Nagaland-Dimapur sex workers in disarray

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Dimapur sex workers in disarray

Dimapur is one of the fastest growing cities in India

having a density of 333 persons per square kilometer.

Being a commercial metropolis bordering Assam and

accessible by road/rail/air, it can rightly be called

the gateway to Nagaland. Business being an attractive

activity of the area, especially of smuggled goods

hordes of businessmen throngs the area eyeing

prospective customers. Added to this, large battalion

of peace keeping personnel surrounds the area;

besides, being a transit point for army personnel

located at other places of Northeast. This puts the

region in a highly mobile zone.

Consequently, the demand for sex work is more as in

any other highly mobile areas. Latest estimates put

the number of sex workers in Dimapur town as 532,

excluding flying girls and call girls. Local (Naga)

sex workers are a few in numbers compared to non-local

sex workers (mainly from neighboring states, Nepal and

Bangladesh). The area of operation is confined to

specific locations, though not declared officially as

red-light areas. Hotel based sex work is more safe as

the authorities connive with law enforcing personnel

to inflict ‘less harm’ to them.

Since HIV/AIDS intervention among them was facilitated

by State AIDS control society and Oxfam a few years

back, condom use among them has risen exponentially

(fall in new cases of STD and high turn over of

condoms as indicators) and they are able to negotiate

with their customers on condom use. However, the

Goondas and underground cohorts do occasional harm to

them by not paying for sex, not using condoms and even

manhandling them if they oppose.

Since the area is not considered as a red-light zone

officially, the sex workers remain unorganized and

human rights violations never come to the open. What

pester the sex workers now are the frequent raids

conducted by newly constituted women police wing. This

forces them to shift bases and some works on the

streets, clandestinely. This affects the ongoing

intervention programme where advocacy often fails to

bring in desired results owing to the high handedness

of police personnel.

Now, the sex workers and the facilitators of

intervention programmes among them demands the

declaration of some areas as red light zones

officially. The proponents of this idea see this as an

important step to empower them, an enabling

environment to arrest the spread of HIV that is

already high in the state and to advocate for human

rights among sex workers.

(Based on the experience of Prodigals’ Home – an NGO

working in the field of health and development: Compiled by Premjith P)

E-mail: <premjith2000@...>

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