We all have rights. Being able to exercise those rights should be a right as well, not a luxury that only a few can afford. For girls and women living in red-light areas, a life devoid of exploitation, abuse and violence is more of a fantasy rather than a fundamental right.
Innumerable girls in India and the neighbouring border areas go missing every day because they fall prey to human trafficking. They are sold as commodities in the brothels of big cities only to be groomed and forced into prostitution. Before they can grow and spread their wings to fly in a sky full of possibilities, darkness befalls their lives.
Ruchira Gupta was walking through the hills of Nepal when she stumbled upon rows of villages with missing girls only to find out, to her utter disappointment and horror, about a successfully running supply chain which trafficked girls and women from remote villages in Nepal to the brothels of Bombay.
A dark reality was transformed into a beacon of hope when she and 22 women from a red-light district in Mumbai founded Apne Aap with a shared vision of a world where no woman would be bought or sold.
Apne Aap’s ambition and impact have grown steadily since then. Although the twenty-two co-founders have all passed due to various unfortunate reasons such as hunger, suicide or AIDS-related complications, their vision lives on. Self-empowerment groups across the country now meet at Apne Aap community centers that serve as safe spaces where thousands of girls and women come together, access education, improve livelihood options and receive legal rights training.
Ruchira Gupta is an Emmy-winning journalist, activist and founder of the anti-sex trafficking NGO Apne Aap which helps women and girls exit systems of prostitution. I Kick and I Fly is her debut fiction novel about the struggles of a girl from a red-light area to stay in school.
She is the recipient of the French Ordre National du Mérite, Clinton Global Citizen Award, and the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction among other honours for her contribution to the establishment of the UN Trafficking Fund for Survivors, the passage of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act and her grassroots activism with Apne Aap.
In this interview with Youth Ki Awaaz, she talks about the challenges faced by prostituted women and girls regarding access to education and the policy changes required to promote educational inclusivity in its truest sense in India.
Maniparna Sen (MS): What are the barriers that the children living in red-light areas face when it comes to attending school and receiving education?
Ruchira Gupta (RG) Sexual and physical exploitation is the biggest danger to children in red-light areas. When sex predators come for the women, they often reach out for the children, who are sometimes sleeping or playing on the floor when the predator is on the bed with the mother. The other is the secondary trauma of watching their mothers and loved ones abused, day in and day out.
And then there is a lack of sleep, constant noise and quarrels, pimps forcing them to run errands, drug and alcohol use and hunger. All these things combined lead to forcing the child out of the mainstream education system, as they cannot concentrate in class and there is no one to help them with their learning at home. Stigma, discrimination, bullying and body shaming by other children often stops children from red-light areas from going to school.
They are first-generation learners and often go hungry, so they cannot focus on class in the same way. Then there is also the question of lack of money for uniforms, school supplies, even transportation. Sometimes, teachers and other parents object to the admission of children from the red-light area in the school.
All these barriers can be easily overcome by making sure children get adequate food in school, money for supplies and transpiration, help with homework and a dedicated counselor who can interlocute on their behalf with adults. My NGO, Apne Aap, has applied these methods and succeeded. I have written about how in my new fiction novel, I Kick and I Fly.
MS: How significant is the role of education in helping these children lead better lives?
RG: Education is the best way to prevent children from red-light areas ending up as victims of sex trafficking too. It gives them training and structure and builds skills which provide a pathway for options other than prostitution.
In my NGO, Apne Aap, we have educated thousands of daughters of prostituted women, through school and college and this turned things around for the entire family. Girls born in red-light areas, to mothers who were victims of sex-trafficking, have become teachers, police officers, call center operators, chefs, animation artists and lawyers. They have helped their mothers out of the red-light area and start new lives.
MS: Even if they attend schools, there is a prevalence of low attendance and high dropout rates among children of prostituted women. What do you think are the reasons behind such phenomena?
RG: Due to the sexual and physical abuse of themselves and their mothers, children may miss class. This leads them to fall behind in studies and unleashes a vicious cycle. Often there is accompanying hunger and insomnia because customers use the beds that they sleep on. Some kids become dependent on drugs and alcohol, forced on them by the pimps who ask them to run errands.There is also the stigma and shaming in school. Children can’t face the constant bullying and don’t want to go to school. They are first generation learners and need help to cope with class.
MS: A study by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) highlights that while attending school, children of prostituted women prefer not to interact with outsiders or people from other communities, and they are often ostracized, bullied and abused by teachers as well as children from other communities. What can we do to sensitize people, especially children from mainstream society to prevent such discrimination?
RG: We need to break the silence and share stories about the real lives of children of prostituted women. Stories build empathy because we can see people from their own point of view as flesh and blood creatures who have feelings, emotions and thoughts like our own.
MS: You, along with your organization, have been working relentlessly to ensure that these children receive quality education. How challenging has the journey been?
RG: I have faced off traffickers trying to kidnap the children, beat them up on the way to school. Once two children were even locked up by traffickers in a room, when they went home to their mothers in the red-light area for the weekend. My NGO, Apne Aap, started a hostel to keep the children safe.
The traffickers jumped over the wall to kidnap the children. We had to make the walls higher, hire a security guard. Pimps who were often relatives would beat up the children’s mothers for sending the children to school, especially the daughters and yet the mother’s prevailed and fought for their daughters right to an education.
Then we realized the children needed food and help with homework outside school, plus financial assistance to have the same school supplies and uniforms as other children. We began to provide that. The children suffered from fear, shame and guilt because of the constant shame and discrimination they faced. This led to low self-esteem. We began karate and Kung fu classes for the children to like their bodies and learn how to fight. This was a real game changer.
When a girl in my NGO, Apne Aap, won a gold medal in Karate, everything began to change. The other kids and teachers began to respect her, her family began to see her as someone who had value other than a resource to be sold and other women found hope in the possibility.
MS: When educational inclusivity is perceived through the gender lens, the girl children, especially the ones who are born to prostituted women and brought up in red light areas seem to be at a greater disadvantage compared to the boys. How do you think we can end this disparity between boys and girls in terms of access to education?
RG: We can start ‘girls only’ classrooms, incentivize mothers to keep daughters in school by saying we will only educate sons if their daughters also come to school, and create role models for girls by tracking and highlighting the pathways of girls who succeed in getting out of the red-light areas. Storytelling through books, theatre and movies is a very accessible way to educate families and girls themselves about the importance of girls’ education. The right to education has been a very good way to ensure that parents send their daughters to school.
MS: The NEP 2020 claims to provide access to highest-quality education for all learners regardless of their social or economic background yet there is no mention about the educational opportunities of sex workers and their children in the NEP neither there are any government policies regarding the same except the Right to Education Act. What do you think of such discrepancy on the part of the government?
RG: The government tends to forget the most vulnerable in its policies. I call such girls The Last Girl. They are the last because they are the most vulnerable for being poor, female and teenagers. On top of that they are often from marginalized groups like oppressed castes, tribes and religions. Due to this they do not have access to food, clothing, housing, education, and even legal protection. This makes them the last. Any good policy must begin by the ‘uplift of the last.’ If the government did that they would actually use their imagination and think of how it can create policies and system to ensure that children of prostituted women are given access to education. But they want to take the easy way out and reach those who are already easy to reach. This is a very short-term action by the government and does not improve the system of education. If they created a system that included and reached The Last Girl, ‘education for all’ would become a reality in India.
MS: What measures do you think can be taken by the Government to end discrimination against children of sex workers and make sure that they receive quality education just like every other child?
RG: Start community classrooms in red-light areas, that are equipped with proper teachers to provide after-school help with homework and one good meal a day. This should be accompanied by ensuring that mainstream schools have quotas for admission of children from these marginalized groups that have subsidized tuition. No school has any such quota right now. Even the economically backward quota is not implemented and not even monitored by the government. My NGO, Apne Aap, sponsors children from red-light areas in boarding schools in Delhi. One school called Shanti Gyan International not only charged us full tuition and boarding, but even made us give the boarding for the pandemic year when the school was closed. It was a complete rip off. Not only could we not avail the economically backward group quota, we had to pay double, because the school owner said he was “obliging” us by admitting our children.