 receiving the Nari Shakti Puraskar | |
| Formation | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Location |
|
Secretary General | Geetha M. [1] |
| Award(s) | Nari Shakti Puraskar |
Sadhana Mahila Sangha is an NGO in Bangalore that supports sex workers. During the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic they had to feed sex workers who could no longer find clients.
The organisation was formed in 2011 and registered in 2013. Sex workers get harassed and mistreated by the police. [1] [2] M.Geetha, the secretary of Sadhana Mahila Sangha, says there is a 2009 ruling by the Supreme Court that specifically makes this illegal. The organisation also helps workers who intend to change their work but workers face continued discrimination. Many of them have already lost their husbands and families and even in normal times they face psychological problems on top of risks like HIV. [1] The NGO arranges HIV testing for the sex workers every three months and then gives them counselling if they test positive. They advise them to use condoms and make sure they realise the moral issues of not doing so. Some use the positive test as an opportunity to leave sex work and others find themselves homeless after they were thrown out of their households. In both cases the NGO offers support to these women. [3]
By March 2020 sex workers were reporting hardships. [2] Many of them live outside the city and they would travel in each morning to work. During the pandemic the buses were cancelled, the clients were afraid of catching the virus and the sex workers were short of food as they relied on their clients to buy them a meal. The organisation estimated that there were 1,000 sex workers in Bangalore. [2] Their incomes had fallen by about 55%. [2] If a sex worker can find two clients a day then they could eat two meals but too many customers are keeping their distance. Without cash they cannot pay for their rented houses in the suburbs and because they value their privacy they will find it tricky to explain to their landlords why they cannot pay the rent. [2] Sadhana Mahila Sangha has been providing food for those who are unemployed. By May 2020 most had not worked in four weeks. [1] One worker noted that with HIV they could use a condom but with COVID-19 they cannot wear a complete cover all outfit. [1]
The whole organisation was honoured when it was awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar [4] for their work. The award was made in New Delhi and the group received a citation and one lakh of rupees. They received one of 31 awards that were made by President Pranab Mukherjee on International Women's Day, 2017, at the Presidential palace (Rashtrapati Bhavan). [5]
Sonagachi is a neighbourhood in Kolkata, India, located in North Kolkata near the intersection of Jatindra Mohan Avenue with Beadon Street and Sovabazar, about one kilometer north of the Marble Palace area. Sonagachi is among the largest red-light districts in Asia and the world with several hundred multi-storey brothels residing more than 16,000 commercial sex workers.
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, or simply Durbar, is a collective of 60,000 sex workers in West Bengal. Established on 15 February 1992, in Sonagachi, the largest red-light district in Kolkata, West Bengal, India with estimated 11,000 sex workers, Durbar has been working on women's rights and sex workers' rights advocacy, anti-human trafficking and HIV/AIDS prevention. The Durbar states that its aims are the challenging and altering of the barriers that form the everyday reality of sex workers' lives as they relate to their poverty or their ostracism. Durbar runs 51 free clinics for sex workers across West Bengal, with support from organisations such as the Ford Foundation and the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), who also help Durbar in its initiatives like networking, rights protection and creating alternative livelihood for sex workers.
Prostitution in Kolkata is present in different forms and Kolkata's sex industry is one of the largest in Asia. Prostitution may be brothel-based or non-brothel based as in the case of call girls. India is regarded as having one of the largest commercial sex trades globally. Kolkata has many red-light districts, out of which Sonagachi is the largest red-light district in Asia with more than 50,000 commercial sex workers.
The Nari Shakti Puraskar is an annual award given by the Ministry of Women and Child Development of the Government of India to individual women or to institutions that work towards the cause of women empowerment. It is the highest civilian honour for women in India, and is presented by the president of India on International Women's Day at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. The award was instituted in 1999 under the title of Stree Shakti Puraskar, renamed and reorganised in 2015. It is awarded in six institutional and two individual categories, which carry a cash prize of 200,000 and 100,000 rupees, respectively.
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Rina Akter is a Bangladeshi sex worker turned humanitarian. She was recognised as one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2020 for her work when she was organising 400 meals a day during the COVID-19 pandemic for unemployed Dhaka sex workers.
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