This happened in the era when AIDS was still an inscrutable acronym. It was one of the first occasions when World Aids Day was marked in the capital city; the programme indicated an “interaction” between several sections of society. Artists, filmmakers, concerned citizens, sex workers, AIDS patients and schoolchildren were all supposed to gather and talk about the burgeoning crisis.

When we got to India Gate, the march was in full swing. There were schoolchildren delighted at the prospect of a holiday. Films were being screened. Concerned citizens took their turn at the open mike. But, my friend asked, where were the sex workers?

“They’re having a separate march,” said an organiser. “In G.B. Road [the red light district].” I asked naively, “Why, didn’t they want to join all of you?” The organiser looked embarrassed and explained that it might have been inappropriate to have sex workers and schoolchildren mingling on the same platform.

It’s been almost a decade since then, but our attitude to sex workers hasn’t changed. Some women’s groups want prostitution to be de-criminalised, arguing that this will allow for improved working conditions. Some feminists are deeply uncomfortable at the thought of giving legal sanction to a profession so intrinsically demeaning to the women ? and men ? who are part of the supply chain. Those working against human trafficking argue that legalising prostitution will end up increasing the numbers of humans forced into prostitution.

In all of this, the voices of those who work in the profession are drowned out. Many sex workers are strongly against legalising commercial sex work; they argue that this will only increase police control and police harassment. Instead, they want their profession to be decriminalised.

Look closer at what sex workers want; it’s a familiar list of demands. They want better working conditions, better hygiene, better working hours and better pay for the services they provide. They want to be recognised as providers of a service that has, unfortunately, remained essential to the human race down the centuries.

They want a little respect, a recognition, as former sex worker and present-day healthcare worker Durga put it, that they are not so different from migrants who end up pulling rickshaws. The service they provide is stigmatised; the reason they provide it is the same reason that rickshaw pullers work ? it’s not that they love their jobs, it’s that it was the only job they could find.

And yes, they want some of the worse statistics in the profession to disappear. Thirty to 40 per cent of sex workers are under 20; Exact numbers are hard to estimate, but roughly, 50 per cent of sex workers were forced or sold into their profession.

It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s right or wrong to sell and buy sex. As long as the trade continues, the least you can give the women and men working in the world’s oldest profession is a recognition that their work is hard enough as it is. They need better working conditions, more respect?and a voice in the way their dhanda is run.