They’re among the most despised members of Indian society, but they’re the real heroines in the fight against HIV. Bangalore’s sex workers save not only their lives, but the lives of thousands of others, in a groundbreaking programme of HIV prevention.
The woman with a smile like Julia Roberts does not want to give her name. But she talks openly about how her father sold her into marriage, how her mother threatened to sell her children and how her husband forced her into prostitution.
She has since remarried, and her new husband of only eight months does not know about her past as a sex worker. But she is proud and public about her work as an HIV educator with the sex workers’ collective Vijaya Mahila Sangha (VMS), a group supported by Christian Aid through the Milan project in the south Indian city of Bangalore.
'Jayalakshmi and others like her are standing up to a potentially terrifying pandemic'
Here, in India’s own Silicon Valley, sex workers are the real heroines in India’s fight to stem the spread of HIV. By insisting that their clients use condoms, and by helping other sex workers to use them, they are saving not only their own lives but those of thousands of others.
But, while one arm of the Indian government has made sex workers central to its HIV strategy, another threatens to drive them underground with laws that will criminalise them and their clients.
‘I tell him, your life is in danger’
Sitting on the floor, her turquoise and pink sari gleaming in the dark room, Jayalakshmi is another unlikely heroine.
She is among the most despised and neglected members of society. But Jayalakshmi and others like her are standing up to a potentially terrifying pandemic. There are 2.47 million HIV-positive people in India. This creates the potential for vast numbers of new infections, the consequences of which will be unspeakable.
‘It’s the conviction of the sex worker that prevents the spread of HIV,’ says Jayalakshmi. ‘When a client comes to me, I tell him he must use a condom. When I say to him, your life is in danger, he begins to understand.’
Three-quarters of the 900 sex workers with whom VMS works use condoms, estimates VMS secretary Gita, herself a former sex-worker.
‘If just one sex worker is educated and uses condoms, in turn she is protecting hundreds of men,’ says Christian Aid’s HIV specialist in India, Semeda Steves. ‘And it is not only they who are saved, it is also their wives and children.’
‘We have to die anyway’
Several thousand women earn their living by working on the rough urban streets of Bangalore and in its gloomy, dank ‘lodges’ (brothels). Poverty and cruelty have pushed them here. In return for as little as Rs 100 (£1.15/€1.70) they sell themselves.
‘It hurts my heart when I see these young girls,’ says Manjula, a VMS educator and former sex worker. ‘I say, “Please don’t spoil your lives.” They say, “Manju, we have no other way.” Once they get into prostitution, they shatter.’
Most days, the woman with the Julia Roberts smile walks the noisy, congested streets in the area around the central bus station. She takes packets of condoms and a sex-education book and visits the sex workers she has come to know.
‘At first, it is hard. Only after five or six conversations do they understand about HIV,’ she says. ‘And they say to me, “It’s OK if we get AIDS. We have to die anyway some day.”
‘But I say to them, “Once I felt as you do. But you need to think of your health. Just using a condom can keep you from this terrible virus.”’
Going underground
According to a recent University of Toronto study, testing, education, condom use and cooperation with lodges are beginning to slow the rise in HIV.
But all this life-saving work could be undermined by proposed legislation which would criminalise sex work and bring in new and harsher penalties for sex workers and their clients.
The Lawyers’ Collective, a group of human rights lawyers working with VMS, says that making it illegal to be the client of a sex worker, or to run a lodge, will drive sex work underground. It will be forced out of the brothels where there is some measure of safety and access to condoms, and into parks, and under bushes and buses – anywhere women can quickly, illicitly, earn enough to buy food.
The Lawyers’ Collective estimates that, nationwide, the legislation will hit 40 million people. That’s not just sex workers, but their families, too.
‘The government depends on sex workers to distribute and use condoms as part of its strategy,’ says Semeda. ‘At the same time, it is criminalising them. They’ll then stop using condoms – and then what will happen?’