Kamathipura

Kamathipura, Asias largest red-light area is located in Mumbai, India (40 acres). It is a volatile mlange of urban decay, prostitution and child trafficking. With the help of this essay I have tried to establish the existing social, economic, political and legal context of Kamathipura. Kamathipura was established by the British for the entertainment of their troops in the early 1800s. After the British left India in 1947, the red-light area was taken over by local brothelkeepers and sex workers. Over the years Kamathipura expanded and is now considered to be a necessary social evil. Located in the heart of the city of Mumbai, it is populated by about 5,000 sex workers, male, female and transgender, either brothel-based or street-based. Kamathipura is also one of the most rundown areas in the city of Mumbai. There are thirteen lanes in Kamathipura and each lane is crowded with small huts, tea-stalls, shops, lodges, pawnshops, eating-joints and brothels. The brothels have tiny rooms separated from one another by thin curtains. The brothel rooms are rented out to sex workers on an hourly basis. These rooms are cheap; it costs anywhere from 20 to 100 Rupees to use the rooms. More than 40% of sex workers in Kamathipura are homeless. They live on the streets, on the footpaths and pavements. Their belongings fit in a small plastic bag which they carry with them everywhere they go. At night, they stand on the same street and solicit sex. When they get clients, they rent a brothelroom for some time and pay a share of their earnings to the brothel-keeper. Apart from sex workers, female and male brothel-keepers, pimps, clients and husbands and partners of sex workers are also seen on the streets of Kamathipura. Sex work is the primary business in the area and an income-generating option to those directly and indirectly involved in it. From sex workers, brothel owners, shopkeepers, restaurants owners, hotels/ bar owners to pimps, clients and the police, sex work is a moneymaking business. The government authorities do not talk about improving the life of sex workers in Kamathipura because if they do, they are being supportive of an illegal and immoral profession.

A majority of the residents of Kamathipura are migrants from other states of India and from neighboring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh. Once introduced to the sex industry, they do not return to their native places. Almost 90% of the people living in Kamathipura have some sexually transmitted infection at any given point in time and 70% are estimated to be HIV positive. The people living in Kamathipura belong to the low socioeconomic strata of Indian society. They are below the poverty line and cannot afford to live in any other location in the city. Kamathipura provides them with cheap accommodation, food, drinks and drugs. There are numerous dance bars, movie halls and gambling joints in the area for entertainment. People know each other and any newcomer is welcome provided he or she is willing to live in isolation to the outside world. No one ever protests against the deplorable situation of the area. If any government authority takes interest in the area, their business will be ruined, sex workers will be arrested and thousands of people in the area will be jobless and hungry. People in Kamathipura therefore live in silence and accept their clandestine existence. People here are infamous in the outside world and do not belong to the glitter and glory of Mumbai city. Their existence is confined to the margins of the society, to the thirteen lanes of Kamathipura. The anonymity of these lanes helps them forget their unfortunate past. No matter how harsh and dangerous it is, they all live here, finding acceptance in the apathy of Kamathipura. Their dignity, which is often questioned by the outside world, is not contested in Kamathipura. It is their belief that it is safe amidst its dangers! With nowhere to go it is their belief that kamathipura holds a constant future for them with a bare minimum provision of food. But there is a constant social decay in the society which is being neglected by people. Most of the sex workers are now preset with wrong notions inbuilt in them. They believe suffering is a part of their life that was inflicted on them in their childhood when they were raped for the first time. Also do they now believe that kamathipura is a place that holds security for them in this world. Often when rescued they fail to believe so. There is a numerous training session that needs to be provided to them to make them confident enough to move out into

the outer world. This only reflects the amount of torture that could be inflicted on them in the brothels. There needs to be urgent need and attention to be paid at stopping these dark business' that run in kamathipura. Luckily what AIDS couldn't do, a real estate boom is now doing. Kamathipura sits on prime land on Grant road, close to south and land here become too precious to be a red-light are. It is inevitable that the area will soon die granting freedom to all its slaves. But it is organized sex trade and exploitation that needs to be stopped, before sex will be sold on the streets, in parks and under bridges.