India - Living with Dignity - Kolkata
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Episode 6 - MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Living with Dignity
Project implemented by Durbar Mahila Samanvaya Samiti, (http://www.durbar.org)
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
January 2011
Project funded by the NACO, Government of India NACO (www.nacoonline.org)
Kolkata, the capital of the Indian State of West Bengal, is a city of contrasts, where the night life of the rich co-exists alongside extreme poverty; where people live their socialist ideologies while practicing traditional religious rituals. While India’s economic growth has benefited many poor families in Kolkata, nearly one third of the city’s population continues to live in slums. And nearly three-quarters of the Kolkata slum population is below the poverty line. Kolkata has been witnessing a high influx of migrants over the past decades –from West Bengal villages and from the neighbouring country of Bangladesh – contributing to the population that lives in slums.
Sonagachi is the biggest red light area of Kolkata. Here live the migrant women and men who cater to the high demand for sex workers, especially among migrant labour. Most of these sex workers are illiterate and have little knowledge on risks associated with unsafe sexual practices. These women are a high risk group for HIV infections. The increasing incidence of AIDS among sex workers was a cause for concern for the Indian government. The Indian Government responded to this alarm by launching, in 1995, an intervention program in the Sonagachi red light area that aimed at reducing and preventing the incidence of STD and HIV/ AIDS.
Our team went to Sonagachi to meet the sex workers who lit the flame of change and illumined the lives of many sex workers in Kolkata.
The programme of the Indian government includes health services for treating sexually transmitted diseases, building awareness among sex workers and distributing condoms. The outreach workers who worked on this programme were the sex workers themselves. The government informed the outreach workers about HIV/ AIDS, trained them in spreading awareness among their co-workers in facilitating their access to public medical services. From mere transmitters of information, they slowly became educators and agents of change in their communities. They began forming groups that advocated for a change in attitudes, practices and behaviours among sex workers and the wider community.
Some of the active outreach workers came together and formed an organization called Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee so that they could spread awareness on safe sex and on the prevention and cure of AIDS, among a wider group of sex workers. In 1999, the Committee took over the management of the STD/HIV Intervention Programme and replicated the approach of the 'Sonagachi Project' also in other red light areas of the city.
What was the global agenda of the Millennium Development Goal and a commitment of the Indian government soon became a goal for the sex workers of Sonagachi in Kolkata. When people are strengthened by knowledge and solidarity, their collective voice surely gets heard and informs political processes. When global agendas respond to local needs and rights, it becomes a win-win situation. The story of the Durbar Mahila Samanvaya Committee is one such story of women's empowerment.
Today, this Committee not only spreads awareness and distributes free condoms but also helps sex workers in demanding their right to safe sex with clients and better working conditions and in strengthening their collective bargaining power in accessing health services. Today, the Committee brings together 65,000 female, male and transgender sex workers working in the Indian state of West Bengal.
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Additional notes
"None of us knew our rights. Only when we made the committee and came together, did we realise what our rights are" says Bharati Dey, a sex worker who now is an outreach worker raising awareness on rights and HIV among other sex workers.
"Whenever we have problems, we know we can count on our organisation to solve it", says another sex worker.
"Sex workers, who are HIV positive regularly come to get their medical checkups, take medicines and condoms." says a doctor of the government funded health unit.
"I am an HIV positive person. First I thought it was a deadly disease but now I take medicines and know that I can live long so long as I regularly take medicines and precautions. I share my knowledge on safe sex with other sex workers so that at least they do not get AIDS", says an HIV positive sex worker.
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Kolkata, the capital
of the Indian State of West Bengal, is a city of contrasts, where the night
life of the rich co-exists alongside extreme poverty; where people live their
socialist ideologies while practicing traditional religious rituals. Kolkata
has witnessed a high influx of migrants over the past decades. Along with
migration, the numbers living under the poverty line have increased manifold.
Poverty, as always, increases the vulnerability of the most vulnerable: women,
children, handicapped. And migrant labour, as always, creates demand for sex
workers.
Sonagachi is the biggest red light area of Kolkata. The low levels of literacy, among sex workers in Sonagachi, combined with low awareness on AIDS and safe sex makes them a high risk group for HIV infections. Some sex workers in the Sonagachi red light area came together and formed an organization called Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee. The Darbar Committee members increase awareness among sex workers on AIDS, on the prevention and treatment of HIV and on safe sex. They support sex workers in demanding their rights for safe sex with clients. They work with the public health service system to distribute condoms among sex workers.
The story of the
Darbar Mahila Samanvaya Committee is one of women's empowerment. It
demonstrates that when knowledge and solidarity are expressed in one
collective voice, the vulnerable and socially exploited persons begin to
exercise their rights. TVP team went to Sonagachi to meet the outreach sex
workers and learn about their organisation that has changed the lives of many
sex workers in Kolkata.
In 1995, the
Government of India launched an HIV intervention program to reduce and prevent
the incidence of STD and HIV/ AIDS in Sonagachi. The intervention programme
included health services for treating Sexually Transmitted Diseases, building
education and awareness among sex workers and the distribution of condoms. The
outreach workers for implementing this programme were the sex workers
themselves. They were trained to spread awareness and information about HIV/
AIDS and to help co-workers access medical services. The roles and
responsibilities of these outreach workers gradually changed. From mere
transmitters of information, they became educators and agents of change in
their communities. They began forming groups that advocated for a change in
attitudes, practices and behaviours among sex workers and the wider community.
One such active group of sex workers came together and formed the Darbar Mahila Samanvaya Committee. In 1999, Durbar took over the management of the STD/HIV Intervention Programme and replicated the approach of the 'Sonagachi Project' also in other red light areas of the city.
The Darbar Committee empowers sex workers by building their awareness on their rights and by strengthening their collective bargaining power in accessing local services for safe sex and better working conditions. The forum created by the Darbar Committee now brings together 65,000 female, male and transgender sex workers working in the Indian state of West Bengal.
"None of us knew our
rights. Only when we made the committee and came together, did we realise what
our rights are" says Bharati Dey, a sex worker who now is an outreach worker
raising awareness on rights and HIV among other sex workers .
"Whenever we have problems, we know we can count on our organisation to solve it", says another sex worker.
"Sex workers, who are HIV positive regularly come to get their medical check ups, take medicines and condoms." says a doctor of the government funded health unit.
"I am an HIV positive person. First I thought it was a deadly disease but now I take medicines and know that I can live long so long as I regularly take medicines and precautions. I share my knowledge on safe sex with other sex workers so that at least they do not get AIDS", says an HIV positive sex worker.
Additional Information
Durbar's Mission
Durbar's mission is to contribute to a process of social and political change
that promotes and strengthens the rights, dignity and social status of all sex
workers and improves the quality of their lives. Durbar wants to ensure rights
of marginalized communities across the globe through (i) improving self
esteem; (ii) adovacy for practice and policy change; (iii) empowering
communities through collectivisation and capacity building; (iv) Addressing
power relations within their profession; and (v) building alliances. The
organisation seeks to build a world where all marginalized communities live in
an environment of respect, rights and dignity.
Expanding Horizons
All sex workers' collectives that are affiliated to Durbar have access to a
micro-credit programme that is operated by the Usha Multipurpose Co-operative
Society, one of the jewels of the Cooperative movement in West Bengal. This
Cooperative was established in 1995 by sex workers to provide financial
support for their co-workers in moments of crisis. By creating a mechanism for
saving incomes and providing alternative jobs for out-of-work or retired sex
workers, the Cooperative not only helps sex workers in escaping the debt traps
of exploitative money lenders but has also weakened the local money
lender-pimp nexus that exploits and trafficks women. The present membership of
the Cooperative has reached 5000 persons. The Cooperative is now planning to
start a large scale production unit that will generate employment for retired
sex workers and those who want to opt out of sex work. The Cooperative
strongly campaigns for the official recognition of sex work and for the right
to self-determination of sex workers.
| What is the difference between fighting for one's rights alone and as a community? | WVrlv_TSN7s |300}} |
| What do you understand by right? | YddnOFVbDpo |300}} |
| What do you think is the relationship between sorrow, ignorance and disease? | K1UZ9MTJj1Y |300}} |
| Achieving Rights as a Community | u_rwDAy1_TQ |300}} |
| How is this project replicable? | OcA71RtszpM |300}}
|
| Usha Cooperative as a bank for self sustainability | pY27LEd3FZE|300}} |
| The rights of sex workers | hItTGSssVlU |300}} |
| Komal Gandhal performing for sustainability and awareness | QlHU64oUXSM|300}} |
| Introduction to the Durbar project, challenges and achievements | MTF5WCQjK6o|300}} |
| Data on HIV in India | rMoYNrHh_2k |300}} |
| Change in people's mindset towards sex workers | a0HNY5imuWQ |300}} |
| Life Story | 3lPOWMe2xUA |300}} |
| Message for all the people who live with HIV | pPJ91Qf3Kw4 |300}} |
| Sickness, diseases and sadness & Why help others when we are sick? | Ex486ENP6LA |300}} |
| What does disease mean to you? What do you feel when you learn that you are HIV +ive | h2z6Ajm5kN8 |300}} |
| Change brought about by the NGO | 9Idm2_vEEqc |300}} |
| Impact of acting as a community vs acting as an individual | 0Ou7lmTiWA4 |300}} |
| Role of PRs | wePRUXR-eLc |300}} |
| Role of the clinic and the change it brought about |
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AIDS project mostly
funded by NACO - NACO gets most of its funding from the World Bank
-http://www.nacoonline.org/About_NACO/Funds_and_Expenditures/
More information about Durbar
Mahila Samanwaya Committee
History of Durbar
A vertical HIV intervention program was launched in 1992 following a base line study conducted by All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health (AIIH&PH), a Central Govt. institute. The objective was to initiate STD and HIV prevention program in Sonagachi, a red light zone in Kolkata, India. The intervention programme started with three principal components: provision of health services including STD treatment; information, education and communication (IEC); and condom programming. The program was pivotal on 'peer based approach'. Recruiting sex workers from the community and providing training on health and HIV, they were promoted as peers and out reach workers. Their role was to spread HIV related messages among their colleagues and friends and also to help them avail clinical services in addition to condoms. However, over a period of time, the limitation of this approach was strongly felt by these peers, as various environmental factors like police raid, extortion by the local goons, and negative attitude of service providers as well as from a section of researchers put an insurmountable barrier before the sex workers to access and to utilize preventive services. They started recognizing that there is a need to change the programming approach from just providing services to empower individuals of community members. They felt strongly the inclusion of empowering strategies to address various structural issues what their framework of project is unable to support in long run. Number of peers started playing their role beyond health educator to more of a 'change agent' to collect and collectivize opinions to group formation.
It was in the year 1995 out of felt need by the community members followed by several discussions and consultations, a unique body of the 'fallen women' was formed; Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) came into existence. This is a forum exclusively set up and managed by sex workers and their children with the objective of creating solidarity and collective strength among the sex worker community and other marginalized groups.
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) took over the management of STD/HIV Intervention Programme (SHIP) from AIIH&PH by 1999. After taking the full control of the intervention programme, DMSC started replicating the basic principles and guiding policies of 'Sonagachi Project' in other red light areas in the city. The organisation took special initiative to reach an increasing number of sex workers. The basic approaches what Sonagachi adopted can be summed up as three 'R's': Respect, Reliance and Recognition. That is respect towards sex workers, reliance on them to run the programme and recognition of their professional and their agency. In practice the Project focused on translating this approach into a relationship of mutual trust and rapport between the community of sex workers and the staff members of the Project.
Developing a positive 'image' as sex workers, moving beyond the binaries of moral/immoral framework what the traditional discourse is all about - the sex workers' collective move forward to address exploitation and social discrimination of sex workers. The organisation promote agency of the sex workers and put stress in their collective bargaining power both in accessing services related to safer sex as well as to improve working condition of sex workers. DMSC claims that for any intervention programme to succeed, it calls for socio-political activism with up to date knowledge and information, and sound skills and capacity of its staff members.
Expanding Horizons
Economic insecurity coupled with extortionate money lending practices that exist only in red light areas, had always been part of the lives of us, sex workers. This had made us unable to save our incomes and often made it impossible for many of us to escape debt traps. To change this, we took one of the most significant steps by registering a consumer co-operative society (Usha Multipurpose Co-operative Society Limited, or Usha). Usha is for and by sex workers. During August 1995, we succeeded in persuading the Government of West Bengal to remove the relevant clauses from the Cooperative law so that we could register our cooperative society as the co-operative of 'sex workers' rather than being passed off as ubiquitous 'housewives'. The registration of the Co-operative marks an important strategic advantage for sex workers in our struggle to re-frame the definitions and meanings of our occupation. Usha hopes to use the fact that a state institution has formally recognised prostitution as the Co-operative member's profession to bolster our campaign for social recognition of sex work and sex workers' right to self-determination.
Usha runs a micro-credit programme for sex workers; creates alternative jobs for out-of-work or retired sex workers; does social marketing of condoms and other consumables; and plans to start a large scale production unit for generating employment for retired sex workers and those who want to opt out of sex work.
We, members of Usha are very emphatic that the Co-operative is not meant for economic rehabilitation of sex workers who are in the trade, but is designed to provide a financial support for us to fall back on in moments of crisis, and to minimise our economic desperation by creating a space for negotiation. Moreover, through social marketing of condoms in areas where we do not yet have an organisational base, Usha aims to acquaint more and more sex workers with the aims and objectives of the sex workers' movement. The cooperative has done a tremendous service to the cause of sex workers' empowerment by disempowering the local moneylender-pimp-trafficker nexus, which works as the pivotal coercive node in the trade.
Having developed the necessary technical expertise and infrastructure, Usha now operate as the principle financial institution for the range of sex workers' organisations affiliated to Durbar, and manages grants from external agencies for them. At present Usha has more than 5,000 registered members and its increasing turnover is trumpeted as a success story of the Cooperative movement in West Bengal by the Department of Cooperatives of the state government.