Voices of women in prostitution
Women of the SANGRAM collective for women in prostitution in Sangli meet regularly to discuss issues and problems. All have stories to tell about their lives and their profession
Kottans for posterity
Tamil Nadu's almost-extinct traditional basket-weaving craft survives and thrives again
Bangalore's contract municipal cleaners battle for minimum wages
Despite a Karnataka High Court order, that contract municipal cleaners in Bangalore be given the minimum wage of Rs 1,800 per month, corrupt contractors and Bangalore Mahanagara Palike officials continue to flout the laws
Beedi workers in Chhattisgarh continue to be exploited
In Chhattisgarh's beedi-producing belt, more than 50,000 families work in the multi-crore beedi industry. Despite the laws that govern this industry, the beedi workers are paid much less than the minimum wage, have no benefits and are constantly at risk of respiratory diseases
Scrap-collectors fight for and win a new legitimacy
The scrap-collectors union of Pune in Maharashtra has given waste-collectors who scoured garbage bins and collected old newspapers and bottles a new respectability and access. The municipal corporation now issues identity cards to them and offers a limited health insurance plan, recognising their contribution to recycling waste in the city
Despatches from Choutuppal, where handloom weaver Shankariah committed suicide
Choutuppal looks fairly prosperous, with a myriad ISD and Internet kiosks. But in this and other centres of the handloom industry in Andhra Pradesh, around 400 weavers, struggling to make a living, are estimated to have killed themselves in a single year. What is going wrong? A first-hand report by Safia Sircar
Women workers demand visibility and a voice
On March 8, 1908, women workers in the needle trade in New York marched in the streets, demanding suffrage and an end to sweatshops and child labour. Almost 100 years on, over 100,000 workers took to the streets of New Delhi this February, to register their protest against the government's anti-worker policies and the severe impact of liberalisation on women workers
Summer of '99: The turning-point for Bastar's tribals
With help from the district administration Bastar's tribals have eliminated the middlemen and taken direct control of trade in minor forest produce. The change in their villages since the Imli Andolan of 1999 is perceptible
Why 9 million fisherfolk are burdened by debt
Six members of the fishing community in Udipi, Karnataka, committed suicide because they couldn't repay their debts. Two of them were women. What has gone wrong with this oldest of livelihood systems?
Shabana:'I have the right to sell my body - and I will sell it'
What does it mean to be a woman in prostitution? What does it mean to sell sex? In a first-person excerpt from 'Unzipped: Women and Men in Prostitution Speak Out', recently published by Point of View, Mumbai, the feisty Shabana, who works the highways on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border, but also distributes condoms in collaboration with two voluntary agencies, opens up to the reader her world of exploitation, survival, empowerment, victimhood and choice.
The testimonies of the men and women who speak out in 'Unzipped' chip away at the myth that those in prostitution are eternal victims -- with no power to deal with the situations in which they find themselves. They also tell us that it is not just poverty that forces women into prostitution, but poverty acting in concert with gender. Until we stop marrying young girls off, until we stop burning, harassing and discriminating against young girls in ways big and small, the family will not be a safe place for young girls. The family will be a place to run away from...into the arms of a pimp, a shyster, or even a distant relative who is a gateway to prostitution.