Prostitution

6.1 Concept and Legal Status

Prostitution involves the exchange of sexual services for payment. India's legal status is nuanced: under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 (ITPA), amended 1986:

• Not criminal: The act of selling sex itself (between consenting adults)
• Criminal: Running a brothel, pimping/procuring, owning premises used for prostitution, soliciting in public places

This makes India's law a partial criminalisation model — targeting third-party exploiters rather than sex workers themselves.

India's sex worker population: Estimated at 3–12 lakh depending on source; the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) identifies female sex workers as a key population for HIV prevention.

6.2 Root Causes

Economic desperation is the primary driver:

• Poverty and debt
• Trafficking (cross-border from Nepal, Bangladesh; internal trafficking from rural areas)
• Abandonment by family after divorce/widowhood
• Caste-based hereditary prostitution practices (Devadasi system in South India; Bedani, Nat, Bedia communities in Rajasthan and UP)

Social factors:

• Gender discrimination making women economically vulnerable
• Lack of alternative livelihood options for uneducated women
• Sexual violence survivors seeking economic survival
• Normalisation in certain communities

6.3 Government and NGO Interventions

Intervention	Description
Ujjawala Scheme (Ministry of WCD)	Rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration of trafficking victims
ITPA Anti-Trafficking Units	Police units in all states for enforcement
Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs)	696 AHTUs established across India
NACO HIV Prevention	Peer-led outreach, condom distribution, STI treatment for FSWs
SC/ST and OBC schemes	For Devadasi community rehabilitation in Karnataka, AP

Supreme Court intervention: In Budhadev Karmaskar v. State of West Bengal (2011), the SC directed that sex workers must be treated with dignity and are entitled to protection under the Constitution. A panel led by Justice (Retd.) S. Ravindra Bhat in 2021 recommended that police should not interfere with consensual adult sex work.

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