www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 VOLUME 2 : ISSUE 5 || September 2020 || Email: [email protected] Website: www.whiteblacklegal.co.in www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 DISCLAIMER No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied in any form by any means without prior written permission of Editor-in-chief of White Black Legal – The Law Journal. The Editorial Team of White Black Legal holds the copyright to all articles contributed to this publication. The views expressed in this publication are purely personal opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Editorial Team of White Black Legal. Though all efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and correctness of the information published, White Black Legal shall not be responsible for any errors caused due to oversight or otherwise. www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 EDITORIAL TEAM EDITOR IN CHIEF Name - Mr. Varun Agrawal Consultant || SUMEG FINANCIAL SERVICES PVT.LTD. Phone - +91-9990670288 Email - [email protected] EDITOR Name - Mr. Anand Agrawal Consultant|| SUMEG FINANCIAL SERVICES PVT.LTD. EDITOR (HONORARY) Name - Smt Surbhi Mittal Manager || PSU EDITOR(HONORARY) Name - Mr Praveen Mittal Consultant || United Health Group MNC EDITOR Name - Smt Sweety Jain Consultant||SUMEG FINANCIAL SERVICES PVT.LTD. EDITOR Name - Mr. Siddharth Dhawan Core Team Member || Legal Education Awareness Foundation www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 ABOUT US WHITE BLACK LEGAL is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal provide dedicated to express views on topical legal issues, thereby generating a cross current of ideas on emerging matters. This platform shall also ignite the initiative and desire of young law students to contribute in the field of law. The erudite response of legal luminaries shall be solicited to enable readers to explore challenges that lie before law makers, lawyers and the society at large, in the event of the ever changing social, economic and technological scenario. With this thought, we hereby present to you WHITE BLACK LEGAL: THE LAW JOURNAL www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 NAME - Tanya Janghel & Milind Jain CONTACT NUMBERS - 9887514049,8105623044 QUALIFICATION - STUDENT 5th Year B.A. LL.B NAME OF THE INSTITUTION - K.L.E. SOCIETY’S LAW COLLEGE, BENGALURU NAME OF THE UNIVERSITY - KARNATAKA STATE LAW UNIVERSITY, HUBLI www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 DECRIMINALIZING AND REGULATING PROSTITUTION IN INDIA ABSTRACT In this evolving world, we get satisfied with changes in our civilizations. The change for good or bad is a need of this hour. Are we moving towards a better tomorrow? The answer may be "Yes or No" depends on the perspective of people. One such sensitive issue of society is "Prostitution". Its existence might have changed but the peoples' perspective towards it is the same. Prostitution describes sexual intercourse in exchange for remuneration The sex industry in Indian and global market which now includes strip clubs, massage brothels, phone sex, brothel, pimping and escort prostitution generates in multibillion dollar. The key factor for those women adopting prostitution as their lifestyle in India is lack of family support, poverty and illiteracy. Moreover, so long as women are considered as liability and sold, prostitution is assumed to be inevitable. While some are defining men’s use of women in prostitution as a form of sexual violence, there are others who seek to normalise and legitimise “sex work” as a reasonable job for women. Such opposite views all calling themselves “feminists”. Some countries choose to ban the sex work while other countries have tried regulating prostitution and giving health and social benefits to the sex workers. In this paper I will be discussing about types of prostitutes, some Constitutional provisions and penal provisions given in Indian Penal Code 1860 and Constitution of India. What are the factors which lead the women in Prostitution; we will also be discussing Prostitution in other countries, some of the initiatives taken by the Government of India to forbid this Activity and most importantly my take on decriminalization of prostitution. 6 www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 INTRODUCTION “SLAVERY STILL EXISTS, BUT NOW IT APPLIES TO WOMEN AND ITS NAME IS PROSTITUTION” - VICTOR HUGO India is a country where all the persons, citizens and peoples of it are given protection under Constitution of India if any legal or fundamental right of them are violated. Is Prostitution against the Morale of the citizens or Constitution of India? Women who are engaged in prostitution are deprived from this right. Every citizen should be treated equally but are we treating the prostitutes equally. Women who do not go for prostitution from their own will but the circumstances force them to go for prostitution for a living or those women who are trafficked have worse condition. Bombay’s red light district, kamathipura, is considered the primary node in south Asian trafficking circuits and the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic. Around 43% of trafficked persons are used for commercial sexual exploitation of which 98 percent are women and girls1. India is also destination and transit point for sex trafficking. In 2011, it was ranked seventh out of 196 countries in the Trafficking Index in terms of risk for trafficking, where it was grouped with countries that were identified as being at extreme risk for trafficking.2 “A prostitute may be a person, who allows her body to be used for a few purposes reciprocally for payment”. Organizers of prostitution are generally called as pimps. Brothels are establishments in red light areas of big cities where prostitution takes place. Prostitution is not only the problem in India but it’s all over the world even in the developed countries whose economies are so strong than our nation. If we trace the path of Prostitution we will find that it was a part of daily life or an activity in ancient Greece. India is also home for several people who are below poverty line; therefore the people who are not able to afford food for them in a single day are the main casualties who are trapped under these situations. In India we can see that the women are the main persons who go in such lines as they are not very well treated by their own families and are kept as burden in their own family. Therefore at the end to earn money for them and to keep alive they need to join the line of Prostitution or are forced to do so by their own family. 1 ILO, 2007 2https://wcd.nic.in/sites/default/files/Final%20Report%20Trafficking%20in%20women%20and%20girl%2C%2 0SAI.pdf 7 www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 Though prostitution is a legal act it is not a celebrated one. Many NGOs, organizations and individual groups are going through a herculean task to control prostitution. Anytime the topic about prostitution comes there exists a question through all the time which is about the legalization of all such organized activities. Every time, this question becomes unanswered due to its arbitrariness. It is reported that these victims are kept in brothels without adequate food and minimal medicine. There are instances were girls who have returned from brothels have revealed that they were forced to satisfy 20-25 customers a day and were not even given a single meal properly by the brothel owners and they had to rely on tips from customers. This form of slavery is cruel were owner controls the life of enslaved women. Prostitution is a class of profession which involves great amount of risk and tolerance both physically and mentally. Prostitution as a profession is also affected by various norms like social and cultural, which means that women are victims of social stigma and poverty. For this it is duty of lawmakers and the Government to make some laws which can strike a balance and those persons or peoples should be safeguarded who are being abused. Just because of poverty these persons are becoming victims of sexual abuse, lack of medical facilities and mental diseases. However prostitution in India is illegal, but in some of the countries it’s a legal profession. Therefore we can say that legalizing prostitution has its own pros and cons. But what can be pros and cons of legalizing prostitution? If prostitution will be legalized then it will help Government to provide a good and strong system of equality and it can create a high level of neutrality. On the other hand the cons of legalizing prostitution can be, it does not provide any guarantee on the quality of rule, it may discourage the social changes that we need to change. If we see both the situations in this present era so we can say that only body of laws can be constructed to match the needs. If we see The Constitution of India we can say that it does not expressly says the rights of sex workers it only says about basic human rights under 3ARTICLE 14 which is RIGHT TO EQUALITY and ARTICLE 154 states that there should be no DISCRIMINATION ON GROUNDS OF RELIGION, RACE, CASTE, SEX OR PLACE OF BIRTH, and ARTICLE 215 states PROTECTION OF LIFE AND PERSONAL LIBERTY which also includes right to love 3P M BAKSHI THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA BARE ACT 15TH EDITION (PAGE NO. 20) 4P M BAKSHI THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA BARE ACT 15TH EDITITON ( PAGE NO. 41) 5P M BAKSHI THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA BARE ACT 15TH EDITION (PAGE NO. 72) 8 www.whiteblacklegal.co.in ISSN: 2581-8503 with human dignity, and ARTICLE 326 of The Constitution of India ensures that if any legal and fundamental right of any citizen is violated then they can directly approach to the Supreme Court for the enforcement of right.