Appeared in Kathmandu Post on 4/3/2009 and Deccan Herald on 8/11/2008
Colin Todhunter talks to journalist-turned-activist Ruchira Gupta who has made a documentary on the brothels of Kamathipura in Mumbai, where women and girls from Nepal were kept in small four-by-four foot rooms and made to service 15 to 20 men a day
During the late 1990s, journalist-turned-activist Ruchira Gupta went to the brothels of Mumbai to make a documentary about sex trafficking, the award winning and extremely harrowing 'Selling of Innocents'. She says she had never before seen anything like the type of human exploitation that she encountered in the city's red light district. In response, she started an initiative called Apne Aap to help women and children who had been sexually exploited regain their independence.
Trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation is a worldwide, multi billion-dollar industry. One million girls and women are trafficked in Asia as a whole, and between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepali girls are trafficked every year to India. The process comprises a chain of supply, which includes the financially poor parent, the procurer, the border guard, the agent who takes the girls across the border, the people who then transport them to Mumbai and the brothel madame.
Gupta travelled to the brothels of Kamathipura in Mumbai, where women and girls from Nepal were kept locked in small four-by-four foot rooms, with no windows and made to service 15 to 20 men a day. They were subjected to rape, physical abuse, torture, violence, repeated abortions and life-threatening diseases. They had been sold, tricked or forced into a life of sexual slavery.
The women had been sold into prostitution when they were nine or ten and had been locked up inside the brothels for years. They were isolated and scared, but taking part in the documentary helped them come together. And that is essentially how Apne Aap was born.
Right not to be
Apne App means 'self help' in Hindi. Based on the notion that rights aren't just given, they have to be claimed, Apne Aap articulates the struggle of women who want the 'right not to be a prostitute'.
At Apne Aap, women are welcome any time during the day to sleep, bathe or drop off their children for care. The project has various community centres, based on the model that you have to train women on rights and how to access them. There are also resource and training centres as well as re-integration centres in red light areas and slums in Bihar, Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal. It also runs night crèches and soup kitchens in red light districts.
Sex trafficking
When girls and women first have contact with Apne Aap, they don't have a sense of what is right, and what is constitutionally their entitlement. Gupta says, "They don't know that it's not allowed to extort money from them or that men cannot go inside the brothel anytime and smash the furniture." Apne Aap is trying to inform women how to challenge the police and how to tackle HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and various other issues.
Gupta wants to eradicate sex trafficking, but argues that just buying the girls off is no solution because the demand will still be there, and as long as there is a demand, there will be a supply. So Apne Aap is going into villages and launching prevention campaigns. For instance, the girls go and talk about their own life experiences, what happened to them inside the brothel and what can happen to young girls who come in. The project also promotes the rights of a girl and how she has equal right to property as her brother.
Workshops for men
Workshops are also being held with men, including the police, customers and pimps. Sometimes men come to the brothels thinking that because they have a sexual urge, the thing is to go and look for a really young girl and find an outlet. Apne Aap makes them aware that this is exploitive, and new ideas are introduced and old ones discarded. For example, they may think that masturbation is wrong and that it will make them blind, or they might think that sex with a virgin will cure them of AIDS.
Apne Aap wants to eradicate what is the biggest method of trafficking: intergenerational prostitution. Gupta says, "When a woman's children and her children's children are also sold into prostitution, it becomes institutionalised. They've seen the exploitation, the repeated rapes and the kind of lifestyles that their mothers have, who live in back rooms, locked up, waiting for clients."
According to Gupta, none of the mothers want their daughters to get into prostitution, but when they become older and disease-ridden, and their earning capacity decreases, they push their daughters into prostitution because otherwise they starve. The documentary 'Selling of Innconents' closes with the camera focusing on rows of toddlers sleeping in the brothels and the meaasge, "If nothing is done to stop sex trafficking this is the next generation of Kamathipurak girls."
Gupta notes, "These children could literally be growing up on the streets when their mothers die. The boys will become part of gangs and the girls will end up becoming prostitutes. We are trying to get the girls placed in boarding schools, and the boys are given some vocational classes."
The root causes of trafficking lie in the inequality of certain groups and women as well as economic policies that fail to ensure universal access to education and legal protection. Apne Aap aims to highlight the plight of these women and provide them with the resources they need to break out. For Ruchira Gupta, it is about getting the issues across effectively to the outside world: "You have to find how to connect, and explain to people about sexual trafficking. See, you always have to look for these moments of connectivity - from outrage, exploitation, and victimisation to moving on. It truly is a bipartisan issue."