By Antra Bhaskar
Dark lipstick, loud makeup, bold clothes, curvaceous body, standing near a shady area waiting for a client, all these things come to our mind when we think of sex workers in India. However, we fail to realize that majority of sex worker India is clandestine due to unfavorable legal environment and discrimination against female sex workers. According to a survey conducted across Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu from September 2019 to November 2019, by Sarvojana Coalition, an NGO that works towards the empowerment of sex worker said 68% of women sex workers in India entered the profession ‘voluntarily’, due to factors such as lack of education and poverty.
LGBTQ+ community: 2 yrs after abrogation of Sec 377, a sneak-peak into ground reality By Abhishek Heda. Dated: 12/18/2020 11:23:37 PM
“They are still called out as “chhakka,” “hijda”, and subject to various homophobic, transphobic, and racial abuses. Not only this, there has been a subtle increase in the number of hate crimes against the LGBT+ community in India, with 181 incidents being recorded from Jan 2019 to June 2019. In 37 of these reported incidents, the victim was killed, acting as a livid testimonial that their situation is getting worse day by day.”
Touted as one of the biggest milestones in the movement by the LGBTQA community for equal rights, the abrogation of section 377 of the Indian penal code in 2018 by the Supreme Court was considered as a landmark judgment with an expectation that the situation of those people will considerably improve.