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From debt to depression, the pandemic has hit India’s sex workers hard
Updated:
Updated:
July 03, 2021 12:16 IST
Since the pandemic broke, India’s roughly nine lakh female sex workers are out of work, steeped in debt, and at risk from the virus
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A sex worker receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Wadia Hospital in Mumbai.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Since the pandemic broke, India’s roughly nine lakh female sex workers are out of work, steeped in debt, and at risk from the virus
Sunita lives with her husband and son in a tiny room in a crowded Mumbai slum. Tin sheets make up the walls. A thin bedsheet, tightly tied across the room, acts as a partition between the kitchen and the rest of the house. Outside, a few yards away, is a common bathroom, which more than 200 people in the slum use. “Living here makes me anonymous. Mostly, I like that,” she says. Sunita has never invited her clients home.
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.