Half the Districts in India are Affected by Human Trafficking
According to a report of the National Commission for Women, (NCW) at least half of the 612 districts in the country are affected by trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation.
The NCW report says that in 378 districts, there are 1,794 identified places of origin from where females are trafficked and 1,016 areas where commercial sexual activities take place.
The NCW says that the promise of a job is the biggest way of deception and accounts for over 50 per cent of trafficking cases.
The states in southern and eastern India ae the most vulnerable as far as trafficking is concerned, say the report.
The report also found out that almost all the districts in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal are affected by this problem.
Tamil Nadu with 93.33 per cent of its districts are affected, is leading the tally of the states affected by human trafficking followed by Orissa with 86.66 per cent and Bihar 86.48 per cent.
The report further added that 2.4 per cent of the total female population in age group of 15-35 years in the country are affected by commercial sexual exploitation.
According to the report there are over 28 lakh commercial sex workers in the country. And over 43 percent women enter to this flesh trade in their minor ages.
The report expressed concern over the entry of minors in flesh trade from the regions where incidence of poverty and hunger are comparatively high
Reasons like violence against women, high rate of unemployment and lack of options contribute to the vulnerability of trafficking of adults, the report says.
The report says that gender discrimination and gender specific violence and crimes perpetuate the vulnerability of women and children and act as one of the reasons behind trafficking.
The report also says that more than 22 per cent women are trafficked and forced into flesh trade by family members.
Around 8 per cent women are trafficked by husbands or in-laws and friends or neighbours lure 18 per cent. More than 51 per cent women in commercial sex were trafficked either by family members or in-laws, the report says.
The report reveals that about 22 per cent of traffickers are not prosecuted due to their political backing.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Red light district swaps sin for skyscrapers in Mumbai
Red light district swaps sin for skyscrapers
Clara Lewis, TOI Crest 28 November 2009, 03:47pm IST
Mumbai
Brothel Kamathipura
Many brothels are now video parlours and shops selling CDs
Till about four years ago, garishly painted women in glittering attire were a common sight on Cursetji Shuklaji Street, a busy road in Mumbai's notorious red light district, Kamathipura. Once known as Safed Gully (White Lane) on account of the European prostitutes that it housed during the British Raj, Shuklaji Street was the place where, for years on end, one could find sex workers plying their trade. These days however, they're out there not to solicit but to await the private taxis that ferry them to dance bars in the suburbs.
From 50,000 sex workers in 1992 (a statistic recorded by the BMC as part of its AIDS documentation ) to a mere 1,600 today, Kamathipura and the adjoining Foras Road are a mere shadow of their former selves. The street-facing brothels have given way to little shops vending CDs and mobile phones; there's also a clutch of video parlours where boisterous youngsters throng to catch the latest Telugu blockbuster.
Gentrification is slowly descending on Kamathipura , like it has on many of Mumbai's distinctive boroughs. The one-storey , ground-hugging structures are making way for dizzy skyscrapers - two, of 35 storeys, have come up on Shuklaji Street, while another two, 47 storeys each, are nearing completion. Salim Balwa, director D B Realty, the company that's busy making over the area, is planning several more projects here. "The space crunch in Mumbai has meant that you go looking for land where no development has happened," he says. All the towers overlook Kamathipura.
Balwa, who's developed 10 lakh square feet in the area and is in the process of acquiring another 3.5 lakh, is sure that he's on to a good thing. "All said and done, the place is centrally located, and it is better than living in far-off Mira Road," he says. The present residents, most of whom live in houses that are about 100 sq ft in size, will get 300 sq ft after redevelopment, says Balwa. And, of course, there will be a more-than-neat profit for him.
It was the twin factors of AIDS and the Maharashtra government's redevelopment policy that played a major role in getting sex workers to move out of the oldest profession in the world and subsequently out of Kamathipura. The AIDS scare led to the first serious government intervention in the area's prostitution dens: Dr Jairaj Thanekar, Chief Executive Health Officer, BMC, who worked in Kamathipura for 15 years to implement the AIDS intervention programme, says the corporation played a key role in reducing the number of prostitutes . "From organising raids on the Yellappa markets down south - the main source of girls for Kamathipura - to raiding the brothels, we made it difficult for prostitution to function," he says. "From 1999 onwards, the number of sex workers started dwindling."
When the BMC intervened, the rate of transmission of HIV was a shocking four per cent. By then a large number of sex workers had died. "Brothel owners, faced with sex workers who kept falling ill, moved them out to other brothels in Mulund, Bhandup and Ghatkopar, but procuring new girls was also becoming difficult," says Thanekar. This and other factors - a reluctance among landlords, newly aware of AIDS, to lease out their premises to prostitution, spiralling rents, police raids, and the emergence of a new generation of financiers who got into more lucrative ventures - hastened the downward spiral of prostitution in Kamathipura.
The reconstruction wave of dilapidated buildings completed the process. "Several people were bought out by the builders," says a brothel owner. "Gangubai Chawl on 11th Kamathipura Lane was among the first to be torn down and reconstructed into a six-storey building by a private developer. Normal households moved in." The stigma attached to Kamathipura began to dwindle somewhat , and the newly reconstructed prostitution dens began to be put to other uses - for the last four years, businessmen have been renting out the infamous rooms to small manufacturing units. Mohammed Israr, a 22-year-old native of Bihar, who assembles travel bags for a local manufacturer, has rented 600 sq feet in a one-storey structure in Kamathipura. He pays a stiff monthly rent of Rs 12,000 for the space, but says that it's worth the money, given the central location.
Abdul Sattar, a local pan-beedi stall owner on Lane 13, has been in the business for the last 15 years. "Earlier, sex workers' clients frequented my stall," he says. "There were a lot of goons and hangers-on around. Now, proper businessmen come here. It's a welcome change, as people working in the vicinity are no longer looked down upon. There was a time when we were ashamed to tell our relatives that we lived and worked in Kamathipura . But not any more." Adds Sadiq Ismail, who owns a consumer goods shop on 12th Kamathipura Lane, "I live in a house above my shop with my wife, three sons and a daughter. There is nothing shameful about living here any more."
Street named desire
Kamathipura is Mumbai's oldest and Asia's largest red light district. It got its name from the Kamathis (workers) of Andhra Pradesh. They worked as labourers on construction sites. The neighbourhood also had Chinese residents who worked as dockhands and ran restaurants. Kamathipura was formerly Lal Bazaar, an area set aside by the British for their troops' sexual pleasures. By the end of the 19th century, Lal Bazaar was known as a "tolerated area" as prostitution was illegal. At the time, Bombay and to a lesser extent Calcutta were the most important cities in an expanding prostitution network.
Cursetji Shuklaji Street in Kamathipura was called Safed Gully as it was home to European prostitutes. The brothels here were classified into first, second and third class. In 1916, the British set up the Venereal Disease Clinic, the first of its kind in Bombay. The BMC took over the clinic in 1925.
Pleasure Island
The purest form of Afghan afeem (opium) was available only at Bachchuseth ki Wadi on Foras Road, a place famous for its kothewalis and mujras. Free-flowing liquor, the aroma of kebabs, the scent of mogra gajras and the resonance of ghungroos, musical instruments and melodious voices made it the most famous entertainment zone in Mumbai. In the 1970s and early '80s Bachchu Wadi was the haunt of Mumbai's underworld, with such kingpins as Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, and Dawood Ibrahim frequenting it. The kothewalis, trained in Hindustani music, were much sought after. "The place would come alive after sunset, and there was music and laughter till the wee hours of the morning," reminisces Abdul Rauf Sheikh, a pan-stall owner. But after R R Patil became home minister in 2003, policemen started forcibly shutting down the kothasat 12.30 am. Sheikh says that girls from Bihar, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh now rent out their rooms while they themselves work in beer bars in the city and suburbs. Shah Bano, a one-time singer and dancer at one of the kothasin Bachchu Wadi, now lives in Mira Road, dropping by once a week to meet her children who still live there. The children, however, have shunned the kothatradition and do odd jobs for a living.
Salim Balwa, director, D B Realty, is all set to change the face of Bachchu Wadi and Kamathipura in turn. Bachchu Wadi is to be his first redevelopment project in the area. The wadi has 280 tenants - of these 100 are kothewaliswho regularly hold mujraswhile the other 180 are normal households. For Balwa, the major stumbling block was that the two groups did not want to live in the same building. "So , over the course of several meetings it was decided that the 100 tenants who hold mujras would be given a separate building with a separate entrance and lift. And the rest would be in a different building. Once my door is closed, how does it matter who does what?"
Clara Lewis, TOI Crest 28 November 2009, 03:47pm IST
Mumbai
Brothel Kamathipura
Many brothels are now video parlours and shops selling CDs
Till about four years ago, garishly painted women in glittering attire were a common sight on Cursetji Shuklaji Street, a busy road in Mumbai's notorious red light district, Kamathipura. Once known as Safed Gully (White Lane) on account of the European prostitutes that it housed during the British Raj, Shuklaji Street was the place where, for years on end, one could find sex workers plying their trade. These days however, they're out there not to solicit but to await the private taxis that ferry them to dance bars in the suburbs.
From 50,000 sex workers in 1992 (a statistic recorded by the BMC as part of its AIDS documentation ) to a mere 1,600 today, Kamathipura and the adjoining Foras Road are a mere shadow of their former selves. The street-facing brothels have given way to little shops vending CDs and mobile phones; there's also a clutch of video parlours where boisterous youngsters throng to catch the latest Telugu blockbuster.
Gentrification is slowly descending on Kamathipura , like it has on many of Mumbai's distinctive boroughs. The one-storey , ground-hugging structures are making way for dizzy skyscrapers - two, of 35 storeys, have come up on Shuklaji Street, while another two, 47 storeys each, are nearing completion. Salim Balwa, director D B Realty, the company that's busy making over the area, is planning several more projects here. "The space crunch in Mumbai has meant that you go looking for land where no development has happened," he says. All the towers overlook Kamathipura.
Balwa, who's developed 10 lakh square feet in the area and is in the process of acquiring another 3.5 lakh, is sure that he's on to a good thing. "All said and done, the place is centrally located, and it is better than living in far-off Mira Road," he says. The present residents, most of whom live in houses that are about 100 sq ft in size, will get 300 sq ft after redevelopment, says Balwa. And, of course, there will be a more-than-neat profit for him.
It was the twin factors of AIDS and the Maharashtra government's redevelopment policy that played a major role in getting sex workers to move out of the oldest profession in the world and subsequently out of Kamathipura. The AIDS scare led to the first serious government intervention in the area's prostitution dens: Dr Jairaj Thanekar, Chief Executive Health Officer, BMC, who worked in Kamathipura for 15 years to implement the AIDS intervention programme, says the corporation played a key role in reducing the number of prostitutes . "From organising raids on the Yellappa markets down south - the main source of girls for Kamathipura - to raiding the brothels, we made it difficult for prostitution to function," he says. "From 1999 onwards, the number of sex workers started dwindling."
When the BMC intervened, the rate of transmission of HIV was a shocking four per cent. By then a large number of sex workers had died. "Brothel owners, faced with sex workers who kept falling ill, moved them out to other brothels in Mulund, Bhandup and Ghatkopar, but procuring new girls was also becoming difficult," says Thanekar. This and other factors - a reluctance among landlords, newly aware of AIDS, to lease out their premises to prostitution, spiralling rents, police raids, and the emergence of a new generation of financiers who got into more lucrative ventures - hastened the downward spiral of prostitution in Kamathipura.
The reconstruction wave of dilapidated buildings completed the process. "Several people were bought out by the builders," says a brothel owner. "Gangubai Chawl on 11th Kamathipura Lane was among the first to be torn down and reconstructed into a six-storey building by a private developer. Normal households moved in." The stigma attached to Kamathipura began to dwindle somewhat , and the newly reconstructed prostitution dens began to be put to other uses - for the last four years, businessmen have been renting out the infamous rooms to small manufacturing units. Mohammed Israr, a 22-year-old native of Bihar, who assembles travel bags for a local manufacturer, has rented 600 sq feet in a one-storey structure in Kamathipura. He pays a stiff monthly rent of Rs 12,000 for the space, but says that it's worth the money, given the central location.
Abdul Sattar, a local pan-beedi stall owner on Lane 13, has been in the business for the last 15 years. "Earlier, sex workers' clients frequented my stall," he says. "There were a lot of goons and hangers-on around. Now, proper businessmen come here. It's a welcome change, as people working in the vicinity are no longer looked down upon. There was a time when we were ashamed to tell our relatives that we lived and worked in Kamathipura . But not any more." Adds Sadiq Ismail, who owns a consumer goods shop on 12th Kamathipura Lane, "I live in a house above my shop with my wife, three sons and a daughter. There is nothing shameful about living here any more."
Street named desire
Kamathipura is Mumbai's oldest and Asia's largest red light district. It got its name from the Kamathis (workers) of Andhra Pradesh. They worked as labourers on construction sites. The neighbourhood also had Chinese residents who worked as dockhands and ran restaurants. Kamathipura was formerly Lal Bazaar, an area set aside by the British for their troops' sexual pleasures. By the end of the 19th century, Lal Bazaar was known as a "tolerated area" as prostitution was illegal. At the time, Bombay and to a lesser extent Calcutta were the most important cities in an expanding prostitution network.
Cursetji Shuklaji Street in Kamathipura was called Safed Gully as it was home to European prostitutes. The brothels here were classified into first, second and third class. In 1916, the British set up the Venereal Disease Clinic, the first of its kind in Bombay. The BMC took over the clinic in 1925.
Pleasure Island
The purest form of Afghan afeem (opium) was available only at Bachchuseth ki Wadi on Foras Road, a place famous for its kothewalis and mujras. Free-flowing liquor, the aroma of kebabs, the scent of mogra gajras and the resonance of ghungroos, musical instruments and melodious voices made it the most famous entertainment zone in Mumbai. In the 1970s and early '80s Bachchu Wadi was the haunt of Mumbai's underworld, with such kingpins as Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, and Dawood Ibrahim frequenting it. The kothewalis, trained in Hindustani music, were much sought after. "The place would come alive after sunset, and there was music and laughter till the wee hours of the morning," reminisces Abdul Rauf Sheikh, a pan-stall owner. But after R R Patil became home minister in 2003, policemen started forcibly shutting down the kothasat 12.30 am. Sheikh says that girls from Bihar, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh now rent out their rooms while they themselves work in beer bars in the city and suburbs. Shah Bano, a one-time singer and dancer at one of the kothasin Bachchu Wadi, now lives in Mira Road, dropping by once a week to meet her children who still live there. The children, however, have shunned the kothatradition and do odd jobs for a living.
Salim Balwa, director, D B Realty, is all set to change the face of Bachchu Wadi and Kamathipura in turn. Bachchu Wadi is to be his first redevelopment project in the area. The wadi has 280 tenants - of these 100 are kothewaliswho regularly hold mujraswhile the other 180 are normal households. For Balwa, the major stumbling block was that the two groups did not want to live in the same building. "So , over the course of several meetings it was decided that the 100 tenants who hold mujras would be given a separate building with a separate entrance and lift. And the rest would be in a different building. Once my door is closed, how does it matter who does what?"
Friday, November 06, 2009
Trafficking prevention in West Godavari Dist. of A.P.
THE HINDU
Date:06/11/2009
Andhra Pradesh - Eluru
3 towns gain notoriety for women trafficking
Staff Reporter
ELURU: Three towns -- Tanuku, Tadepalligudem and Kovvuru -- in West Godavari district earned notoriety for women trafficking, according to Superintendent of Police B. Balakrishna. Several victims were rescued from trafficking in these three towns during a series of raids by the police, the SP said at a meeting on women trafficking here on Thursday. He said 56 traffickers were arrested and 23 victims were sent to rescue homes for rehabilitation in the last two months.
Mr. Balakrishna said police were contemplating implication of the relatives of victims in cases relating to trafficking for reportedly abetting their kith and kin into the trade. In some cases, it was the parents and relatives who were selling their minor girls.
Date:06/11/2009
Andhra Pradesh - Eluru
3 towns gain notoriety for women trafficking
Staff Reporter
ELURU: Three towns -- Tanuku, Tadepalligudem and Kovvuru -- in West Godavari district earned notoriety for women trafficking, according to Superintendent of Police B. Balakrishna. Several victims were rescued from trafficking in these three towns during a series of raids by the police, the SP said at a meeting on women trafficking here on Thursday. He said 56 traffickers were arrested and 23 victims were sent to rescue homes for rehabilitation in the last two months.
Mr. Balakrishna said police were contemplating implication of the relatives of victims in cases relating to trafficking for reportedly abetting their kith and kin into the trade. In some cases, it was the parents and relatives who were selling their minor girls.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)