Sex Sells & Always Will: Why Shweta deserves better

                                     

By Sangeeth Sebastian

In a country where nearly half the sex workers are either abducted or sold as minors into the trade, arguing that all those who sell sex are not victims of exploitation may be difficult.

Yet, the reality is that at least for a section of women in India, sex work is just that: work. The arrest of South Indian actor Shweta Prasad Babu allegedly for prostitution last week shows how quick we are as a society in branding such women as “victims” in need of “rescue” and “rehabilitation.”

There is a distinction between sex work and trafficking. While trafficking is coercive, exploitative and criminal, sex work can be a conscious choice.

By her own admission, Shewta resorted to sex work to “make money” and support some “good causes.” It was something, which she opted out of her own free will. Publishing images of the actor as an innocent looking child artiste, which she once was, along with the sob story of her arrest, does not alter the reality that she is now a 23-year-old woman capable of taking decisions on her own.

In a statement released to the media after her arrest, Shweta claimed she knew several other heroines who also worked as freelance sex workers to maintain a cosy lifestyle, when film offers dwindle. This makes sex work look like any other normal service industry.

The profession is now less stigmatised than it previously was, thanks to the growing reach and anonymity offered by the Internet. Buying and selling sex online is now easy and discreet, luring many, including better educated women to consider sex work for quick money.

                                                           

Unfortunately, Indian approach on the issue is rooted in moralising and views all forms of commercial sex as products of trafficking. As the very name of the legislation ‘Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act,’ under which the actor was arrested, shows.

Police departments in ultra-conservative South India have dedicated anti-vice squads (a term more reminiscent of Saudi Arabian moral police) whose members derive vicarious pleasure in rounding up and shaming out-of-job actors in the name of busting prostitution rackets, on a periodic basis, under the Act.

The farce is all the more apparent as the police themselves admit the futility of the exercise. “By registering cases under the Act, the police cannot solve the problem. Less than ten cases ends up in conviction a year,” says a senior official with the Chennai police.

Rehabilitation programmes like the one which Shweta is reportedly undergoing too can be of little help. Since the idea behind such programmes are to develop 'marketable skills' that can wean the ‘victims’ away from prostitution, the utility of such skills for a national award winning actor is debatable.

In enlightened Kerala, rehabilitation efforts once controversially focused on turning prostitutes into washerwomen, as those who were involved in the project felt that being a washerwoman was more dignified than being a prostitute. Shweta, at least deserves better.