Indian prostitutes receive life insurance

[Guest guest]

Indian prostitutes receive life insurance

By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi

Around 250 sex workers in India's eastern city of Kolkata have, for

the first time received life insurance cover from a State-owned

corporation.

They believe this to be a step forward in their long standing crusade

aimed at legalising their profession to help bring them into the

mainstream and fight poverty and discrimination.

" The policy from the Life Insurance Corporation of India may not

change much in our life, but this small step is a giant leap forward

in our struggle for legal recognition of sex work, " Bharati Dey of

the Indomitable Women's Coordination Committee in Kolkata, formerly

Calcutta, said.

The committee that campaigns for safe sex and to make prostitution

legal has 65,000 sex workers as members in eastern Bengal province of

which Kolkata is the capital

We live in no-man's land and this is the first time that a government

company has recognised us as professionals " , declared 45-year old Dey

from the city's Sonagachi red light district, one of Asia's largest.

Although illegal, prostitution is a thriving business across India

with an estimated two million female sex workers, the majority forced

into it by poverty.

Mamata Nandy, 35, a sex worker and a proud policy holder, said

recognition by a company like the Life Insurance Corporation would

also strengthen the fight against AIDS which in India is transmitted

primarily through prostitutes.

According to UNAIDS, India has some 5.7 million people infected with

the AIDS virus HIV, the highest such number compared with any place

else.

The insurance policies, which are now expected to include to sex

workers outside Kolkata, are not the only advance for women in the

world's oldest profession.

In the western port city of Mumbai, a bank run by sex workers was

established some years ago to help free them from exploitative

brothel owners who maltreated them and kept them in wretched

conditions.

Started by a handful of sex workers in Kamathipura, Mumbai's red

light district, it now has hundreds of clients.

" The policy may not change much in our life, but this small step is a

giant leap forward in our struggle for legal recognition of sex

work. " Bharati Dey, Indomitable Women's Committee

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1917672/Indian-prostitutes-

receive-life-insurance.html