Now that the national elite and ruling class are campaigning for legalizing prostitution, it is time to rethink whether such a measure should be imposed merely on the whims of a few, without arriving at a national consensus. While the Planning Commission in its 11th five year plan document has recommended this, an sms poll by a leading national daily has revealed that 91 per cent and 84 per cent respondents of Delhi and Mumbai respectively want prostitution to be legalized. Since the majority is for the motion, should we now condone pornography, strip clubs, live sex shows, and the buying and selling of women for sex?

Powerful lobbies have been advocating the recognition of sex work as a legitimate industry. The International Labour Organization has also joined the bandwagon. In a controversial report, the ILO urged four poor Asian nations to take advantage of the booming sex industry by taxing prostitutes. The argument was based on the fact that the state should play the pimp by letting its women be sold as commodities in the national and international market, in return for a part of their earning as revenue. After successfully making HIV/AIDS eradication the primary agenda in developing countries, legalizing sex work has now become the next important target for NGOs.

The latest recommendation of the Planning Commission needs to be viewed within the power dynamics of state versus civil society whereby a group of futuristic, ill-informed bureaucrats are swindled by powerful NGOs through misinformation. More disturbing, repeated lobbying for prostitution by these NGOs has made it acceptable and even respectable as a profession. Anyone criticizing it has to bear with misnomers like the culture police or a sanghi.

Cruel act

Legalized prostitution is state-sponsored, one that legitimizes buying and selling of women as commodities for sexual pleasure. It segregates women as a class set aside for sexual servitude and reduces them to mere sexual objects. Evidence from Netherlands indicates that with legalization, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of brothels, sex bars, strip clubs, live sex shows and trafficking in women and children. The goal of any industry is to expand and if prostitution is legalized, how then can it be argued that this will regulate sex trade and prohibit the entry of minors? There will be hundreds of fake procedures to prove one?s age and an entire network of pimp-police-bureaucracy will benefit from the legalized sex industry. Criminals and exploiters of women who were earlier termed as pimps will become sexual entrepreneurs.

The reason for not supporting the legalization of prostitution is that it is an oppressive, exploitative institution, which reinforces sexual violence against women thereby increasing gender inequality. What we are condoning here is women?s sexual slavery, exploitation and abuse. The failure to expand the economic and social opportunities for women in 60 years of planned development has now forced the Indian government to offer a choice to women by proposing to legalize prostitution.

There is absolutely no evidence that legalization of prostitution reduces trafficking in women. There is also very little evidence that legalization brings down the spread of HIV/AIDS. Sweden and Venezuela have refused to give prostitution a legal status on the ground that the profession goes against the basic tenets of human dignity and social justice. But India is promoting it at the cost of the dignity of its womenfolk. If at all, the oldest profession in our civilization needs to be institutionalized, there should be a national debate on the subject. It cannot be imposed simply on the basis of the whims of a powerful NGO-bureaucrat lobby.