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Control
and Counteractions:
Trafficking, Women Sex Workers and the State
Preliminary
analysis of research findings in Nepal and Mumbai
Presented
by Meena M Shivdas at the DPhil Work in Progress Seminar, 2nd
November 2000, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK.
DPhil Supervisors: Drs A Cornwall and A M Goetz
Introduction
This
paper presents preliminary analysis from field research
undertaken on the trafficking of women between Nepal and Mumbai
for sex work. In Nepal, the research examined the state’s
commitment to address the trafficking of women to India and
studied whether returnee women are able to access state and
non-state institutions when they attempt to reintegrate and seek
redressal. In Mumbai, the research focus was on Nepali women’s
situations in the sex industry with a view to assessing their
agency in relation to improving their situations in brothels and
negotiating condom use to prevent HIV infection. My academic
interest in the issue stemmed from the fact that there are few
empirical studies on trafficked Nepali women and most of them
present the women as victims whether in Mumbai brothels or in
communities in Nepal. I wanted to see whether trafficked Nepali
women sex workers had any agency ie., choice in entering sex
work; autonomy to make decisions about their health, bodies and
sexuality; “voice” in natal families in Nepal; earn enough
to have disposable incomes to support families, buy property,
gold etc., given the circumstances under which they entered sex
work and the exploitative work conditions and if they were able
to improve their situations. I wanted to assess whether their
agency was adequate to protect them from HIV infection
particularly as state interventions on HIV envisage an important
role for sex workers in negotiating condom use to prevent the
spread of HIV infection through heterosexual contact. The first
research question therefore asked how Nepali women sex workers
were positioned in the various discourses on sex work,
trafficking and HIV that are constructed by state and non-state
actors. The second main task was to contrast these outsider
discourses to Nepali women sex workers’ own perceptions and
experiences in order to explore their situations in Mumbai
brothels and their attempts to reintegrate in communities upon
return to Nepal.
When
I began the research I had made a number of assumptions about
Nepali women’s situation in Mumbai with regard to their
foreign and marginalised status as the ‘other’ women sex
workers. I had assumed that their alien, marginalised status and
the exploitative conditions under which they worked could
adversely affect their personal capacity to negotiate with state
and non-state actors in Mumbai and impede their access to
quality health care. These assumptions were based on what I had
gleaned from the existing literature and discussions I had had
on a pre-fieldwork visit to Mumbai in July 1998. The
interpretations of trafficked Nepali women’s lives by
researchers and NGO activists echo the trends in global
discourses on trafficking and sex work that are polarised and
politicised. Global discourses construct women sex workers along
two distinct lines: women who migrate for sex work out of choice
and voluntarily sell their sexual labour; and women who are
trafficked for sex work are victims and have their sexual labour
commoditised and exploited. Women sex workers are perceived in a
binary and static manner in international debates and due
consideration is not given to the range of positions between
victims and agents which the women occupy. This is particularly
so with regard to how women negotiate with clients and madams in
their daily lives and interact with agents of the state -- the
police, social workers and medical practitioners -- and
non-state actors including NGOs, rescuers and counsellors. In
addition, the debates do not fully explore the women’s
perceptions of issues such as trafficking, migration and sex
work, their continued links with family and kin, and their
in/actions against traffickers.
My
main argument in the thesis is that the control of trafficked
Nepali women who have become sex workers in Mumbai and some of
whom have returned home, is expressed and mediated through
policy, action and intervention by different actors and
institutions. I see the different actors – both state and
non-state, acting out their intent to control the women’s
sexuality, their movements and their roles in a numbers of ways.
I also see a series of contradictions in the perceptions,
intentions, mediations and actions of these actors, particularly
in the stances/positions they take at different times and during
differing circumstances. The women’s capacity to resist,
oppose or negotiate, I found, is largely circumscribed by the
structures and processes of power that permeate their lives in
Nepal and Mumbai. However, I came across a few instances where
Nepali women sex workers in Mumbai and women returnees in Nepal
have been able to live their lives on their own terms to some
extent. The preliminary analysis of findings presented here is
an initial attempt to make sense of the empirical data. At this
point, I can say that my current understanding of trafficked
Nepali women’s lives has deepened and I am more aware of the
complexities in the way the state, the family and the community
perceive the women and seek to control their movements,
sexuality and roles.
The
first section of this paper lays out the analytical framework
used to understand the research findings. The research context
and the methods used to gather information then follow. A
section is devoted to issues that came up in the course of the
fieldwork and which raise questions on feminist methodology and
research ethics. The section on research findings sets down the
way in which Nepali women sex workers are posited in the various
discourses that attempt to understand their lives and contrasts
it with the women’s experiences in order to answer the
questions raised by the research.
Towards
an Analytical Framework
The
study employed feminist methodological preferences, including
oral history and recording personal narratives that sought a
women-centred perspective and focused on the experiential as a
way of locating agency. My research proposal recognised that
privileging women’s voices would present problems as the
women’s self-representations are also framed in ways that are
influenced by others’ (state and non-state actors)
representation of them. Therefore in my empirical work all
contradictions in the narratives have been recorded and form a
part of the analysis. By using an actor oriented analysis
posited by Long[1]
(1992) I explored the positions and actions of the various
actors[2]
involved and their interactions with the Nepali women. My aim
was to capture the interactions between the various actors. An
actor-oriented framework lends itself to a study of interactions
because it facilitates a focus on various actors and their
discourses and allows for the examination of interests,
perspectives, positions and levels of agency.
The
actor-oriented approach is particularly appropriate to use in a
research situation that addresses controversial and sensitive
issues – in this case, the details of the lives of trafficked
women sex workers. The approach allowed me to sketch a detailed
picture of the voices and actions of the various actors so that
contradictions could be teased out. For example, I found that
people often did not articulate precisely what they thought
about trafficked Nepali women, but their perceptions and
reservations about sex workers’ sexuality were often conveyed
in the way they posit sex workers’ lives and choices, and,
more clearly, when they interacted with the women. Trafficked
Nepali women returnees were often constructed as ‘innocent’
by the Nepal police in public discourses but when the women
expressed their agency by filing reports against traffickers,
the conduct of police officers was at variance to what had been
publicly expressed. Gender biases and moralistic depredations of
sex workers’ sexuality play a dominant part in the way the
Nepal police construct the women in the confines of the police
station. This difference between discourses in the public and
private spheres is similar to Murphy’s (1990) notion of
frontstage discourse and backstage commentary.
The
actor-oriented approach also helped me to position the women’s
discourses within the larger discourses that ‘others’
constructed about them. What struck me most about the women’s
articulations of their lives was the seamless way in which some
of the women could shift positions and present themselves and
their lives in different ways depending on the context and the
circumstances. This raised questions for me on the notion of the
self and its constructions and the possibility of negotiating
positions constantly in different articulations to suit the
context. The recurrent and problematic themes that emerged from
my data were the control of women’s sexuality, movements and
roles, and the perceptions and workings of the concepts of
choice and empowerment.
While
the actor-oriented framework was adequate to record discourses
and explore various positions, I found that in trying to
understand agency and power – specifically women’s capacity
to oppose and resist exploitative situations in sex work in
Mumbai and on return to Nepal, it did not move beyond locating
agency ie., the framework did not help me understand why agency
was possible in certain contexts and not in others. For example,
why certain returnees were able to exercise their legal rights
and not others, and why, in some cases, families collude with
traffickers. I find Foucault’s work on power (1978) and
Scott’s (1985) analysis of modes of resistance helpful to
identify and understand the dynamics of power and resistance in
everyday practices. While Foucault sees nodes of resistance in
power relations that have the capacity to mobilise people, Scott
notes that subordinate groups are able to apply a variety of
strategies to subvert the dominant agenda. Following Foucault
and Scott, Nepali women sex workers’ capacity to address
exploitation and oppression in their lives can be detected in
their encounters with gharwallies,
clients, other non-state and state actors in Mumbai, and in
Nepal. However, it is Michel de Certeau’s (1980; 1984) work on
‘strategies and tactics’ that helps me most to understand
the actions and decisions made by Nepali women sex workers and
returnees when they choose to express or not express their
agency.
Foucault
avers that there is a plurality of resistances in situations of
domination and these are distributed irregularly. In the case of
Nepali women sex workers this can be found in their varied
responses to power in Mumbai brothels and in Nepali communities
at home. Scott suggests that a wide range of forms of resistance
comprise the infrapolitics of subordinated groups. This is
evident among Nepali returnees when they use different NGOs for
different purposes and in Mumbai when Nepali women sex workers
employ subtle strategies to avoid work. However neither approach
answers my questions about why only some Nepali women are able
to return and bring their traffickers to book while others
continue to remain in Mumbai brothels even though all of them I
spoke with expressed anger at their situation. Michel de Certeau[3]
posits that a dominated group or individual can only resist a
system if they place themselves entirely outside the system and
devise a coherent strategy of resistance. While still within the
system, a dominated group or individual can only oppose the
system through ‘tactical’ moves that are made on grounds
that are still defined by the system. This distinction between
‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ explains the various
manifestations and levels of agency that trafficked Nepali women
display in Mumbai and Nepal.
Part
of my study on policy processes and their outcomes also entailed
the analysis of policy documents on trafficking in Nepal,
including laws and data from police files, and in Mumbai, laws
on sex work and HIV. My
work in this area was informed by feminist theories on sexuality
and the state (Cooper, 1995) and discourse analysis of policy
(Shore and Wright, 1997). I benefited from discussions with NGO
activists who worked on legal rights in Nepal and Mumbai.
Research
Context
There
are varying estimates of the numbers of women working in
Mumbai’s sex industry. A 1993 Asia Watch estimate pegs the
numbers at 100,000 whereas Barry (1995) asserts that there are
600,000 women in the Mumbai sex industry. There are only
guesstimates of the number of Nepali women sex workers in Mumbai
– the Indian Health Organisation (1993), an NGO, puts their
numbers between 40,000 and 50,000 whereas Nepali NGOs (O’Dea,
1993) assert that the numbers are 153,000. As to the numbers of
women trafficked every year to India, Nepali NGOs aver that
seven to ten thousand women enter India every year to work in
the sex industries. O’Dea (1993) points out that government
figures tend to downplay the numbers while NGO figures are
exaggerated. A study of data held by the Nepal police show that
in the last three years there have been less than 140 reports of
trafficking filed by returnees every year. My study is concerned
with the trajectory of trafficked Nepali women sex workers’
lives in the Mumbai sex industry and in Nepal as returnees and
does not attempt to speculate on the number of women entering
India every year or the number of women returning to Nepal.
Research
Methods
Between
July to December 1999 I was in Nepal and examined the roles
played by families, communities, traffickers, NGOs and the
police when women are moved across the border. I also assessed
the roles of NGOs and state institutions in relation to
women’s rehabilitation and reintegration into communities. I
also studied returnee women’s capacities as change agents
working towards ending trafficking and their efforts at
implicating their perpetrators through the criminal justice
system. The field sites were Kathmandu, Birgunj, Hetauda and
Sindhupalchowk. Kathmandu, the capital, in addition to having
central government offices also houses many non-state actors
including national NGOs who run rehabilitation centres for
returnees, funding agencies and international NGOs. Birgunj was
chosen because the district borders the state of Bihar in India
and serves as a transit point for trafficked women who are taken
across the Inarua border post to Raxaul on the Bihar side. The
villages of Sindhupalchowk district have been identified by the
Nepali government and NGOs as trafficking sites with established
trafficking network of dalalis
(middlemen/brokers) and brothel owners from Mumbai. Hetauda
district serves as a hinterland to Birgunj and is also known to
have trafficking networks.
I
was in Mumbai from January to May 2000 and compared the lives of
Nepali women sex workers and Indian women sex workers in terms
of their access to health care and capacity to earn and be peer[4]
educators. The conditions in brothels and Nepali women sex
workers’ capacity to negotiate with the gharwallies
(madams) and agents of the state were also explored. I assessed
the implications of HIV policy in Nepali women’s lives by
examining their access to health care and their status and
social support mechanism in the brothels after becoming sero-positive.
The main field site was Kamathipura. Kamathipura served as a red
light area for British troops since 1793 (Ballhatchet, 1980) and
has remained a densely populated red light area. Trafficked
Nepali women are part of the sex worker community in Kamathipura.
Rozario (1988) notes that Nepali women entered sex work in India
from the time of the Rana regime (1847-1951) and that their
numbers in Mumbai increased in the mid 1970s. Nepali women sex
workers are mainly found in bungalas
(up market houses) and kothis
(small houses). Limited research was also carried out at
Khetwadi and Bhandup-Sonapur. While Khetwadi has kothis
with Nepali women, the sex trade in minors also operates there
and it is difficult to enter the kothis,
the sex business in Bhandup-Sonapur is controlled by eunuchs and
there is a Nepali gulli
(street/alley) with kothis
of Nepali women.
The
methods of data gathering included semi structured interviews,
participant observation, policy analysis, analysis of NGO, GO
and media reports, PRA session and focus group discussions. In
Nepal I interviewed ten women returnees, thirty-five non-state
actors, eight donors and seventeen non-state actors. In Mumbai I
interviewed four[5]
Nepali women sex workers and one woman returnee who rescues
trafficked women, eighteen Indian women sex workers, four eunuch
sex workers, twenty non-state actors and seventeen state actors.
I also spoke to three Indian women sex workers who operated in
Sangli, Maharashtra, and where they have been able to get out of
the exploitative system of gharwallies
and pimps. A
detailed account of the various actors I met is given in
Annexure I.
Issues
during fieldwork
A
significant issue for me during the fieldwork was the dilemma of
conducting feminist research in a context where the power
differentials were apparent between me (a middle class, urban
and English educated feminist researcher) and the women whose
lives I was studying. Feminist research is supposed to bridge
realities of women’s lives with processes in the policy sphere
and engage in action oriented work which would empower the women
whose lives are under focus (Cook & Fonow, 1991; Maguire,
1987). Stanley and Wise (1983) point out that if the researched
are not part of the development of the methodology and the
research questions, then the feminist research approach adopted
is incomplete. Although I was aware of the unequal power
relations in my study and tried my best to include the women at
every stage of my research, the women were not part of the
development of the methodology. And there was no way of
assessing whether or not the research process had empowered the
women. I realised how much I had gained from the women, and how
what I had to offer by way of information and sharing my life
experiences, fell far short of what they gave me in return.
Another dilemma was my sense of discomfort with the physical
environment of the field sites – I never got over the filth
and garbage in Kamathipura, Mumbai, and every time I was there I
was reminded of my privileged position. It pained me to see
minors in the sex trade and sero-positive sex workers living on
the streets. In Nepal, the rehabilitation centres for women
returnees left me depressed as they confined the women to a
building and restrictions were placed on their movements. It was
an ironical mirroring of the way they were confined in the
brothels in Mumbai. There were gut wrenching moments when
returnee women struggled to speak of their experiences in Mumbai
brothels. The visits to prisons in the Kathmandu valley were
equally disturbing. Meeting and interviewing male and female
traffickers was emotionally draining given the set up –
crowded male and female prisons in the Kathmandu valley with
other prisoners looking over your shoulders, accounts of police
brutality and constant refrains of how they had been framed.
When
I started the fieldwork in both Nepal and Mumbai I was daunted
by the scope of what I had set out to do and feared that people
would not speak with me. In Nepal I worked with a women’s
rights coalition that also addressed the trafficking in Nepali
women as part of its agenda and put me in touch with the various
actors, in Mumbai, a sex workers’ group in Kamathipura helped
me set up contacts in the red light areas. It was relatively
easy to set up interviews in Nepal because the issue is seen as
a national priority and a source of embarrassment, apart from
the curious fact that I was Indian and researching the
trafficking of their women to my country. Nepal is a small
country and people were willing to help.
In Mumbai, I was filled with fear (all of it unfounded)
about being in the red light areas but the sex workers’ group
showed me around and I learnt to navigate for myself in the
warren of lanes with brothels, shops, clinics, households and
beer bars.
In
Nepal, I found that people wanted to first establish the motives
for my research and clarify a number of questions including
whether I had plans to disseminate the findings to NGOs and GOs,
and whether I intended to help trapped Nepali women in Mumbai.
Initially, I had expected some level of hostility given my
nationality and the events surrounding the repatriation of
nearly 200 Nepali women sex workers from Mumbai in 1996 which
led people in Nepal to believe that India considered Nepal to be
an AIDS dumping ground after having exploited the women.
However, there was more of a recognition now that the Nepali
hand in trafficking was also responsible for the movement of
young Nepali women to Mumbai for sex work. I found support and
encouragement for my work from the women’s coalition I worked
with and from the Nepal police, particularly the Deputy
Inspector General of Nepal police responsible for addressing
trafficking, crimes against women and training and the women
police officers who addressed crimes against women. I was also
extremely lucky to have detailed interviews and discussions with
a few of the returnee women.
In
Mumbai, people were less accessible – particularly government
officials. That said, I managed to interview key people from the
government involved in the 1996 rescue operations and NGOs who
continue to work on the issue. A defining moment for my research
was when the peer group at the ASHA (AIDS STD Health Action)
project of the Mumbai municipal corporation, agreed to work with
me and help me set up contacts in the red light areas. After
many unsuccessful attempts at establishing contact with Nepali
women sex workers in Mumbai (because they isolate themselves
from the community), I was grateful when the Nepali peer workers
at PSI (Population Services International) agreed to speak with
me.
Evidently
from the above account, the field experience was a series of
highs and lows that often left me emotionally and physically
exhausted. I came away feeling that findings from my study could
contribute to policy outcomes or programme initiatives. In
Nepal, some of my findings have been incorporated into a project
addressing trafficking of women and girls implemented by a human
rights group in three districts. I helped to design a
questionnaire in collaboration with women returnees for the
Nepal police to use in their informal negotiations with the
Indian police on interventions at borders. In addition, a human
rights group has used findings from my fieldwork about the
framing of traffickers to implement a project on penal reforms.
In Mumbai, I hope to work in collaboration with peer educators
of PSI on a sexual health manual addressing the concerns of sex
workers.
Research
findings
This
section outlines what I see as discourses[6]
of control of women sex workers and returnees in Nepal and
Mumbai and how this contrasts with the women’s experiences. I
show that the different forms of control seek to address
different aspects of the women’s lives particularly their
sexuality, their movements and the roles they are expected to
play. I establish that Nepali women’s responses are
circumscribed by structures of power and control in the various
locations, the discrimination and biases they face from state
and non-state actors, and the binding factors of family
relationships. I argue that although Nepali women demonstrate
agency in certain instances in Mumbai brothels, the forms of
agency are not adequate to protect them from becoming infected
with HIV or be able to successfully negotiate condom use among
clients. I also argue that, in Nepal, interventions by state and
non-state actors although seemingly well intentioned, may
actually serve to further alienate returnee women’s
reintegration into the community.
Looking
at Discourses of Control in Nepal
The
nation’s daughters defiled -- NGO discourses on trafficking
NGO
discourses in Nepal are mainly framed in a nationalist context
from a perspective of ownership of the women, refer to
trafficked women as hamru
chelibetiharu
‘our daughters’ and see the movement of women to India for
sex work as a national shame and embarrassment. Trafficking
discourses are split along two lines – the abolitionist
position where trafficking and sex work are seen as criminal and
exploitative, and the sex workers’ rights position where
trafficking is seen as exploitative but the notion of choice in
sex work is recognised. This split in discourses echoes the
patterns in international debates on trafficking.
The
discourse by abolitionist NGOs is mainly framed from the
standpoint of coercion and being lured away to a foreign country
and sees the women and girls as innocent and entirely lacking in
agency. This perception often colours many NGO positions and
when NGO activists are confronted by the fact that many of the
women they meet in Mumbai brothels do not wish to return home, a
sense of disbelief is often expressed. The notion of
‘choice’ is ignored in many of the discourses and if alluded
to, is treated in a simplistic way – ie., recognising that
Nepali women may have been brainwashed into saying that they
came to Mumbai out of choice. This simplistic interpretation
does not consider the varying degrees of choice that women make
and ignores the circumstances under which this choice is
expressed in Mumbai. More importantly, the web of social and
familial obligations and perceptions that bind Nepali women sex
workers in Mumbai and which play a part in decisions made to
continue with sex work are often ignored.
NGOs
which support sex workers’ rights also frame trafficking
discourses from the standpoint of coercion and the luring of
young, innocent women by a network of traffickers but they also
recognise that choice in sex work exists. However, not all NGOs
that recognise choice in sex work acknowledge family collusion
in trafficking. District-based NGOs, on the other hand, frame
the trafficking discourse in a more nuanced manner with a deeper
perception and understanding of family involvement in
trafficking and based on a realistic assessment of returnee
women’s situations. They also tend not to conflate
trafficking, sex work and HIV issues in their work with
women’s and community groups as they face a lot of resistance
when they raise these issues in discussions at the village
level. The reasons for the difference in perceptions among
Kathmandu based NGOs and district NGOs could be the way
international debates have influenced national debates and the
influence of donors (bilaterals and multilaterals) who tend to
support projects that have a more ‘globalised’ position on
trafficking.
Some
activists acknowledge that an important element of trafficking
in the Nepali context is the perceived collusion of family
members and the network of dalalis
or middlemen at the local and community levels. Political
patronage enjoyed by some ‘prominent’ traffickers in Nepal
and brothel owners in Mumbai, particularly the way certain
parliamentarians prevail on the police to drop investigations
against ‘their people’, is also identified by NGOs as a
contributory factor in the trafficking of women to India.
Despite
having different positions on sex work ie., either abolitionist,
or focussing on sex workers’ rights, the dominant imagery in
all NGO discourses on trafficking is of the nation’s daughters
being defiled in India. This dominant imagery circumscribes
their interpretation of trafficking and sex work. NGOs emphasise
the sexual usage of trafficked Nepali women by foreign men and
do not acknowledge the fact that the women make money from the
sexual encounters in Mumbai or that some returnees may engage in
sex work in Nepal. This notion of being ‘sexually used’ and
‘sullied’ also colours the way returnees are perceived and
treated in NGO rehabilitation centres (please refer to section
below on rehabilitation of returnees). In addition, NGOs who
recognise choice in sex work also tend to frame their
interpretations of returnee women’s sexuality on the same
moral basis that abolitionist NGOs use and tend to curtail
returnee women’s movements and dictate the way returnees
mobilise and function as change agents. This raises questions
about control and the notion of choice: why do NGOs try to
control returnee women’s movements and their expression of
sexuality? How is it that even NGOs who purport to recognise
choice do not pay attention to returnee women’s choice when
they assume that returnees can become change agents as part of
the rehabilitation process?
Contamination
and containment -- NGO discourses on HIV
NGOs
involved in raising awareness about HIV/AIDS perceive HIV
infection as a consequence of being trafficked, and, present
messages on the themes of ‘infection’, ‘ostracisation’
and ‘death’ in their skits and discussions. Most NGO
projects focus on ‘behaviour change intervention’ or
‘targeted intervention’ and tend to see returnee
women sex workers as a high-risk category for HIV infections.
Some NGOs believe in the notion that when HIV is addressed in
trafficking discourses then it becomes more powerful and deters
people (local level politicians/village networks etc) from
getting involved in trafficking. While not all NGOs addressing
the trafficking issue also address the HIV issue, those running
rehabilitation centres generally address HIV issues particularly
the management of infections.
Earlier
sero-positive returnees could return and get assimilated into
the community, however with increased awareness of HIV this is
not the case as there is a perception that women from the thulo
sahar or big city (Mumbai) are dirty. While returnees are
encouraged to work as change agents by NGOs, questions are
raised about the women’s sexuality and there are reservations
expressed about their sexual behaviour. Some NGOs seem to feel
that HIV positive returnees cannot have sexual relationships or
get married. Others feel that perhaps marriage might be a safer
option as then the woman would not have multiple sexual
partners. Besides having to contend with NGO biases, sero-positive
returnees have to adjust to life in the community where
misconceptions about the spread of HIV infection prevail and
where there is some form of social exclusion of families with
daughters who have the ‘Bombay disease’ – AIDS.
Interestingly in their bid to focus on women returnees, NGOs pay
very little attention to the HIV status of lahures
or male seasonal migrants to India who are as likely to carry
the HIV virus.
Evidently,
in trying to contain the spread of infection the main factor
seen to be at the centre is the control of sero-positive women
returnees’ sexuality. Ironically, the heightened awareness
about HIV may have generated not only misconceptions about
spreading of the disease but also increased suspicions about the
‘dirty state’ of women who have been to Mumbai.
The
coralling of returnees – NGO discourses on rehabilitation
Returnee
women’s first step in the readjustment to life in Nepal after
sex work in India is seen in terms of rehabilitation ie.,
confinement in NGO shelters where counselling, initial medical
attention, help with legally prosecuting traffickers, and, work
skills training are provided. While their being locked up in
these shelters is presented as a security measure, what
immediately comes to mind is the similarity of being locked away
in brothels in India. Rehabilitation centres seem to have a
simplistic notion of reintegrating the women into society and
train the women in sewing, knitting and handicrafts. While some
NGOs have recognised the limitation of these activities once the
women return to their villages and have instead started
micro-credit projects for livestock rearing, the majority of
NGOs that address rehabilitation issues continue with the
sewing-knitting routine without considering the marketing and
sustainability aspects of these endeavours.
In
addition to security measures, the other main issue of concern
to NGOs seems to be the expression of returnee women’s
sexuality. Upon return, some of the trafficked women rescued by
Maiti Nepal work with the NGO as change agents in awareness
raising exercises – either patrolling the borders with the
police or working in their prevention and transit camps. Other
NGOs, for example, WOREC (Women’s Rehabilitation Centre) have
the returnees working in village communities. While they bring
their personal experiences into play during these efforts, they
are often held back when they attempt to work independently of
NGOs or have intimate relations with men without marrying them.
A case in point is the experience of the women who were part of Shakti
Samuha (a group
of women returnees from the 1996 group who tried to work as a
collective) – the work carried out was often subsumed under
the work of the NGO (Women’s Rehabilitation Centre or WOREC).
One of the returnees was also asked to leave the centre and the
group because she allegedly had a boyfriend. In the case of
Maiti Nepal, the policy for returnees is ‘no sex’ as against
‘safe sex’. Another rehabilitation centre arranges marriages
for returnees, this particular NGO is one that follows Christian
values and may well be involved in proselytisation. The
discourse constructs a moralistic interpretation of what is
deemed to be socially acceptable form of sexual behaviour for
women and attempts to rein in their sexual expressions in
relationships that are not socially sanctioned.
From
the foregoing, returnees who engage in interactions with NGOs
seemed to have problems reintegrating in communities. In
contrast, when I spoke with one returnee in Kathmandu who had
returned on her own, it seemed to me that she had reintegrated
herself into the community in a far easier manner than those who
had come back to the country through NGO rehabilitation schemes.
The returnee was working in a carpet factory and living with
family members. A
Nepali woman sex worker in Mumbai I spoke with recounted that
three of her friends had returned home and since married.
Apparently their stories to the community was that they had been
working in a carpet factory in Kashmir so that they could get
married without any problems. From the women’s stories in
Kathmandu it is clear that unless they present themselves as
‘clean’ women who have not worked in the sex industry, their
chances of getting married become slim. So, the women learn to
present themselves in ways that society expects them to –
after all, as one Nepali woman in Mumbai put it, ‘… it’s
what the men expect to hear’. Evidently then, women who are
associated with NGO rehabilitation schemes are already marked
and would not have a chance to recreate their Indian lives in a
manner deemed acceptable in order to get reintegrated.
While
some returnees have marriages arranged for them by NGOs and
others become change-agents with NGOs, there are many others who
quietly integrate into their communities. However, an activist
working on the issue for over eighteen years in villages
suggests that ten years ago it was easier for returnee women to
marry and get integrated into the community. The situation now
where NGOs and donors have created a ‘heightened’ awareness
about trafficking and its links with sex work and HIV does not
bode well for women’s ‘quiet’ returns given the public
stigma attached to women and girls who are brought by NGOs to
get integrated into their communities.
NGOs
clearly see returnee women’s reintegration only in terms of
rehabilitation (confined in centres) and becoming change agents
(raising awareness against trafficking in communities,
patrolling border areas with the police and becoming involved in
lobbying and advocacy work) and tend to keep the reins on any
expression of their sexuality. By corralling women’s
expression of their sexuality through curbing their interactions
with men or getting them married so that their sexuality can be
expressed within the confines of a socially sanctioned
institution, NGOs seek to control returnee women’s sexuality.
Innocent
daughters, cunning whores – State discourses on trafficking
The
law on trafficking in Nepal seeks to protect ‘the defiled
daughters’ who have been despoiled in a foreign land (mainly
India) through placing the burden of proof on the accused.
Trafficking of women and girls is the only crime against women
where the women’s versions of the crime are
believed by the state and where their sexuality is not
open to being questioned. It is a crime against women that is
deemed unpardonable by the monarch. However, while the
protectionist stance of the state is evident in the law, the
agents of the state, particularly the police, tend to view
returnees as ‘cunning whores’ as opposed to the ‘innocent
daughters’. In Nepal, women returnees speak of the way the
police interrogate them during filing of reports and how they
are made to feel that it was their fault that they were
trafficked to India and became sex workers. NGOs aver that
women’s cells are not vested with enough power to take action
against traffickers. On the other hand, the police are of the
view that when NGOs sometimes give leads on instances of
trafficking for them to investigate, in cases where the family
is involved ie., when women are accompanied by family members,
the police are unable to act. The police therefore play a part
in both facilitating and impeding returnee women’s access to
the judicial system depending on the way they choose to act or
not act. Government lawyers in districts on the other hand, are
known to act for traffickers because they want to make more
money. Evidently, while the policy may aim to protect the
defiled daughters, the women still have to contend with agents
of the state who see them as cunning whores and women whose
cases they are forced to defend because the state sees it as a
responsibility when they would much rather take up the cases of
those who are in a position to pay them more.
At
another level, the Ministry for Women and Social Welfare has
finalised the National Action Plan (NAP) on trafficking in women
and girls. The policy clearly spells out an abolitionist stance
on trafficking through setting out the main features of the NAP
as prevention, protection, rescue, rehabilitation and
reintegration of victims into society. A national task force has
been formed and district level task forces have been established
in twenty-four prone districts. The NAP calls for actions
including review of laws, fines for traffickers, more awareness
raising programmes, alleviation of poverty and control of STIs
and HIV. The Ministry for Local Administration and an NGO
working on trafficking and legal issues are to collaborate on a
registration exercise which will track the movement of women and
girls at the ward level (the local level administrative body).
Plans are being discussed on how to make parents responsible if
no proper explanation is offered when daughters go missing.
While the above measures are seen as a commitment by the State
to address trafficking, it is interesting to note that a new
bill on trafficking has still not seen the light of day because
there are various versions of it and the ownership of the bill
is at stake. These versions are a bill drafted by the police and
the Home Ministry with the help of the US Embassy, a bill
drafted by an NGO with funding from UNICEF and a review of the
laws on trafficking undertaken by the Ministry of Women and
Social Welfare. The issue of ownership has now been resolved and
ILO is funding the line ministry to draft the final version.
While
the thread running through all of the state’s mechanisms and
processes is one of control – of women’s movements and of
their sexuality, other points on policy intent can also be
raised. A case in point is the ambivalence expressed by policy
and action regarding perceptions of returnee women’s sexuality
through the implicit notion that women’s sexuality once
defiled by foreign men is dangerous. That ‘deviant’
women’s (read returnee sex workers’) movements have to be
monitored and protected but that agents of the state are not
above harassing the women because they are considered to be
immoral is another example of the state’s ambivalence
regarding women’s sexuality. While the state is concerned
about the potential threat posed by returnee women’s sexual
history, the sexual behaviour of male lahures
(seasonal migrants) in India and the threat posed to their
wives/partners in Nepal because of that is not open to any such
question. The state also does not perceive domestic sex workers
who operate in Nepal as being ‘dirty’ and ‘infectious’
in the way they see returnee sex workers.
Denial,
collusion and acceptance -- family discourses on trafficking and
sex work
In
Nepal, the family and community seem to move between acceptance
and collusion in trafficking and sex work to actively opposing
trafficking of women for the sex trade through participating in
NGO initiated community vigilance and surveillance systems.
Here, polarised images of the family and the community are
encountered and one can place the articulations in a spectrum of
contradictions through the varied negotiations and
rationalisations that emerge. Not all families collude, but some
families do and not everyone in the community is part of the
trafficking ring but some are, particularly those in local level
politics. Families often find it difficult to access police help
when their women kin are trafficked or go missing because of the
attitudes of police personnel in the villages.
From
my discussions and interviews it is apparent that some state and
non-state actors choose not to acknowledge family involvement in
trafficking as it does not fit with their take on women and
families as ‘victims’ in trafficking. District based NGOs
however, recognise that family involvement is there inasmuch as
some form of consent can be detected, ie., families agree to
letting women go to work in either Kathmandu or India when
approached by people known to them who then offer them money in
lieu of what the woman would earn in her work. This shatters the
classic story line propagated by NGOs and donors about parents
selling their daughters to traffickers directly. Family members,
particularly male kin, are known to visit Mumbai a few times in
a year to collect money from the women. The women I spoke to in
Mumbai told me that in some cases when male kin visit Mumbai
brothels they often collect money from the gharwallies
and do not acknowledge their women kin. This behaviour fits with
what district NGOs in Nepal had to tell me about families
accepting money from sex work but not acknowledging that women
kin were sex workers. In other cases family members stay in the
brothels for a few weeks. One Nepali woman returnee told me that
when family members, particularly male kin visited, women are
often let off from sex work and help out with other routine
chores such as cooking and washing. Presumably this strategy of
a display of non-sexual activity is mainly to publicly convey to
the visitor that the women are not being sexually deviant and
that the gharwallies
can then be seen as good benefactors.
From
the above, again, the recurring factor that resonates through
the women’s lives is one of control of sexuality by the
families – ie., in this instance, kin, particularly male kin,
choosing not deal with the way the women are expressing their
sexuality in encounters not deemed as proper or sanctioned. This
public disavowal of women kin being in the sex industry in India
is also demonstrated by villagers when activists, development
workers and journalists ask about the whereabouts of women kin.
In addition to silence and hostility, villagers also resist NGO
questioning in other ways, for example, student activists report
that villagers often brand them as Maoist[7]
sympathisers and urge the community to not interact with them
and certain journalists are persona
non grata.
Sometimes, villagers may refer to other families as having sold
their daughters and use external markers such as tin roofs or
equipment in the house as indicators to confirm their suspicions
and deflect the focus on others.
Protected
whores, framed criminals -- traffickers’ discourses
Traffickers
(both women and men in prisons in the Kathmandu valley) were of
the view that the law was on the side of the trafficked women
and they never got a chance to vindicate themselves. Given the
way the law is formulated (ie., the burden of proof is on the
accused), the
traffickers I spoke with felt that it was easy for women to
frame them in trafficking cases as the law was on their side. A
majority of them said they were framed by people known to them
and by the women who they had trafficked. Male traffickers
reported that the women who had accused/framed them were women
who had married many times ie., their sexual conduct was already
open to question and therefore the women had not lost anything
by going into sex work. Traffickers tended to judge women from
the male-dominant framework of chastity and fidelity. According
to them women opt for sex work out of greed and many women are
convinced about the lucrative sex trade during the long journey
from Nepal. Both male and women traffickers spoke about the
political nexus in the trade and said that big time traffickers
with political patronage were able to get out of prisons, for
example, Shimla Tamang, a Nepali brothel owner who was only
jailed for two years. It was reported that she and her
accomplice were able to get their sentences shortened by paying
money into the campaign funds of a parliamentarian from the
Royalist Party. An examination of papers from the case also
reveals that the plaintiff died of AIDS related symptoms during
the course of the investigation and therefore the case had to be
dismissed.
Male
traffickers spoke bitterly of frequent comers[8]
who had worked out a system[9]
by which they arrange for themselves to be trafficked and sold
and re-sold so that they could split the money with the
traffickers. The male traffickers felt that the women were
gaining from the system and exploiting traffickers and hence
needed to be punished. One male trafficker said that women do
not enter the sex industry out of choice, ‘we know that this
is not a good profession. If a woman comes and says she did it
out of choice, I am willing to hang myself.’ However, during
general discussions many of the male traffickers maintained that
as 60% of the women get into sex work out of choice and 40% were
forced, traffickers were only responsible for 40% of the women
in Mumbai. Trafficker’ perceptions of trafficked women
demonstrate that while they construct the sex work profession as
‘not good’ they also try to absolve themselves of being the
bad men by maintaining that choice exists in sex work. Although
most of them denied ever visiting Mumbai, they felt that 50% of
sex workers[10]
in Mumbai were Nepali. Police
brutality was identified as the main reason for confessing to
their crime and the state was held responsible for making them
lose the best part of their lives and marking them as criminals.
NGO
activists in the districts were of the view that many of the
women traffickers often acted as fronts for male kin. This fact
was borne out when I met three women traffickers in the
Women’s Prison in Kathmandu who recounted that husbands/lovers
had played a part in their implication. For example, in one
case, a woman had been asked to arrange rooms to lodge the
trafficked women enroute to India as a consequence of which she
was implicated in the crime. However, the warden in the prison
suggested that I treat the women’s words with caution as she
had heard different versions of their stories at different times
and with different people.
The
significant issue that stood out for me in traffickers’
discourses was the way they constructed the women based on the
women’s sexuality and their perceived sexual behaviour which
were seen at variance to the norm and which then gave them the
license to traffic the women.
Looking
at Discourses of Control in Mumbai
Protectionist
laws, exploitative practices – State discourses on sex work
Policy
on sex work in Mumbai constructs the state as the rescuer and/or
protector. For example, the ITPA (Immoral Traffic Prevention
Act) gives the state the authority to arrange marriages for
rescued sex workers and restore their respectability. The Mumbai
police have the authority to conduct ‘rescues’ (raids?) on
brothels and place the women in remand homes if they think them
to be under age. However, it has been pointed out by activists,
lawyers and members of the Juvenile Welfare Board that the
Mumbai police tend to round up as many women as possible and get
the police hospital to classify them all to be minors. For
example, Fernandes et al (2000) report that many of the women
rescued during the 1996 raids on Mumbai brothels were not minors
(under 18 years). The Juvenile Welfare Board members in their
interviews with me also affirmed that many of the women brought
before them after police rescue operations in 1998 and 1999
under the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) were not minors. It is
interesting to note that when the police rescue women from
Mumbai brothels they tend to arraign them under the JJA rather
than the ITPA presumably because the use of ITPA entails
producing the women before a magistrate who can then hear the
women’s pleas. The pleas may include the fact that they want
to continue in the sex trade. Under the JJA, the women are
classified as minors needing protection and the question of
choice therefore does not arise.
At
another level, police officers who are street level state agents
construct the sex workers as the underclass/marginal dirty women
who need to be sexually used and who have to pay them to be
protected from state action. State action could be repatriation
for Nepali women sex workers who are assumed to be minors and
action against gharwallies
for employing minors. Police officers are known to collect hafta
or protection money and demand sexual services during their
beats and then during rescues the same officers round up the
women and take them to the local police chowkis
or posts. Activists and rescuers aver that women
‘rescued’ by the police are often HIV positive or
older women – two categories of sex workers gharwallies
want to get rid of – because the police and gharwallies
are in cahoots with one another. This fact is also borne out
when returnees recount that gharwallies
pay bribes to the police to obtain the release of
‘healthy’ women who have fallen into the police
dragnet. Another returnee told me that Nepali women do not trust
the Mumbai police because they never know under which guise they
might encounter them. For example, they could present themselves
as decoy clients, paying clients, clients who are getting
service in lieu of protection, abusive clients and police
officers conducting rescues under official orders or in
conjunction with rescuers.
The
state of Maharashtra has no specific policy on HIV but follows
strategies set out by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).
NACO strategies are based on guidelines issued by the World Bank
and UNAIDS. These guidelines are mainly about sero-surveillance,
sentinel surveys and targeted intervention protocol. The Mumbai
District AIDS Control Society (MDACS) which oversees NACO’s
directives in Mumbai, works through NGOs to step up awareness
campaigns and condom distribution. However, NGOs point out that
MDACS functions like a bureaucracy and considerable red tape is
encountered during the course of their work. So far no
evaluation of MDACS has been carried out. NGOs also aver that
the quality of care encountered in government run HIV/AIDS
clinics and hospitals is poor and medical personnel are known to
discriminate against sex workers particularly sero-positive sex
workers. In addition state actors who run the remand homes and
medical personnel who interact with the women in these shelters
tend to view the sex workers as dirty women and rundis
or whores who carry disease.
The
various discourses therefore construct the women in a binary
manner – they are seen as either victims who have to be
rescued and returned safely to their families and country or as
dirty whores who have to be sexually used (by street level
agents of the state). Because they carry the sexual stigma of
being used by many men, they are treated with disdain (by state
actors in hospitals and remand homes) and by the police when
arrangements are made to repatriate them.
Making
madonnas out of whores – rescuers’ discourses
Rescuers,
who are mainly individual crusading men, perceive Nepali sex
workers as innocent victims who need to be taken out of brothels
and handed to the care of either clients who have expressed a
desire to marry them, or to the NGOs in Nepal who would
rehabilitate them. The perception guiding their moves is
obviously one where they construct Nepali women sex workers as
sexually deviant women who need their sexuality controlled
either through marriage or through rehabilitation in rescue
homes. In the state-run remand homes and private shelters, the
dominant view is of seeing the Nepali women as young victims who
need to be returned home.
Three
male rescuers I met all worked from the premise that the women
want to opt out of the trade and the rescuers also acted on
requests made by clients who wish to marry the women. One
rescuer (an ex Army officer) who only rescues Nepali women told
me that he soon discovered the women were using the clients to
get out of the trade and had no intentions of marrying the men.
This he took as further evidence that the women were desperate
to get out of the brothels and return to their homes because
they were innocent victims who were forced to become sex
workers. Another rescuer (a former politician) arranged
marriages for the rescued women. An interesting aspect of
rescues was that when a suspended Deputy Municipal Commissioner
who has now been reinstated took it upon himself to conduct mass
raids in 1995-1996, the entire community from the red light
areas mobilised to protest. Gharwallies,
pimps and sex workers from the Indian and Nepali brothels, and
NGO activists came together under the leadership of the dalit
poet politician Namdeo Dhasal and took out a ‘morcha’ or a protest march and petitioned the government
regarding police and official harassment. The series of raids
had left everyone (social workers, gharwallies,
clients, NGOs, sex workers) incensed because sex workers never
knew when they may be rounded up and the NGO and GO run remand
homes were inadequately prepared to receive all those rescued.
Further, NGOs may have also felt a threat to their existence and
services if the sex industry had got dismantled. The Deputy
Municipal Commissioner recounted in his interview with me about
the way Nepali gharwallies
were more aggressive with him possibly because they had more
money and had monetary arrangements worked out with the local
police which was not helping them during his raids.
Helpless,
struggling victims Vs filial,
practical women –
NGO discourses
Two
distinct positions in NGO discourses on sex work can be
discerned in Mumbai which somewhat echo the positions in Nepal.
Abolitionists who call for the sex trade to cease because of the
exploitation and abuse tend to construct the Nepali women as
helpless victims who are struggling to get out of the trade but
cannot because they are trapped in exploitative structures. Sex
workers’ rights advocates on the other hand call for better
work conditions and elimination of exploitation and perceive
Nepali women as individuals who continue to meet family
obligations and are practical about such issues as returning
home and reintegrating. NGOs operating in Kamathipura are more
social work oriented (provide services – arrange medical check
ups; counsel; arrange ration cards for food from the public
distribution system for Indian sex workers) and see sex work as
being totally exploitative. Empowerment strategies identified by
such groups focus
on helping sex workers through facilitating their access to
health care, and offering education and childcare services for
their children. The focus is therefore not on empowering sex
workers to negotiate for better work conditions or break the
nexus of gharwallies
and police. NGO groups in Kamathipura acknowledge that their
contact with Nepali women sex workers is limited to provision of
childcare as the Nepali women tend to isolate themselves. Sex
workers’ rights advocates on the other hand focus on
empowerment strategies that address issues of health management
– STIs, HIV – and have been able to train Nepali peer
educators. Some groups operate medical facilities and offer
counselling under HIV/AIDS intervention projects and acknowledge
that Nepali women have been able to send money back home, own
land, educate children etc., and, more importantly, that Nepali
women have identified with the community in Mumbai and do not
wish to return. The head of PSI, an NGO that has Nepali peers
working in the Kamathipura and Khetwadi areas of Mumbai,
recounted that sero-positive Nepalis who receive treatment at
their clinic do not wish to return home. Nepali women who avail
of health services provided by PSI also do not wish to return.
She also recounted how a representative of Maiti Nepal had
refused to take three sero-positive Nepali women who had been
prepared to return. This incident raises questions about the
intentions of Nepali NGOs involved in rehabilitation.
Genenerally,
sex workers attached to NGOs with either of the two main
positions reflect the ideology spouted. However, when I spoke to
some of them alone without the hovering presence of NGO
representatives, their positions were different. For example,
the peer workers from the ASHA project of the municipal
corporation with whom I worked said many of them had come on
their own to Mumbai to work in the sex industry – they are
mainly from Karnataka, a neighbouring state where the Devadasi
system (temple prostitutes) is prevalent. Another Indian woman
sex worker elaborated on the strategies she used to work her way
to being a manager in a Nepali brothel in an interview with me.
At a seminar the next day, she presented herself as entirely
lacking in agency and dependent on NGO largesse to get her out
of the sex industry.
NGOs
are of the view that Indian sex workers are less accepting of
their situation and work than Nepalis. This could be because
Nepalis are in a foreign country and have fewer options open to
them. NGO discourses on sex workers frame Nepali women as being
better off than Indian women in terms of their access to private
health care, their capacity to earn more money and their access
to better nutrition. However, it is widely acknowledged that
Nepali women have far lesser freedom to move outside brothels
and they remain indebted to gharwallies
for 5-6 years after being sold. There is a tendency among NGOs
and police to conflate the situation of ‘minors’ with that
of ‘majors’ and club all of their situations as being
exploitative. The notion of negative choice or constrained
choice is often used to explain why women opt for sex work. The
oft-repeated remark among NGOS is
‘there are no other alternatives’. NGOs also feel
Nepali women are more likely to scrutinise help before accepting
it as they tend to isolate themselves in the Mumbai sex industry
and view ‘others’ ie., those of Indian origin rather
suspiciously.
Looking
at sex workers’ lives in Mumbai
Us
and Them – Indian sex workers’ discourses on the ‘other’
Indian
women sex workers see the Nepali women as the ‘other’ and
their construction of this ‘other’ is framed from a
standpoint of being different from themselves. Nepali women are
first and foremost seen as having more clients because they are
prepared to ‘do anything’ including kissing and anal sex to
take away most of the dhanda or business. Indian women also recognise that the
Nepali gharwallies
look after the women and that male kin and local Nepali women
interact with them socially in the brothels. Therefore, though
their movements outside the brothels are restricted, Nepali
women are able to get the support of their social networks. When
the Indian sex workers spoke to me about their Nepali colleagues
they always alluded to the women’s lack of freedom to move
outside the brothels as the main factor that set the Nepalis
apart from them. Indian women tended to pass disparaging remarks
about the way the Nepali women get sandwiched in rooms and spend
their free time watching Hindi movies, drinking beer and
smoking. Indian peer educators also felt that Nepali women
prefer to go to private clinics and are less open to interaction
with them when they go on their morning rounds in the area. They
also pointed out that Nepali gharwallies
and managers do not allow peer workers beyond the main door of
brothels.
While
the Indian women identify with the community in Kamathipura,
they still place themselves as the ‘bad’ women as opposed to
‘good’ married women in their dealings with state and
non-state actors. Their negotiations are conducted from an
unequal and different position which is evident when NGOs
coordinate peer education work amongst them. It is in the realm
of the bad women that they place themselves and Nepali women on
an equal footing. This also meant that they were supportive when
Nepali women’s lives were under threat. For example, an Indian
women manager of a Nepali brothel helped three women escape when
the gharwalli
was out of Mumbai. Indian women empathised with the Nepalis when
one of the women was murdered by a client and police
indifference on that evening allowed the client to get away. He
was later apprehended. One Indian peer educator summed up her
feelings towards the Nepalis thus, ‘they are like us, in the
same dhanda, so
we know what they are going through. But this is not their
country so they are afraid of the sarkar[11]
-- the police. Woh
dar ke baithei hai
– they live in fear.’
Nepali
women’s lives: a mixture of exploitation and agency?
I
see the Nepali women’s lives in a series of negotiations and
compliance with their understanding and actualisation of power
and agency differing under different circumstances. In concrete
terms, Nepali women have better access to health care because
they avail of private health services and they have a higher
capacity to earn money than the Indian women sex workers because
they are seen as exotic and fair skinned (therefore less dirty
ie., less infectious) and offer varied services. They also enjoy
better nutritional status. This is in contrast to the Mumbai
situation described in most literature. However, they have less
freedom of movement and are indebted for 5-6 years after being
sold. NGO and state interventions for their empowerment are
couched in ambiguous notions of empowerment which do not seek to
give the women complete control over their lives, bodies and
sexuality but gives them partial leeway towards a notion of
independence by facilitating their membership in peer groups.
HIV/AIDS
interventions by the state in Mumbai target sex workers because
they are seen as a risky group in the cycle of HIV infection.
The rationale is that women sex workers’ sexuality needs to be
controlled if they are not to become health risks to the general
public and that the onus is on the women to ensure condom usage.
However, the reality is that sex workers lose considerable
amount of income from having sex with condoms (Rao et al, 2000)
and in negotiations with clients, sex workers are not in a
position to enforce condom usage. There is insufficient focus on
exploring the possibility of promoting other forms of
non-penetrative sex that can be perceived as safe sex practices.
Some of these practices are already employed by sex workers
during encounters with difficult clients (see section on
countering control).
Access
to health care among Nepalis is considered good as they visit
private practitioners. However, quacks abound in Kamathipura and
many sex workers visit them for medical care. The state and NGOs
have not been able to break the monopoly on medical services by
quacks. A Nepali woman’s situation with health care after she
becomes HIV positive is dependent on her relationship with the gharwalli
ie, if she has been a good worker she is often given
money and gold and arrangements are made for her return to
Nepal. If the woman prefers to stay in Mumbai, she continues to
work till she develops full-blown AIDS. When she is too ill to
work she is often expected to help out with other chores such as
cooking or cleaning.
The
realities on the ground for Nepali women in relation to the HIV
epidemic in Mumbai are in contradiction with what is being
portrayed in Nepal by state and non-state actors. The discourses
in Nepal are mainly based on the events surrounding the 1996
raids and rescue operation. I found that Nepali women who form a
part of the sex worker population in Mumbai with HIV infection
rates of 68%, continue to work. Counselling services and
treatment for HIV related symptoms are provided by NGOs, private
and state agencies and medical practitioners. After they die of
AIDS, Nepali women’s funerals are arranged by the gharwallies
following Nepali Buddhist/animist rituals. While I saw abandoned
sero-positive Indian women on the roads, I did not see a single
Nepali woman abandoned in this way.
Medical
practitioners and some NGO workers have noted that Nepali women
have lower STIs (sexually transmitted infections) because they
provide more oral sex than penetration. Because of their
reputation to ‘please’ clients, NGO activists tend to
conclude that they are less likely to succeed in negotiating
condom usage among clients. This may answer why the rate of MTPs
(medical termination of pregnancies) among Nepali women is high.
Workers at the government clinic in Kamathipura told me that the
Nepali women they had interacted with assumed that because they
drank beer they would not contract STIs. There is a belief that
beer washes away infections.
Nepali
women are escorted by pimps or brothel managers when they visit
private medical facilities or when clients require them to visit
hotel rooms because gharwallies
fear they may run away. From accounts of their lives, I am able
to discern that they are able to exercise some level of agency
in terms of countering harassment from police, clients and gharwallies
but the power structures within the industry prevent the women
from changing the exploitative system. Nepali sex workers in
Mumbai recount that gharwallies
often do not insist on condom usage if clients are prepared to
pay more and when the women have just started sex work and may
be afraid to voice their concerns or are ignorant about STIs and
HIV. Therefore the policy implication of the exploitative
structures and work arrangements is that sex workers’ limited
agency is not adequate for them to prevent the spread of HIV
infection. But as pointed out earlier the concept of safe sex is
seen only in terms of condom use and sex workers are assumed to
be able to negotiate condom use among clients.
In
the following sections I will describe the differing accounts of
the industry as seen through the eyes of returnees and those who
choose to remain and attempt to understand the women’s lives
using Michel de Certeau’s conceptual distinction between
strategies and tactics.
The
Nepali women in Mumbai: building relationships and choosing to
remain
Nepali
women, like Indian women, build a web of relationships in the
sex work community and have long term clients who are seen as
lovers -- ‘aadmis’
or ‘men’. The women distinguish the aadmis
from their other clients by not using condoms with them. They
will also have children by the aadmis.
During the raids in 1996 when one Nepali woman was able to get
married to her Indian aadmi
the other Nepali women considered her to be lucky. Returnees
acknowledge that some of their encounters with certain clients
in Mumbai have been warm and platonic. One returnee recounted
how her Arab patron did not demand sexual services but they
enjoyed a warm friendship and another returnee spoke of clients
who hired them because they enjoyed speaking with them.
Significantly, NGOs in Nepal choose not to address aspects of
women’s lives as sex workers in Mumbai which do not fit into
their picture of exploitation and abuse.
Many
of the women do not wish to return home as they identify with
the community in Mumbai and are able to send money to kin in
Nepal. Those I spoke with pointed out that they had got used to
the life in Mumbai – good food, money, access to the TV and
Hindi movies – and did not wish to return. The words used were
‘aadat pad
gaya’ or living in Mumbai had become a habit. They also
acknowledge the hardships endured if they return – living in
remote villages without running water and electricity; growing
potatoes and herding livestock; living through hungry months.
Another important issue for them is the non-acceptance of
communities -- one Nepali woman I spoke to identified losing ‘izzat’
or ‘honour’ as the reason for her not wanting to return. The
woman said, ‘hamara izzat
becha gaya hai, ab
kaise muluk jaye?’
– ‘now that my honour has been sold how can I return
home?’ Significantly, as many as twelve women from the 1996
repatriation have returned to Mumbai to work citing
non-acceptance of the community and being branded as ‘bad
women’ by the local police as factors that influenced their
return.
Nepali
women also said that after they had paid up their sale price,
they are able to move in the sex industry – I spoke to one
woman who has been in Mumbai for over 25 years and operates
independently. An NGO working on HIV issues in certain Mumbai
suburbs (Juhu, Borivali and Kandivali) has reported that there
are instances of Nepali women working independently of gharwallies
and in conjunction with taxi drivers and rickshaw operators. An
interesting fact about Nepali gharwallies
is that many of them started off as trafficked sex workers and
then, over time, established their businesses.
From
the empirical data on Nepali women’s situations in Mumbai I
can discern some levels of agency among the women in a work
situation where they are able to forge relationships and
friendships in the community. The women are able to send money
to kin, buy property, put away money for house improvements (eg.,
tin roofs) and buy gold. Some of them take presents in cash and
kind when they return[12]
home for the festival of Dasain.
At the same time I can see them work out of exploitative work
conditions and structures and being unable to change the terms
of the trade. The Nepali women admitted that women are often
beaten by gharwallies
if they refuse to take clients. There are detailed accounts
elsewhere of how Nepali women are broken into the trade and
Nepali NGOs often rely on such accounts of brutality and
violence to show how Nepali women are treated in Mumbai. During
my fieldwork in Kamathipura, I encountered one instance of
violence and that was the murder of a Nepali sex worker. There
were no rescues conducted by the police during my period in
Kamathipura.
From
a distance –
returnees’ words
Returnees
tend to stress the exploitative conditions under which they
lived and worked in Mumbai. Some women recounted how
exploitation was considerably greater when there were many
clients and they were expected to service as many as
twenty-eight clients every night. However, clientele has reduced
considerably over the years. A Mumbai woman asserts that fears
over HIV and the police have driven down business. Returnees
spoke of the way they were beaten with electric cords by gharwallies
and how food and medical attention were withdrawn when they were
perceived to be obstinate and refused to ‘sit’ ie., work.
Returnees also spoke of newcomers committing suicide and minors
being hidden in cardboard cartons, under the floorboards or in
cupboards during police rescues. On being asked why women
continued to stay in Mumbai after the repayment period was over
and they were free to return, returnees felt women got used to
the easy life (good food, TV, Hindi movies, cosmetics) in Mumbai
and were loathe to return because they considered themselves to
be ‘zinda lash’
or ‘living corpses’ and ‘falane
ki bahu’ ‘anyone’s wife’ ie., ‘no
respectability’ and ‘sexually used’. Returnees also cited
village women’s desire for a glamorous life in Mumbai as a
factor that is played upon by traffickers when they lure women
to travel with them in the guise of wives to avoid NGO and GO
interventions at the borders.
Countering
Control
Nepali
women’s strategies to counter exploitation can be analysed
following Michel de Certeau’s conceptual distinction between
tactics and strategies where tactics, seen as moves made from
within a dominating system, does not allow for resistance to the
system. Resistance is only possible when strategies are devised
and exerted from outside the system. Women employ varying
tactics in Nepali brothels in Mumbai despite the fact that the
over-arching atmosphere is one of debt bondage for the first few
years of work. For example, a woman returnee was able to avoid
sex work for a few months because she claimed she had not
started menstruating. A Mumbai woman said she pretended to be
mad at the first brothel so that she could be sold to another
brothel. Nepali women in Mumbai and returnees admit that
capitulation is also used as a tactic to get the gharwallies off their backs. However, these moves because
they are circumscribed by the system itself, do not allow the
women to change the system but give them only partial leeway to
reach better work situations on a temporary basis. The overall
exploitative system continues to shape their work.
In
the same vein, while the women have an array of tactics to
handle difficult clients, for example, drunken clients are sent
away after thigh sex or other non-penetrative methods.
Sometimes the women are able to band together and throw a
difficult client out of the brothel, however, they continue to
feel vulnerable. Police clients bring pistols or ‘lathis’ (sticks) as part of their state paraphernalia. Some
clients are marked as violent – the man who murdered the
Nepali woman in Kamathipura in April 2000 had attacked three
other sex workers before.
While
tactical moves work to an extent and women are able to look
after their interests, their gambits are played out on grounds
laid out by the dominant actors. Using Michel de Certeau’s
interpretation of tactics, I can say that Nepali women’s
agency in the brothels is circumscribed by the structures and
power relations that make up the sex industry in Mumbai and they
are not able to change the situation or their conditions of
work.
In
Nepal, while many returnees are under the thumbs of NGOs
particularly those who live in rehabilitation centres and are
sero-positive, those who live out their roles as change agents
also face restrictions on their movements and decisions. Any
notion of resistance on their parts is countered by severe
restriction placed on them by NGOs.
An
example of a strategy of resistance in Michel de Certeau’s
definition of the term can be discerned in the way a Nepali
woman planned her escape over the three and a half year period
when she was in a brothel. By making the Indian male cleaner in
the brothel her ‘dharam
bhai[13]’ she was able to enlist his help in buying a
bus ticket to Nepal, scale down the wall of the brothel and
reach the bus station without being detected. By relying on the
non-Nepali link in the brothel which was deemed outside the
circle of power ie., a male Indian cleaner who was seen as a
servant, the woman was able to resist the system. The same women
made her way back to Kathmandu to confront her traffickers
through police action – a cousin is currently serving a prison
sentence while investigations are on. However, strategies of
resistance too are fraught
with problems. While the woman was able to exercise her
agency by escaping from Mumbai and prosecuting her traffickers
in Nepal, she still has to contend with the community disdain
and disapproval for publicly accusing a male relative. The
popular media in Nepal sensationalised her situation in Mumbai
by using some of the pictures she naively handed over to a
journalist when he interviewed her.
Change
agents in Nepal who work at the transit camp in Birgunj and
those who patrol the border at Inarua told me about the
hostility they face from people in the community who see them as
‘rundis from
Mumbai’ and are loathe to interact with them. In the same
vein, the women from Shakti
Samuha also face acute hostility in the villages where they
work.
Michel
de Certeau’s interpretation of a strategy of resistance places
it in the realm of the outside ie, operating from outside the
system. However, Nepali women who act as change agents to stop
trafficking in women from Nepal may be outside the boundaries of
the Indian brothel system but are still within the boundaries of
the complex Nepali trafficking system. They therefore still need
to build their power and devise strategies from within the same
system to counter trafficking. In other words, the women cannot
resist till they are out of the influence of NGOs and state
machinery and processes that are part of that system.
Problematic
Issues
While
my analysis thus far has been fairly easy to grasp, I find that
there are two areas that are particularly problematic. These are
the notion of choice in relation to Nepali women’s situation
in Mumbai and the concept of empowerment with regards to Nepali
women sex workers in Mumbai and returnees in Nepal. I have
attempted to tease out some of the issues connected with choice
and empowerment in this concluding section.
What
Choice?
The
notion of choice becomes problematic in relation to Nepali women
sex workers in Mumbai because of the circumstances under which
they have entered the trade and the terms of the trade which
place them under debt after being sold and do not give them
freedom of movement. Some NGOs based in Mumbai speak about
‘negative choice’ – when they want to explain that women
have no other options but sex work. The notion of negative
choice as posited by NGOs leaves out any scope of agency in
whatever form or level ie., subversion, opposition etc., and
constructs the women as merely hapless victims. This is not the
case with the women I spoke to because they were part of peer
groups and were in a position to voice concerns. I was therefore
able to discern some level of agency in the way some older
Nepali women operate on their own after being with gharwallies
for 25 years and in instances where ‘Mumbai’ women or
frequent comers visit Nepal during the festival of Dasain
and bring new girls and women.
However,
the question of choice in sex work for Nepali women is
problematic because the women do not see it as choice. Nepali
women construct themselves as ‘zinda
lash’ (living
corpse) and ‘falane
ki bahu’
(anyone’s wife) – both constructs that do not convey any
notion of choice but have an echo of having to accept the
situation. Many of the Indian sex workers I interviewed
perceive sex work as a means of livelihood born out of
‘majboori’
or ‘difficulty’. They tend to say that sex work is not ‘naukri’ or formal work. Therefore the sense/notion that sex
work is not permanent is implicit. However the Nepali women sex
workers said they saw sex work as ‘kaam’
or work because ‘khana
hai naa?’ (we have to eat, right?). Choice in sex work in this
situation even if seen as choice is made on grounds of survival
rather than a decision to do sex work because one wants to do
it. Clearly, the way in which western feminist works interpret
the notion of choice in sex work is limiting for the analysis of
trafficked Nepali women’s linguistic discourse on their lives.
Empowerment
for Whom?
In
Mumbai, notions of empowerment are shrouded in ambiguity as peer
group development takes place and most women I encountered felt
that to be empowered ‘social workers’ they needed to get out
of the trade. While at one level, this rationalisation suits the
abolitionist NGOs, the position also threatens their status quo
in being service providers to the community of sex workers and
their children. The empowerment strategies do not aim to
eliminate the exploitative structures made up of gharwallies and pimps. The notion of ‘empowering’ sex
workers to become peer educators has another problematic
dimension – while
the women are trained to distribute condoms, counsel on HIV,
offer assistance with going to clinics etc., ‘empowerment’
is also taken to mean moving away from sex work by the women ie.,
the women then tend to identify more with the NGO than the sex
worker community, pride themselves in having a steady income and
see the work of peer educators as respectable. However they
continue to live in the community, see themselves as social
workers and in some cases, continue with sex work. This has
implications for their work given NACO’s (National AIDS
Control Organisation) guidelines for HIV intervention among sex
workers where there is a stipulation that only active sex
workers can become peer educators because being ‘insiders’
they can have far more influence than ‘outsiders’. Another
point for policy makers and funders to consider is that a peer
group might fight shy of being identified as a sex workers’
group. A case in point is the peer group at the ASHA project
where the women saw the need to mobilise and organise sex
workers and get their collective registered as a women’s group
and not as a sex workers’ group. The women felt that if they
identified themselves a sex workers’ group they would run the
risk of being labelled ‘rundi
palten’ or
whores’ group because of the stigma attached to sex work. They
pointed out that they had already encountered other problems
with being seen as peer educators and having their identity as
sex workers made public. Two of the women in the group had
teenage sons who had objected to their mothers’ involvement in
sex work and the women had to move out of Kamathipura. However,
they continued to do business without the knowledge of their
sons.
In
Nepal, empowerment strategies followed by multilaterals and NGOs
focus on building women’s groups in villages with a view to
raising awareness on the issue and appealing to women as mothers
to protect young girls from being trafficked. There are two
problems with this approach – first, village women are not
necessarily the decision makers in families and second, any
approach that leaves out men, particularly male politicians at
the ward and village level runs the risk of not being considered
seriously. One multilateral and the partner NGO has realised
this weakness and begun village surveillance groups that include
males. NGOs that run rehabilitation centres in Nepal for rescued
women and returnees seem to consider empowerment to be about
sewing machines and knitting needles. Some have started
micro-credit programmes for livestock rearing. Empowerment here
is also taken to mean that the women do not become sexually
deviant in the future ie., the women express themselves sexually
only in marriages.
From
the foregoing, it is evident that the empirical data will help
me question the concepts and workings of empowerment.
Conclusion
and contributions of research
Given
my findings regarding Nepali women’s agency in Mumbai in the
light of my original assumptions, I feel the study offers a more
nuanced interpretation of Nepali sex workers’ lives which can
help state and non-state actors to frame their interventions in
a more informed way. In terms of developing the analysis more
theoretically, I feel the empirical data will help bring
together an analysis of women’s work and women’s sexuality
as sex work is a significant site of their convergence and
facilitate a sharper and more grounded analysis of sex
workers’ agency. The work will also contribute to debates on
transnationalism and the notion of living in different spaces
and cultures at the same time, and build on feminist academic
work that addresses women, policy and the state.
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