Sexuality Research & Social Policy http://nsrc.sfsu.edu

December 2008 Vol. 5, No. 4

South Asian Border Crossings and Sex Work: Revisiting the Question of Migration in Anti-Trafficking Interventions

Svati P. Shah

Abstract: Tracing the genealogy of U.S. foreign policy interests in trafficking through the first major con- temporary trafficking case in the United States, the author shows that historical concerns about pro- tecting U.S. borders form a set of principles criminalizing migrants and argues that these principles are being exported through U.S. anti-trafficking work abroad. Moving from the moment in the 1990s when a consolidated anti-trafficking agenda was being determined in the United States, the author discusses the ways in which this agenda is now potentially migrating to South Asia and, in particular, to — albeit with some major tensions already in play. The author argues that states’ anxieties about migra- tion are themselves migrating, such that states in different regions are aiming to coordinate their responses to increased economic migration everywhere, and shows that anxieties about preventing sex work gain purchase in an international context in which migration and decriminalized borders are increasingly suspect.

Key words: trafficking debate; law; India; diaspora; immigration

Discourses and debates regarding the implementa- U.S. domestic policy. Using both Chapkis’s and Luibhéid’s tion of free-trade policies around the world have tended work on the relationship between anti-migrant and anti- to emphasize how these policies enable the more unfet- trafficking agendas, critiques of the conceptual and politi- tered migration of capital across international borders cal conflation of trafficking and , as well as the (Jha, 2000; Overbeek, 2002). Critics of these policies construction of innocence in these discourses offered by have tried to emphasize their human cost, especially with Chapkis and by Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema (1998), respect to low-income migrants, who have more signifi- I argue that this synergy is now increasingly apparent in U.S. cantly reduced access to cross-border migration within the foreign policy as well. The focus on international security, context of neoliberalism than they did previously. At the contextualized by the so-called war on terror, has consti- same time, governmental concerns regarding human traf- tuted a foreign-policy discourse that seems to be aimed at ficking are rising, leading to further advocacy for height- heightening national border controls in countries and ened law enforcement and added border-control regions that are of strategic interest to the United States, measures, which are rationalized as protective of the rights including South Asia. Anti-trafficking initiatives under- of innocents who may be unwittingly trafficked into taken by the U.S. government abroad include both shaping prostitution. and strengthening law enforcement in allied countries In this article, I draw on the critiques of Wendy Chapkis through the dominant anti-trafficking framework. To illus- (2003) and Eithne Luibhéid (2002), who have argued that trate this trajectory, I discuss U.S. governmental interests there is a synergy, both contemporary and historical, in shaping anti-trafficking laws and policies in India. My between anti-trafficking and anti-migration discourses in argument, which stems from concerns that grew out of my

Address correspondence concerning this article to Svati P. Shah, Department of Women’s Studies, Duke University, 210 East Duke Building, Box 90760, Durham, NC 27708. E-mail: [email protected]

Sexuality Research & Social Policy, Vol. 5, Issue 4, pp. 19–30, electronic ISSN 1553-6610. © 2008 by the National Sexuality Research Center. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp 19 SEXUALITY RESEARCH & SOCIAL POLICY

ethnographic research on sex work and migration in the city person deserves this hell. Let us break our silence. of (Shah, in press), is based on a contextualized Let us break our tolerance to such a crime, and analysis of newspaper reportage, research conducted by strengthen the hands of those of us who are fight- academics and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), ing this battle. Come. Join me in this global fight and legal cases. against .

Rhetorics of Trafficking and In Hindi, however, he said: Prostitution in South Asia Every girl bought and sold is someone’s sister or Current U.S. governmental interest in preventing daughter. Today you don’t have any relationship trafficking in South Asia—and especially in India—is sig- (rishta) to them, but you can. Until then, will you nificant, both in terms of the space the issue claims in pub- watch this fight in silence? The time is not for think- lic discourses on migration, sexuality, and charity, as well ing, the time is for stopping. Respect women. Stop as the number of resources being poured into the issue. human trafficking. (United Nations Office on Drugs India is becoming a hub of this work for international and Crime, 2007) agencies and for bilateral donors alike. One example of this focus is the South Asia Regional Conference of the Global As the Hindi film industry’s biggest star, Bachchan’s Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN GIFT), a meet- involvement in this campaign is not insignificant. ing held in New Delhi in October 2007 and sponsored by There is much to pull apart regarding the fact that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Celebrity these messages emphasized organized crime for the endorsements for fighting trafficking in India accompa- English-speaking audiences but stressed family, rela- nied the conference, including prerecorded messages of tionships, and the status of women in the Hindi mes- solidarity from such A-list Bollywood actors as Amitabh sage. The issue of subjectivity in these messages, as Bachchan, Preity Zinta, John Abraham, and Suneil Shetty. well as in the discourse as a whole, is also critical: To A growing cadre of major and minor Bollywood per- whom is our hero speaking? In the Hindi message, sonalities, it seems, are jumping onto the anti-trafficking the imperative form of Bachchan’s exhortation to bandwagon, probably because the issue increasingly is respect women indicates that women are not speak- becoming a nodal point for charity. With trafficking being ing here at all; rather, they are the object of a con- represented as the nexus of all so-called social evils, includ- versation between Bachchan and his imagined (and ing prostitution, slums, child labor, poor sanitation, educa- necessarily gendered) audience, whom he implores tion, and HIV/AIDS, an endorsement on behalf of an to take action to protect their women. For the purpose anti-trafficking campaign, it follows, is an endorsement of this piece, I indicate this analysis but bracket it in against all of these ills rolled into one simple message. The favor of emphasizing the ways in which Bachchan’s celebrity endorsements at the New Delhi event were the message mirrors some of the problems and elisions most public aspect of a series of high-level meetings and con- in the international anti-trafficking discourse, as well ferences held over the last year involving the United States as how these elisions may be historicized, in part, in Agency for International Development, the United Nations U.S. domestic anti-trafficking policy. Office on Drugs and Crime, UNICEF, and the Indian Ministry The genealogy of the international debate on traf- of Women and Child Development. These meetings and ficking includes contemporary feminist debates on pros- consultations have been convened to help formulate a road titution and, of course, older debates on pornography, in map for eradicating human trafficking in the region. which feminists in the United States argued that pornog- Although human trafficking does have several official, raphy and violence against women were two aspects of a yet highly contested definitions, the term itself is subject seamless whole (Bernstein & Schaffner, 2004; Spector, to the kinds of slippages that are evident in the celebrity 2006; Vance, 1984). Like contemporary anti-trafficking endorsements shown during the UN GIFT conference. Of and antiprostitution activism, antipornography activism these, Amitabh Bachchan’s video message to conference mobilized a call to empower states so that they could pro- participants was, perhaps, the most emblematic. Two ver- tect women from violence (Brown, 1995; Doezema, 2001). sions of his message were broadcast, one in Hindi, the Although Bachchan never utters the word prostitution in other in English. In his English-language message, he said: English or in Hindi, his messages’ emphasis on women in To combat an organized crime, we need to be orga- relation to human trafficking and slavery can be under- nized, all of us, who believe that no human being stood as referencing prostitution. In a matrix that empha- should be enslaved. No child, no woman, no human sizes femaleness and human trafficking, women are legible

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as prostitutes because of the historicity of this particular with any historical perspective on how this situation came trope. An emphasis on people or human beings in relation to be or what other aims this rhetoric may serve. to human trafficking would have mitigated the conflation On the surface, increasing parallels are evident between trafficking and prostitution by emphasizing all between the U.S. government’s position on trafficking forms of human trafficking, which includes all manner of and prostitution and some elements within the Indian low-wage labor and labor sectors. government. Without critical historical analysis of the Institutions such as the United Nations and some sec- development of this issue in social policy, however, the tors of the Indian government are under pressure to adopt explanatory choices for this development are limited to an abolitionist agenda with respect to all sexual com- theories of unilateral U.S. hegemony, or the notion that merce, as well as an explicit aim to eradicate prostitution, convergences in these policies are coincidental, based on by such entities as the U.S. government and others that a real rise in the numbers of people trafficked in every have already adopted this stance. This pressure is driven region every year. Critiques of the problems of data col- by a confluence of actors, including both governmental and lection on trafficking notwithstanding (Laczko, 2005; nongovernmental individuals and organizations, who are Masud Ali, 2005), I aim to show that any parallels between finding common cause on this issue, if not shared purpose. the attitudes of the Indian and the U.S. governments For example, a recent article in the official U.S. Department toward trafficking are not the result of unilateralism or of State magazine (Sharifi, 2008) described joint U.S. coincidence. Rather, I argue that these parallels are part governmental and NGO anti-trafficking efforts around of a complex range of geopolitical considerations and are the world as abolitionist. The first discursive step toward historically contextualized by a number of developments achieving this agenda—a step that has been pursued by in the international anti-trafficking discourse itself, antiprostitution activists—has been to conflate prostitu- including, among other things, a series of events that tion, violence, and trafficking. took place in the 1990s—such as the now infamous Reddy Bachchan’s Hindi message resonates with this set of trafficking case. discursive elisions and echoes the position of popular Remembering the Lakireddy Bali Reddy Case documentaries on , such as Land of Missing Children (Kiley, 2006). This film, produced by the The contemporary anti-trafficking policies of the U.S. UK firm Journeyman Pictures, presents prostitution and government are anchored in the Trafficking Victims trafficking in India as an antimodern and repressively Protection Act (TVPA), which passed into law in 2000.1 patriarchal aspect of a country that is, nonetheless, com- Wendy Chapkis (2003) has offered a legislative history of peting relatively successfully in the new globalized econ- its passage, a history that includes the complex vagaries omy. These kinds of mass-mediated images, which also of bipartisanship in U.S. politics. Chapkis also has argued include numerous media stories on the ostensible increase that the act created a new category of violated (innocent) in trafficking to and from India, also convey this immigrants while imposing measures to further restrict dichotomized tension between economic growth and gen- migration against foreign workers categorized as illegal. dered repression. When Bachchan’s Hindi message Chapkis and others have documented the legislative devel- exhorted his viewers to respect women, the implication opment of the TVPA with respect to existing feminist was that this exhortation is necessary because women are debates on prostitution and, previously, pornography; it not respected; when trafficking is stopped, the message is also noteworthy that the passage of the TVPA came on implied, women will achieve a status they have yet to the heels of a well-publicized case of human trafficking inhabit in India. between the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and The linkages that Bachchan’s messages suggest— the U.S. city of Berkeley, California, involving Lakireddy linkages between human trafficking, organized crime, Bali Reddy, one of Berkeley’s wealthiest landlords (Center and the need to protect (and produce) the innocent—have for Women Policy Studies, 2006). Although the case has many potential consequences, including those that extend been fairly well documented, especially by the Indian and into law and into (primarily urban) policing practices. the Indian American press, it also bears remembering as Strengthening the hands (in Bachchan’s words) of those who are fighting the anti-trafficking battle has effectively meant empowering and expanding technologies of surveil- 1 This law was passed as the Victims of Trafficking and lance in urban public spaces. Although this kind of mes- Violence Protection Act of 2000 (Pub. L. 106-386, Div. B, tit. V, 114 Stat. 1464, 1527-29, 1531-32). However, I refer to saging constantly points to an increase in levels of human it by its commonly used shorthand name, the TVPA, trafficking, it rarely qualifies the assertion of this increase throughout this article.

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an antecedent of anti-trafficking policies that the U.S. one of servitude, were the girls not enrolled in any Department of State has been actively attempting to dis- school? (Pais, 2004, ¶ 4) seminate abroad. Many of the contemporary motivations It is worth noting that there seemed to be some con- for this dissemination may be found in a rereading of the fusion in the press about the names of the two girls, and Reddy case. whether they were, in fact, sisters or not. The question of Lakireddy Bali Reddy, an immigrant from Andhra names is important, not only for identifying the girls and Pradesh, India, was one of the wealthiest landowners in their families correctly but also for the caste connotations Berkeley, press reports repeatedly stated. He was of the names that were initially reported, versus the girls’ arrested, indicted, and convicted of bringing at least three birth names. The case U.S. v. Reddy (2000) gave the girls from his village in Andhra Pradesh to California, name of the deceased woman, who was 17, as Chanti ostensibly for the purpose of having sex with them, and Jyotsna Devi Prattipati. Initially, the two girls were iden- employing them at very low wages in his restaurant and tified as Seetha and Lilitha Vamireddy or Vemireddy. The as cleaning staff in his rental properties. As the case pro- suffix -reddy indicates membership to an upper-caste, gressed, it also became apparent that Reddy had fraud- but not Brahmin, community. The name Prattipati indi- ulently used the H1B (work) visa system to bring at least cates that the girl was, in fact, from a Dalit (lower-caste or 20 people from his village in Andhra Pradesh and put so-called untouchable) community. The power that them to work for substandard or no wages in his various Lakireddy Bali Reddy would have had over girls from a properties and restaurants (Saracevic, 2000). The case Dalit community is qualitatively different, and much more first hit the press on November 26, 1999, when two of the pronounced, than he would have had if they had been of girls Reddy had brought to the United States had turned his same caste. The issue of caste in this case was discussed up the heat in one of his rental properties, where they in some detail in the Indian press (e.g., Iype, 2001; Menon, were being housed. A block in the building’s ventilation 2001), but not in the U.S. papers. system caused one of the girls to die from carbon monox- The initial press reports in the United States spurred ide poisoning and the other to be seriously injured (Yi, further investigation of Reddy—who was already being 2000). The weekly India Abroad summarized the initial investigated by the (then) Immigration and Naturalization revelation as follows: Service (INS)—leading to further revelations that the girls The story began November 24, 1999—the eve of had been brought to the United States on falsified docu- Thanksgiving. Marcia Poole, a graphic designer, ments. By January 2000, several California dailies writer and activist, was driving down a Berkeley, reported that the case involved California road when she spotted a group of Indian- [o]ne of Berkeley’s most prominent landlords [who] American men carrying a heavy carpet. As she has been charged in federal court with bringing watched, a human leg popped out of the carpet. A underage girls to the city from his native India for young girl was desperately trying to reach the car- sex.…The U.S. Attorney on Tuesday charged Reddy pet; a portly gent—whom Poole later identified as with one count of illegally bringing aliens into the Bali Reddy—was seen ordering her away. Poole United States. The other charge, according to an stopped her car; got a fellow motorist to call 911; and affidavit, said Reddy “did import and aid and abet kept vigil. Soon, police cars and an ambulance the importation into the United States of aliens for arrived on the scene. Later, she learnt that the portly the purpose of prostitution and for other immoral man had volunteered to interpret for the police. purposes.” (Ferris & Bulwa, 2000, ¶ 1, ¶ 11) Through him, the police were told that the body As the story continued to unfold, news sources was that of 17-year-old Chanti Prattipati, who had such as the San Jose Daily News, the San Francisco died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The girl’s father Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner went on to told the police, through the volunteer interpreter, describe in some detail Reddy’s many crimes, which that the younger girl was Prattipati’s sister, 15-year- included tax evasion, failure to comply with almost every old Seetha Vamireddy (or so read the name on her commercial housing code in the city of Berkeley, and ille- passport). No one was paying any heed to Poole.…A gally employing immigrants with falsified documents. few days later, two student journalists—Megan However, the crime that the Chronicle went back to over Greenwell and Iliana Montauk—were moved to and over again was the case of the girls, reporting that pose, in the Berkeley High School magazine, a ques- “[p]rosecutors argued that the ‘heinous and insidious’ tion that had been bothering them. Why, they asked crime was enough to bar his being released on bond. The in an article portraying the plight of the two girls as victims, they said, had been molested frequently over

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four years, both in India and Berkeley” (Van Derbeken, U.S. Department of State, the FBI, the Indian Bar Levi Holtz, & Squatriglia, 2000, “Gold Discovered,” ¶ 2). Association, and local police in the Krishna District of In one of the first motions in the trial, the district attor- Andhra Pradesh, India. ney said, “We ask this court to approach this case as a This case was destabilizing on several fronts, as case that is a crime of violence” (Van Derbeken et al., evidenced by some of the media reports, with respect to “Gold Discovered,” ¶ 3). contemporary anti-trafficking discourses and the law. This assertion, that the treatment of the girls should In terms of the South Asian diasporic imaginary, the be considered a crime of violence, recalls earlier feminist case revealed a reality that reads counter to the model arguments that rape is a crime of violence and power, not minoritarian myth, which relies on a unitary represen- a crime of sex or passion. This argument was enormously tation of the South Asian community in the United helpful in reframing legal discourses of rape to center on States as comprising law-abiding Hindu professionals of the rights and needs of rape victims. In this instance, Indian descent (Prashad, 2000). This image was dialec- however, although Reddy’s crime was clearly, among tically reinscribed by governmental authorities during other things, violent, one may ask, What other aspects of the Reddy case, such as the INS official who told a San his crimes were elided, prioritized, or ignored in service Francisco Chronicle reporter that “the INS’s early inves- of this argument, and to what effect? In the end, all of tigation showed Reddy to be a ‘professionally educated Reddy’s immigration, labor, and human-rights abuses gentleman, with widespread corporate interests, finan- were folded into one and were mobilized both by the cial interests. There was nothing to indicate any crimi- state and by local communities, whose interests were nal conduct’” (Levi Holtz, Van Derbeken, & Squatriglia, convergent and yet distinct. 2000, ¶ 10). Reddy’s professional and upper-class Community-based organizations from within and standing, in other words, were read as mutually exclu- outside of South Asian communities in San Francisco sive from, rather than supporting or enabling, his legal mobilized a response to the issue on several fronts. Their transgressions. involvement bears further research and discussion, far I would like to suggest that the case was also desta- beyond the scope of this article, that would help elaborate bilizing legally, in that it provided a testing ground for the history of anti-trafficking discourses in the United prosecuting human trafficking under U.S. law. In an effort States, for example, as well as extend studies of diaspora, to address every aspect of the case, prosecutors also South Asian community-based activism, and the devel- attempted to use the anti-peonage law, the California edu- opment of discourses on migration to and from the United cation code (because the girls were not in school), and the States. These organizations included several South Asian 13th amendment. While taking cognizance of these issues feminist groups, including an anti–domestic violence in the case—as well as a host of human-rights parame- organization, non–South Asian feminists, and immigrant ters that were violated according to the U.S. govern- rights advocates. The issue helped mobilize progressive ment’s commitment to various international covenants South Asian coalitions as well, which continue to work on against slavery, extrajudicial killing, and involuntary servi- issues of migration and labor rights in the San Francisco tude—the judge dismissed these charges with prejudice Bay Area. because they were not privately or individually action- For the purpose of this argument, it is important to able under the law (U.S. v. Reddy, 2000).2 These legal note that although these groups were active in calling on aspects of the case are significant given the subtle nego- the district attorney’s office and other state functionar- tiations that were under way in the Senate regarding the ies to prosecute Reddy and his codefendants to the fullest TVPA (2000) at the time Reddy was arrested. These extent of the law, these groups were not necessarily advo- cating for more state oversight or criminalization of all the affected parties. State functionaries, however, seemed 2 Presumably in reference to this statement, one of the anonymous reviewers for this piece wrote: to be alarmed that despite the fact that Reddy’s conduct The Reddy case led to at least one amendment of the was clearly illegal, fraudulent, and harmful, no single TVPA (in 2003) worth highlighting—establishment of the clear law existed under which Reddy could be prose- “private right of action for persons who are trafficked into the United States” with the purported intention of a) cuted. In the end, Reddy was prosecuted under RICO increasing access to civil law rather than labor law for (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), material compensation of the “slaves”, b) room for ATCA (the Alien Torts Claims Act), and the Fair Labor “broader definition of involuntary servitude” to be deployed by the trafficked plaintiff. These amendments Standards Act (U. S. v. Reddy, 2000). Ultimately, the case reflect the ongoing tension between anti-migrant and investigation involved the Berkeley police, the INS, the anti-trafficking stances.

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negotiations followed on the heels of a controversial CIA these events may be productively considered as existing in, report on trafficking into the United States (Chapkis, 2003). and therefore effecting, a shared discursive frame. The Reddy case showed that, for better or for worse, there The Tenuous Transition From Prostitution was no comprehensive law under which a perpetrator of to Trafficking in India3 trafficking could be prosecuted. With respect to the particulars of the Reddy case, the In this section, I offer a schematic history of the con- discourse regarding the two young women who were at vergence between prostitution and trafficking in India, its center was folded into a narrative that would become both to map some of the legal priorities regarding this issue familiar within subsequent national anti-trafficking and to argue that the relationship between these concepts rhetorics. More often than not, the women who were is far from stable. Historians of prostitution have pointed brought to the United States in Reddy’s illicit business to the legacy that exists within contemporary discourses ventures were represented in the press as helpless village of prostitution and trafficking, extending from interna- girls who, for example, “often turned the heat up high tional concerns over White slavery in the late nineteenth and kept the windows of their apartment closed because century and the relationship between these concerns and they missed the warmth of their homeland” (Levi Holtz, those surrounding chattel slavery in the Americas, as well 1999, ¶ 1). It is clear that certain power imbalances, as the connections between Victorian sex panics, prosti- especially those pertaining to class, caste, and gender, tution, the perception of prostitution, and nascent dis- were in place such that Reddy was in control of where the courses on nationalism and border control (Tambe, 2005; people he brought to United States went, which visa Walkowitz, 1992). Despite the long-standing set of con- they were to apply for, which job they eventually did, and nections between prostitution and trafficking, including so forth. those drawn in the first anti-trafficking convention and rat- However, the equally important micronegotiations ified by the then newly formed United Nations in 1949, of power among the people making the transactions were prostitution and trafficking were not presented as essen- obscured; why so many young people from low-income, tially or inherently equivalent until relatively recently. lower-caste communities—as were most of the people Reddy This context is important for understanding the his- brought over—would grab the opportunity to come to the torical development of cities such as Mumbai, which has United States remained unasked in much of the reportage included a consolidated, visible set of red-light areas since on the case. The contradictions and the questions that the late nineteenth century. Concerns about prostitution inhere in this case, as well as the legislative gaps that the case in the city by legislators, middle-class reformers, and the seemed to reveal for lawmakers, constitute a legacy in con- media have accompanied the growth and existence of temporary anti-trafficking laws used domestically in the -based prostitution in Mumbai since the Contagious United States, and provide an example of the priorities that Diseases Acts helped give rise to informally yet clearly are evident in the ways in which the United States aims to demarcated zones for sexual commerce within the city shape anti-trafficking policies in other countries. In the (Arasu, 2006). This local context was significant in the ensuing years, the slippages between trafficking, sexual newly independent Indian state’s ratification of the 1949 slavery, and prostitution have taken on new significance. Anti-Trafficking Convention. Ratification meant that sig- To be clear, recalling the Reddy case in this light is not natory countries were obliged to pass national legislation an argument for causality. Demonstrating that the Reddy that would facilitate, as defined by the convention, the pre- case caused the TVPA (2000) to exist in its initial form vention and suppression of trafficking. India’s Suppression would require evidence of the direct impact of that case on of Immoral Trafficking Act was passed in 1956, was the TVPA negotiations of the day—evidence that is not amended twice during the subsequent 3 decades, and was apparent in the public record of the case. However, the tim- ultimately renamed the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act ing of the Reddy case and the debates about the passage of the TVPA do show that these conversations were happen- ing within the same public milieu. Furthermore, in some 3 The insights I offer in this section and the next are based significant ways, the problems and priorities thrown up in on some of the data and analysis that I have included in a forthcoming anthology piece titled “Ethnography the Reddy case are reflected and, to some degree, addressed Illuminates Policy: The Politics of Sex Work and Trafficking in the TVPA. Moving to the Indian context in the next sec- in India” (Shah, in press), which elaborates in some detail tion, I aim to show that discourses regarding trafficking in the slippages between trafficking and prostitution in the Indian context. My usage of these insights here aims to India were developing at about the same time and slightly raise questions about the migration of anti-trafficking after the Reddy case broke; I ultimately suggest that all of frameworks internationally.

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(ITPA; Kotiswaran, 2001). Because the convention was the law itself was never intended to eradicate prostitution based on anti-trafficking conventions that were derived altogether. However, the absence of a clause that directly from discourses of White slavery—a racialized term that criminalizes the exchange of money for sexual services prioritized protecting the chastity of White women does produce an emphasis within the ITPA on witnessing (Burton, 1994; Walkowitz, 1992)—and because the term prostitution beyond the confines of the transaction itself, White slavery included sexual exploitation and prostitu- to include the solicitation of sexual services in public tion, signatories to the convention necessarily inherited the spaces. This emphasis indicates both that the act of solic- burdens of the original anti-trafficking convention’s itation is seen to render the transaction between sex elisions between slavery, exploitation, trafficking, and worker and client a foregone conclusion and that the dis- prostitution. tinction between seeing solicitation and knowing that sex- The criminalization of prostitution centers on the ual services have been exchanged for money, goods, or notion of sexual commerce as a social harm and deprior- other services amount to the same thing. itizes an understanding of sex work as an economic strat- This legal context will change radically when reforms egy. The criminalizing of prostitution in India indicates to the ITPA (1986) proposed by the Indian government’s that this set of priorities is in play, to be sure, but may also Ministry for Women and Child Development are passed. reveal that much more is at stake than furthering the Amendments to the ITPA have been proposed several rhetoric of protecting women from selling sex. This “much times since its last major revision and renaming in 1986 more” includes sustaining the rhetoric of urban public (Kotiswaran, 2001) due to ongoing debates about the best safety and economic development in India through the way to define and address prostitution. The ministry’s promise of laws such as the ITPA (1986). Although Indian recently proposed reforms would include the repeal of antisolicitation laws, antinuisance laws, and Police Acts the antisolicitation clause. Although this measure is sup- (which give the police authority to monitor public space ported by sex workers’ rights advocates, a host of other for noise, crowding, and any general use) already bestow proposed reforms include enhanced penalties for run- relatively broad powers on the police, these are supple- ning a brothel and lowering the rank of police officers mented by informal policing practices, such as the enforce- legally empowered to conduct raids on , which ment of unwritten curfews in and near low-income would make raids much more frequent. The most signif- neighborhoods in cities such as Mumbai. icant proposed change would be to criminalize clients Although the ITPA (1986) is legislatively redundant (figured as male) who solicit sexual services (Grover & in several ways, it has been used, until now, to govern any Tandon, 2006). legal transgression related to organized, brothel-based The initially proposed amendments included a new, sexual commerce. The main clauses of the ITPA have served expanded definition of prostitution as “sexual exploitation to contain visible signs of prostitution in public spaces, or abuse of persons for commercial purposes…or for con- particularly through Section 8, the antisolicitation clause. sideration in money or in any other kind” (Parliamentary Elsewhere (Shah, 2006), I have argued that the antisolic- Standing Committee, 2006, §10.1). This amendment itation clause helps maintain gendered hierarchies that would have constituted a departure from the current def- structure the use of public urban space by constructing a inition of prostitution in the ITPA (1986), which states that spectacle of prostitution against which normative, “‘prostitution’ means the sexual exploitation or abuse of respectable sexuality is defined. The antisolicitation clause persons for commercial purposes, and the expression in particular is significant given that the exchange of ‘prostitute’ shall be construed accordingly” (§2f). The new money for sexual services per se is not illegal in India. definition effectively would have defined prostitution in Instead, solicitation, living off of the earnings of a sex terms of exploitation, a word that repeatedly has been used worker, living in a brothel, and other activities related to to indicate prostitution in contemporary debates on traf- the exchange of sex and money are rendered illegal. ficking. By defining prostitution as always and inherently There are wide-ranging interpretations about this exploitative, the amended bill would have precluded the aspect of India’s antiprostitution law. One U.S. activist sug- use of sexual commerce as a livelihood strategy in abso- gested to me that the law might indicate benevolence or lute terms and would have made any sexual commerce even sex-positivity on behalf of the Indian government. In available to anti-trafficking measures, which turn on the contrast, I would echo Ratna Kapur’s (2003) argument, axis of exploitation. Such a change would have been espe- based on her work on the ITPA (1986) and its antisolici- cially significant for people who sell or trade sexual ser- tation clause, that the law enshrines the government’s vices more episodically—those who have, until now, prioritization of controlling visible prostitution and that occupied a liminal and less visible legal status with respect

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to policies that govern prostitution—and potentially would beer bars as seamlessly connected. The Bargirls’ Union have expanded the terrain on which the law can be inter- responded by arguing that most union members either preted and enforced. The struggle between abolitionists were not doing sex work at all or were doing sex work and nonabolitionists in debates on prostitution and traf- episodically, that dancing and prostitution should be leg- ficking in India surfaced in the debate over this clause, in islated separately, and that many bar dancers would begin particular, when the Parliamentary Standing Committee doing sex work full time if the ban were passed. In other of the Rajya Sabha (India’s upper house of parliament), words, as an implicitly antiprostitution measure, the union which was deputed to review the amendments and com- maintained, the ban would inevitably fail. munity responses to them, suggested abandoning this Forum Against Oppression of Women, an autonomous clause altogether. In its 2006 report, the committee cited feminist organization based in Mumbai, and the Research this proposed definition of prostitution as being too wide Centre for Women Studies of SNDT Women’s University and ambiguous, suggesting that lobbying efforts encour- did survey research with a total of 580 bar dancers before aging the committee to make a legal distinction between and after the ban. They compiled their findings in two trafficking and prostitution have had an impact. At the studies, Backgrounds and Working Conditions of Women same time, the report asserted that prostitutes wish to live Working as Dancers in Dance Bars, and After the Ban: with dignity and to be rehabilitated, language and prior- Women Working in Dance Bars (SNDT Women’s University ities that reflect anti-trafficking, abolitionist agendas & Forum Against Oppression of Women, 2005a, 2005b). internationally.4 In the first study, Forum Against Oppression of Women addressed the question of linkages between the ban and the State-Level Legislation—Bar Girls U.S. Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons The growing convergence of antiprostitution and (TIP) Report tier ranking system, noting the relatively anti-trafficking discourses in India became apparent in the poor 2004 Tier 2 Watch List ranking for India. After the 2005 ban against women dancing for tips in beer bars. The ban, this ranking seemed to have shifted, albeit marginally. series of events leading up to the ban, as well as its sub- The June 2005 TIP Report spoke favorably of the state’s sequent enforcement, also shows the careful interplay of action against the dance bars: U.S. and Indian interests in this convergence. In 2005, as The March 2005 order by the Home Minister of a result of a series of local political machinations in the Maharashtra state to close down “dance bars”—many western Indian state of Maharastra (where Mumbai is of which served as prostitution and trafficking out- located), a sweeping ban was imposed on women dancing lets—may check a new trend of traffickers favouring in beer bars. Beer bars that include women dancing for tips this more sophisticated and concealed format for have, since the mid-1980s, become fairly common selling victims trafficked for the purpose of sexual throughout the state. Women remain fully clothed exploitation over more blatant brothel-based traf- throughout their shifts and dance to Bollywood film songs ficking. (U.S. Department of State, 2005, p. 123) for the bar’s male clientele. The ban was protested by the Forum Against Oppression of Women and SNDT Bargirls’ Union and the Bar Owners’ Association, as well offered the following insight about the relationship as several well-known women’s organizations, including between the ban and the TIP Report ranking: Forum Against Oppression of Women. A large part of this concern and subsequent action The coalition of organizations opposed to the ban over the dance bars, by the State machinery thus argued that the ban would destroy the livelihoods of the seem to be motivated not so much by real concern more than 15,000 women who worked as dancers in these for society and the people, but manipulated by the bars. The use of the language of exploitation and moral- policies of the United States. Thus, dance bars which ity in the law itself, as well as in the parliamentary debates have existed in fact with state sanction for more on the issue, made it clear that advocates of the ban saw than two decades, are now being targeted in this prostitution, the notion of immorality as inherent to manner. This is a matter of serious concern and women who engage in sexual commerce, and dancing in exposes the spurious intent of the government and its motives to secure the interests of its people or 4 The situation regarding these proposed changes to the external pressures. (SNDT Women’s University & Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act is unresolved. At the time Forum Against Oppression of Women, 2005, p. 15) of this writing, the debate among parliamentarians, govern- Forum Against Oppression of Women and mem- mental agencies, and nongovernmental organizations is very much ongoing. The version of the law that will ulti- bers of rights groups in Maharastra acknowl- mately be ratified is unclear. edged that complex interplays between and among local

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politicians also may have led to the ban being proposed ini- protection to victims and stricter tially, though the official proban line was consistently penalties for their traffickers and for clients of pros- iterated as that of protecting bar dancers from being sex- titution. The central government also further ually exploited. However, the interests of the United States empowered the coordination office for anti-traf- in curbing trafficking and, via the conflation of trafficking ficking, elevating the stature of the Department of and sex work, anything relating to the as Women and Child Development (DWCD) by creat- well, were clearly at work in some manner in this instance. ing a Minister of State for Women and Child Without some kind of conflated view of trafficking and Development (MWCD). India should consider des- prostitution in place, the ban on women dancing in these ignating and empowering a national law enforce- bars would have had no impact whatsoever on the TIP ment agency with investigative and prosecutorial Report entry for India in 2005. jurisdiction throughout the country to address its In addition to the current incarnation of the ITPA interstate and international trafficking problem. (1986) and the debate surrounding its proposed reforms, The government should similarly consider taking contemporary debates on trafficking have affected India greater measures to rescue and protect victims of broadly through the implementation of the classification bonded labor and to prosecute their traffickers or system for countries in the TIP Report, which is a pro- employers, giving them punishments sufficiently vision of the TVPA (2000). Although the TVPA is a domes- stringent to deter and that adequately reflect the tic U.S. law, the TIP Report acts as its foreign-policy nature of the heinous crime of trafficking. It is par- antenna by ranking countries according to assessments ticularly important to strengthen and enforce sen- by the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and tences applied to individuals convicted of exploiting Combat Trafficking in Persons. These assessments deter- bonded laborers. India should also improve its long- mine whether countries throughout the world have pros- term protection of trafficking victims and institute ecuted traffickers sufficiently, for the purpose of nation-wide public awareness programs to educate achieving appreciable progress over the previous year in all segments of the population on the dangers of eliminating trafficking in persons (U.S. Department of trafficking. (U.S. Department of State, 2006, p. 137) State, 2004). A country that is ranked in Tier 3 of the TIP The exhortations to revise the ITPA (1986) accord- Report rating system potentially loses all nonhumani- ing to these parameters and references to the DWCD’s role tarian aid from United States Agency for International in these revisions, as well as the suggestion to set up a Development until the U.S. Department of State assesses national anti-trafficking body, are all in keeping with the the country’s anti-trafficking efforts differently. Since stated goals of the DWCD in the ITPA reform process. 2004, India has been ranked just above Tier 3, on the Although this statement does not constitute grounds for Tier 2 Watch List. India’s entry in the 2006 TIP Report claiming that the United States is directly controlling or read, in part: even steering the process, it does create a context for ask- INDIA (TIER 2—WATCH LIST) ing why these two governments’ interests are converging The Government of India does not fully comply on this and related issues. Furthermore, the policy paral- with the minimum standards for the elimination of lels also lead one to question how the link between trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to India’s internal policies and its commercial, technolog- do so. India is placed on Tier 2 Watch List for the third ical, and strategic alliances with the United States, in consecutive year due to its failure to show evidence of addition to its receipt of U.S. aid, is negotiated, in part, increasing efforts to address trafficking in persons. through the discourse on trafficking. Meanwhile, the India lacks a national law enforcement response to effects of the ban on bar girls, although perhaps ensur- any form of trafficking, but took some preliminary ing that India would be kept off of the dreaded Tier 3 list measures to create a central law enforcement unit to of the TIP Report, has led to further developments that do so. However, India did not take steps to address may help sustain the narrative of trafficking with respect the huge issue of bonded labor and other forms of to former dancers. A 2006 Times of India article reported involuntary servitude. The Indian Government also that former dancers now are being recruited to dance in did not take meaningful steps to address its sizeable venues in the Gulf: trafficking-related corruption problem. The gov- Seema was working as a waitress in a bar in [Mumbai]. ernment drafted, but had not yet introduced to par- Her salary was a measly Rs 3,000 per month. But liament, amendments to the Immoral Trafficking when the bar owner asked her if she would be inter- Prevention Act (ITPA) that would afford greater ested to go for a 10-day trip to China and would be

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paid 10 times her salary, she readily agreed. What to date. Although I agree on the significance of the fact followed was a stint at one of the “body shops” that Reddy was ultimately convicted of illegal immi- there, where Indian girls are more in demand than gration and fraud, I see Basu’s overall emphasis on the Chinese girls. need for further criminalization, rather than seeing traf- ficking as a migration issue, as emblematic of the pre- Seema is not alone. In the last four months, there dominant anti-trafficking discourse. The emphasis on has been a huge increase in human trafficking, with criminalization moves the discussion back to Chapkis’s Mumbai becoming a transit point for far-flung des- (2003) question about the initial passage of the TVPA tinations like Hong Kong, Dubai, and even in (2000): African countries like Uganda and Kenya’s capital The question, then, is what motivated the near Nairobi. (Viju, ¶ 2–3) unanimous support for abused migrants and pros- Dancing for tips in bars became difficult and then titutes under HR 3244 by legislators otherwise hos- impossible due to the ban. Although the article acknowl- tile to immigrants and poor women, especially those edges this fact, it also reiterates the conflation between engaged in commercial sex? As I will argue in this migrating for work and human trafficking. This slippage article, the answer lies, in part, in the usefulness of is, by now, all too familiar. As the rhetoric migrates, its the law in creating a politically strategic exception elisions prove themselves to be mobile as well. to a punishing rule. (p. 924) In this article, I have attempted to build upon both Conclusion Chapkis’s (2003) and Luibhéid’s (2002) interventions The Indian government’s interest in anti-trafficking in domestic U.S. anti-trafficking debates in light of work has included an interest in further criminalizing so- transnational and intergovernmental developments in called traffickers, which has included an agenda to crimi- anti-trafficking legislation. How, in the context of inter- nalize clients of sex workers and to emphasize trafficking national anti-trafficking discourses since the passage of as a crime that affects women. This emphasis was also evi- the U.S. TVPA (2000), can a focus on criminality and dent in then U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft’s refer- abject victimization with respect to anti-trafficking dis- ence to the Reddy case when he argued for the need for courses be understood as a discourse of protection in comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation (Yi, 2001), which India? Given the legislative history of trafficking in the was followed by the passage of the TVPA (2000). The act’s United States—as well as the clear U.S. interests in cul- priorities, which rely on addressing the issue of trafficking tivating India as a strategic partner and in proliferating through heightened law enforcement and criminalization, its version of law enforcement internationally—some of are reflected in current U.S. domestic and foreign policy ini- these developments in anti-trafficking laws and rhetorics tiatives on this issue. This emphasis is sustained by some can be understood as being bound up with existing of the scholars who have written about Lakireddy Bali alliances, collaborations, and bids for control. These Reddy and have maintained that the case is more properly alliances and collaborations necessarily include coop- seen as a crime of trafficking rather than as a migration eration on numerous other issues—including, signifi- issue. Sutapa Basu (2005), for example, argued: cantly, HIV/AIDS. At the same time, the analysis and Despite increasingly global attempts to monitor narratives I have presented in this article are not meant and curb the trafficking trade, authorities have been to suggest that the United States is extending direct largely ineffective in dealing with the problem…cur- control into Indian legislative or discursive matters. rent laws regard trafficking largely as a migration Rather, this analysis suggests that legislative develop- issue and do nothing to help trafficking victims. ments on the issue of trafficking, at least, are not occur- The legal context of migration cannot give full jus- ring in national isolation and must be understood within tice to the nebulous crime of trafficking. Traffickers the context of wider sets of national, political, and inter- are not properly punished for their crime. (p. 226) governmental interests. Policy interventions on the However, Basu (2005) went on to say of the Reddy issue of trafficking, then, will necessarily be intertwined case, “It is…important to note that when the government for some time to come. prosecuted Reddy, his charges consisted of mostly ille- Acknowledgments gal immigration and fraud as opposed to exploitation” (p. 227). I wish to thank Forum Against Oppression of I mention Basu’s (2005) work because it is one of Women, my interlocutors in my larger project, and the the few published scholarly readings of the Reddy case two anonymous reviewers of the initial manuscript for

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