Poverty, want of easy money and pleasure ushering women to prostitution
Peter Chachei
Dimapur
A CELL PHONES RINGS in a lady’s handbag somewhere in the city. It’s her agent on the other end of the line. The pimp has arranged a client for her. Conversation continues and they finally settle on a perfect place for her to spend the night with a client.
“Mobile prostitutes” as Dr. Asungla terms sex workers who operate through phones and go to one place or the other to meet their clients. The clients, taking the advantage of cellular services, contact these prostitutes and thereby finalize the appointment. Sex workers with mobile phones thus have an advantage over those who only wait in the streets. “This is where we fail to track down the sex workers to give counseling,” says the lady doctor who also works for an NGO based in Dimapur dealing with the commercial sex workers. Asungla added that the risks of being infected with the deadly disease related to sex are on the verge of explosion. Most commonly, the disease termed as VDRL + ve, which is a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD), was found among the commercial workers she has encountered. They belong to the high-risk category of people likely to be infected with the deadly HIV/AIDS virus.
The prostitution scenario has changed with young girls from middle-class families becoming involved in the business. It has also come to light that unlike the past, when girls from poor families were forced to take up prostitution, a larger number of younger school drop-outs have joined the profession.
DSP of Women Cell Dimapur was also of the view and agreed that sex workers have started operating through cell phones which has contributed a lot to the inability to hold back the booming business of prostitution in the commercial hub of the state and added that their network has become a huge organized business in the city with girls finding a very easy way to earn big money.
Today, their network has broadened its area of operation. This problem envelops the personnel’s failure to put a check upon the booming business of prostitution. “There is no fixed area where the trade is been carried out these days,” the officer commented and further said that “even if we take them into custody there is no separate place to keep them which sometimes acts as an hurdle.” Then, very close to the busy train station here in Dimapur, by the side of the railway track, was a huddle of huts made of bamboo and synthetic plastic sheets.
But their occupants sit along by the railway track, with sparkling dresses with long dangling earrings just to attract the eye of the passerby and with their lips darkened with lipsticks. This is Railway Bazaar in Dimapur, one of the red light areas in the city, which has some commercial sex workers, according to conservative estimates.
A social worker articulated that Dimapur, being the commercial hub of the state and one of the north-east’s most important trading centers, with a large migrant population and a big military base, both of which has provided sex workers with regular business and contributed for its boom.
“The age of the sex workers ranges from as young as 17 to 42 years of age,” Naro, who works as an outreach worker for a Dimapur based NGO said and continued that among the local workers, most are school drop-outs. It is very strange, that it has gone up to that extend where one’s husband do the job of contacting the clients.
Prostitutes come to the area for three reasons: one by reason of poverty, second, because of the desire to earn easy money, and, third, they were brought there by want of earthly pleasure. But, one thing is obvious: that the families these girls came from were shattered families. Addicted fathers, dead or ill mothers or step-mothers, mothers or fathers having adulterous relationships -- these were the backgrounds of most the girls, she added.
Without a secure life, proper shelter and other amenities within a family, what can the girls do? Family is the basis and backbone of our society. If the girls had secure families, they wouldn’t have been candidates for prostitution. If their mothers had enough money to provide for their families’ basic needs, then the brothels would soon have been empty, Dr. Anungla added.
(Morung Express News)
