for 11 months and sold cosmetics in the red light district so he could secretly record evidence using hidden cameras. He urges the government, whichever party comes to power, to work for society as a whole, fight against inequalities of all kinds and use the model followed by Guria India.

Caste, religion, challenges and dilemmas

The nature of Guria's job requires him to interact with the legal system.

Whether it is public interest litigation, ongoing trials or first information reports, the pace is most often slow and inadequate. There is a 90% acquittal rate and a 91% pending rate for human trafficking cases. Even when criminals are caught, they often escape punishment, Singh said.

“This is an area where direct government intervention could significantly help the women involved,” Singh says, adding that he and his team members have faced 31 attacks, including one recently where a truck hit the back of his car.

Singh says families also legitimize prostitution in some cases. While working in a red light district makes it slightly easier to distinguish between perpetrators and victims, in certain villages this distinction is passed down from mother to daughter. In such cases, it is much more difficult to identify a course of action. Singh says that the women of theand the castes, less disadvantaged, are all the more vulnerable to exploitation.

Singh added that victims are almost always respectful of each other's religious identity and “celebrate Diwali, Eid and Holi all together.”

The path to follow

While discussing the various challenges of fighting the sex trade, Singh admits that the worst aspect of the fight by far is the social discrimination he has had to face.

On a practical level too, his work is fraught with pitfalls. He must decide whether he wants to work at the source of the problem, in the villages, or at the destination, in brothels, or in transit zones against dangerous migration. It must determine whether to pursue alternative forms of education to empower women in the sex trade, or simply address prostitution as a whole. He must choose between attacking pimps and brothel keepers or opposing corrupt police officers.

A commitment like Singh's turns into a lifelong personal struggle.

Singh says any change must come from the people. He says it is extremely important to instill in children the values ​​that make them good human beings, values ​​that foster a deeper connection with nature and society. “WWhen this human solidarity develops within people, the world will finally become a better place. This is his way forward,” he says.