By Ranjita Biswas

The acclaimed Sonagachi Project in Kolkata which uses peer educators to spread HIV-prevention messages, has broadened its base to include various development components, and is run largely by sex workers themselves

Encouraging sex workers to themselves advocate for safe sex and the use of condoms in order to prevent HIV/AIDS is a popular intervention programme today. But in 1992 when it was launched in Sonagachi, the largest red light area in Kolkata, it was a novel idea. The usual tendency was for outsiders such as social workers to sell the idea of safe sex to the sex workers. The Sonagachi Project, on the other hand, introduced the concept of peer educators.

Over the years, the project has been reinventing itself with new approaches and new action plans to tackle the HIV/AIDS problem in this high-risk group. Moreover it has evolved into a multi-faceted community effort to empower sex workers in ways that go beyond HIV prevention.

The process started with a baseline survey in 1992 conducted by the All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health (AIIH&PH) to initiate an intervention programme to control sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and HIV among female sex workers (FSWs) and their clients. It started with three principal components:

• Providing health services, including STD treatment, from a central clinic in the area.
• Dissemination of IEC (information, education, communication) messages regarding prevention of STD/HIV transmission.
• Promotion of condoms involving peer educators.

Efforts to empower people with knowledge and tools for health are at the centre of this programme. Peer educators provide sexual health and HIV education to sex workers and madams, and distribute condoms. Peer educators are current and former sex workers from the local community who are paid to work four hours a day, during clinic hours, although they volunteer far more time than that. They receive extensive training in transmission and treatment of STIs, including HIV/AIDS; negotiation skills needed to persuade clients to use condoms; reproductive health; treatment and prevention of common communicable diseases; lab training to carry out general medical tests; and local laws and the legal system as it pertains to the sex trade and women's rights.

The programme was designed to directly involve FSWs in the intervention project by accepting their status and not trying to reform or rehabilitate them. FSWs were themselves given responsibilities and this worked so well that three years later, in 1995, the Durbar Mahila Samanwya Committee (DMSC), a forum of sex workers (durbar roughly translates into ‘indomitable’) was formed which took over the responsibility of running the STD/HIV programme from AIIH&PH.

DMSC’s motto is: Respect (for sex workers), Reliance (on knowledge and wisdom of the FSW community) and Recognition (of sex work as an occupation and protected under human rights).

In 1999, Mrinal Kanti Dutta, son of a FSW, was appointed as the programme director of the Sonagachi project. He was followed by Bharati Dey, a sex worker herself, who has been the programme director for the last two years. “We have shown that a sex worker can also undertake such an important organisational job,” says Dutt who is technical adviser to the project now. He has also written two books in Bengali on the community he knows best.

Sonagachi has around 12,000 sex workers. Dey estimates that about 8000 of them are brothel based and the others are floating workers, coming mostly from the suburbs who rent rooms in the area for the day and return to their homes in the evening. Dey says that the number of ‘flying’ FSWs has increased in the last few years. But DMSC is an umbrella organisation and includes them too; there are six clinics for them. Altogether there are 51 clinics and 350 peer educators across the state with a 65,000 strong membership.

Over the years, DMSC has spread from Sonagachi to other red light areas in the city, and out to the districts of West Bengal as well. The present programme has broadened its base to include various development components, not just health and HIV.

DMSC has campaigned on issues that resulted in less exploitation of FSWs. For example, the traditional adhia system where a FSW (mostly temporary) gave 50% of her earnings to the landlady has been replaced by the choutha system where 25% cut is the norm. In fact, ‘tips’ are more popular now where the landlady gets Rs 10 per client irrespective of what the sex worker earns. This is a huge change.

New schemes have been introduced for peer educators both for the purpose of generating more awareness among the FSWs and to avoid the boredom of explaining the same schedule repeatedly. For example, there is a quiz competition with prizes. About 30 FSWs gather in a selected house or room. After the talk on healthcare, HIV/AIDS etc, questions are asked to test how much the women have understood. The first three correct answers get monetary prizes. The purpose is to stoke curiosity about the disease and its prevention, reach out to more women, and give them incentives to know more through a sense of competition. The suggestion for such an event came from the women themselves.

Involving the women themselves has opened up new possibilities for them. Peer educators are becoming trainers and they have the opportunity to become supervisors at a later stage and future leaders of the community.

Another benefit to the women is the Usha Multipurpose Co-operative Society Ltd, a registered body. FSWs had to pay loan sharks high rates of interest for any money they may borrow, which often led to their being indebted for life. The alternative was fly-by-night chit funds that literally cheated the women and charged up to 73% per annum interest. But now members of the Usha Society can take loans for things like buying property, education of children etc at a reasonable interest rate. They are never given loans for event-oriented expenses, like weddings, etc. Then there is the Basanti Bahini, which is engaged in social marketing of condoms.

Some vocational training schemes have also been introduced. At Srishti, aged sex workers, and children, learn to make terracotta toys, figurines, jute objects and so on, that are marketed through various outlets. Some women have trained as beauticians and many are already working in the field. Adult literacy classes are run in 14 units. Statistics show that the number of totally illiterate women is decreasing as also the number of half-literates.

DMSC runs two schools for children of sex workers. Plans are afoot to impart vocational education to these children.

Komal Gandhar, the cultural wing of DMSC, encourages sex workers who have a talent for dancing or singing, and many have won prizes in competitions.

DMSC had campaigned for the removal of the PITA (Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act) under which the women were harassed for soliciting clients. Though the Act has been amended now to delete the provisions that penalised prostitutes for soliciting clients, the proposal to penalise any person visiting a brothel for the purpose of sexual exploitation of trafficked victims is equally problematic, according to DMSC.

Another long-standing demand of DMSC is recognition of FSWs as legitimate workers under the Labour Act, a demand that has not found favour even among activists. One of the strongest arguments against it is that it will encourage traffickers as the fear of punishment will not be there. Moreover, instead of discouraging women from taking up the profession, it will lead to more women entering it.

DMSC argues that it will actually prevent girls below 18 from entering the profession by monitoring through a self-regulatory board. “We are a close-knit community and any girl entering the area is immediately known. Even now, we’ve been able to return many young girls who were either trafficked or were brought unwillingly,” says Dey.

She claims that DMSC rescued 510 underage or trafficked girls between 2005 and 2007 and 264 girls between 1998 and 2005. Some of them were sent home, even beyond the borders to Bangladesh and Nepal, and those who did not want to go home were sent to shelter homes. However, DMSC faces a problem with state authorities who insist that they alone have the authority. “For us, the primary consideration is the girl. If a trafficked girl has to wait for months until the legal procedure is complete, and in the process her identity is revealed, the whole purpose of rescuing is lost. We have explained this many times but to no avail,” says Dey.

Not everyone is convinced with this argument. Under-age girls still land up in Sonagachi and the “so-called” regulatory body turns a blind eye, say some. Gloria Steinem, the celebrated feminist writer who was in Kolkata recently for an anti-trafficking programme with the NGO Apne Aap Women Worldwide, said: “In my experience they (trafficked girls) are there even in Sonagachi; you can see from their faces that they are underage though they claim to be adults.” She also objected to the term ‘sex worker’ as it is “dangerous” to regard prostitution as “work.”

Ruchira Gupta, director, Apne Aap, and maker of the award-winning film Human Trafficking also feels that DMSC’s claim of stopping underage or unwilling girls in sex work is not correct.

“Our Board has 40% members from non-FSW sector and there are even doctors on it. How can it be?” protests Dey.

There is also some dissent about the prevalence of condom-use. The Annual Action Plan (2004-05) of WBSPACS shows that condom use was 81.87% in 2001, but there was an increase of 11.73% in HIV cases, compared to an increase of 5.53% in 1998 when the condom use was 78.45%.

Dr Samarjit Jana, adviser to the Sonagachi project (who was at the helm at AII&PH when the project started) admitted that “it’s difficult to explain but there was a combination of factors that led to this sudden rise in 2001. But it again declined in successive years (2002, 2003 and 2004). Some amount of complacency from the project staff also contributed to this rise. As DMSC opened antiretroviral treatment centres during this period, it may have provided a false sense of security that AIDS could be cured and treated.”

According to the latest figures, a point prevalence survey in Sonagachi in 2005 by DMSC in collaboration with AIIH&PH and NICED (National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases) shows 86% condom use and 5.17% HIV infection.

Bharati Dey admits that though 100% condom use is ideal, it has not been possible. “The root cause is hunger. Women over 40 do not get customers like the young girls. So when they do, and if clients don’t want to use a condom, they don’t have a choice. The other problem is that those with permanent babus or saathis treat them almost like husbands and if they don’t want to use condoms, many women don’t object.”

DMSC has been petitioning the government to rehabilitate old FSWs. “We’ve been only given promises but nothing has materialised despite repeated letters,” says Dey. “We are helpless to prevent them from having unsafe sex.”

Today DMSC is part of a women NGO network, Maitree, in Kolkata. It has also reached out to other fringe communities, “prantiks like us,” as Dey says. One was to stand by the Nachni community, traditionally a dancer’s tribe in the Purulia district who were treated atrociously by mainstream society. The government has now banned some of these practices hostile to the community. DMSC is also giving support to the Sabars, a backward tribal community. Clearly the FSWs see themselves as part of a wider society.

In 2006, DMSC was awarded the UNAIDS Civil Society Award. The citation reads: “In recognition of your outstanding commitment and support to the national fight against HIV and AIDS.”

Despite some hiccups, the project showcases an impressive list of achievements, the most important being to instil self-confidence in the community, and pioneering a movement in the campaign against HIV/AIDS in the high-risk group.

(Ranjita Biswas is a journalist based in Kolkata writing mainly on women and gender issues, HIV/AIDS and environment. She is also Editor of Trans World Features)

Infochange News & Features, February 2008