Prostitution in India

NEW DELHI, INDIA -- India's minister for women and child development said Tuesday the country has an estimated 2.8 million prostitutes and the number is rising.
Renuka Chowdhury presented a study on "Girls-Women in prostitution in India" to the lower house of Parliament. She said more than one-third of Indian prostitutes entered the profession before age 18, the Press Trust of India reported.

Incredible India: A land of Broken Laws, Religion hypocrisy, Gutter politics and Bigger contradiction. Our beaurocracy is one of the worst in world so no wonder when we discover that underneath of Incredible India most of population lives under the poverty line, women exploitation and sex slavery is still exists and is on rise. Yes officially it is illegal but unofficially this crime is going on and no one really bothers to put a full stop on it.

The Streets Where the Average Age of a Prostitute Is 14

there are half a million “sex slaves” in India, and that the average age of a prostitute is 14.

The India story becomes only sadder: Ms. Ling tells us that there are half a million “sex slaves” in India, and that the average age of a prostitute is 14.

Thousands of young girls in India are forced into prostitution every day. Some of them are as young as ten years.NDTV met one such victim, who was lucky enough to escape. She narrates her plight and that of many others like her still languishing in brothels.

Over the last 11 months, this girl, has been sold to about 21,000 customers. She is just 15. Kidnapped by an organised gang from her hometown Hyderabad, she was sold in Budhwar Peth, the red light district of Pune for Rs 35,000.

She was rescued but she says there are thousands of girls like her still trapped inside.

”There are girls even as young as 7-10 years old.

In the brothels of Mumbai, where India's largest sex industry is located, there is a huge demand for girls from Nepal.

"Customers like Nepali girls because they are fair-skinned, not dark like us," one brothel manager said.

Nepali girls charge 50 to 60 rupees per customer, a little under $2. One-quarter of Mumbai's 70,000 prostitutes are Nepalis.

Every year, about 7,000 girls from the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal are smuggled across the border to India. Most are poor, kidnapped or lured by promises of a good job or a role in Indian films. On average, they are just 12 or 13 years old when they are sold to brothels for $200 to $500.

The red light district at Calcutta, India, is one of places where Indian women and girls are forced to work as prostitutes. They are sold by their own family. It’s a business family. Dads and brothers act as the seller and negotiate with the customers at their living room. While the women/girls serve “the guests” at their own house. Sadly to say that, they are feeding the girls/women with the best food they have–even fresh meats, and dressing them in best clothes and lots of jewelry, just so the girls/women are attractive enough to the customers.

The prostitution has been a culture in most families in 300 regions of India. It’s spread into the north and middle part of India, such as Bedia, Banchara, Nat, and Kanjar. In those places, the prostitution culture for having money has been going on for hundreds of years. It began when the south of Bedia and Middle India rapidly changed from prestigious regions to prostitution districts after they had suffered many lost in wars. Even the nomadic lifestyle of Kanjar tribe which initially depended on gardening and land ownerships, had changed. Since the women made more money from the prostitution business, the men were getting lack of their working ability. As for the Nat in the north region and the Banchara in the Middle India, there is a myth about women who gave their body in exchange for the generousness of the local men. That’s why the prostitution remains in the community.

A rare glimpse into the harrowing lives of girls and women forced into India's sex trade found that the youngest among them -- girls age 14 or younger -- faced another cruel risk from their bondage: 60 percent became infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The study, published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, reviewed the health records of 287 Nepalese girls and young women who were lured into prostitution in several cities in India from 1997 to 2005. It found that 38 percent of them tested positive for HIV when examined after they were rescued by Maiti Nepal, a nongovernmental organization based in Kathmandu.

The research yielded new insights on the dehumanizing conditions for females coerced into prostitution, then bought and sold around the world. The State Department estimates there are roughly 600,000 to 800,000 people who are trafficked globally in virtual slavery; 80 percent are female.