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In India, prostitution (exchanging sex for money) is legal, but related activities such as soliciting sex, operating brothels and pimping are illegal. .Prostitution is currently a contentious issue in India. In 2007, the Ministry of Women and Child Development reported the presence of 2.8 million sex workers in India, with 35.47 percent of them entering the trade before the age of 18 years. On any given night in India, you can walk down the street and see hundreds of women lining the streets waiting for their customers. India is a country where it is somewhat taboo to discuss sex, however prostitution is very common. Man come to cities like Mumbai and Kolkata because they are traveling on business, so they are away from their wives and are lonely so they pay for sex. Prostitution is worldwide issue that affects almost every country on the planet. The issue of prostitution in India is widespread. From Kolkata to Mumbai to Bombay, prostitutes line the streets every night. They range in age, appearance, and nationality. The problem in India with prostitution is that no one is taking the steps to try change the issue at hand. The Police all over India are not doing anything to improve the situation for sex-workers. In fact, the police are a major part of the problem. Whenever the Police raid the brothels, they take young sex-workers down to the police station and force the girls to have sex with them. Then the police take the girls back to the brothels and sell them back for a large price. According to a Human Rights Watch report, Indian anti-trafficking laws are designed to combat commercialized vice; prostitution, as such, is not illegal. A sex worker can be punished for soliciting or seducing in public, while clients can be punished for sexual activity in proximity to a public place, and the organization puts the figure of sex workers in India at around 15 million, with Mumbai alone being home to one hundred thousand sex workers, the largest sex industry centre in Asia [5]. Over the years, India has seen a growing mandate to legalize prostitution, to avoid exploitation of sex workers and their children by middlemen and in the wake of growing HIV/AIDS menace. There are between 300,000 and 500,000 children prostitutes in India. Around 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese girls are sold into prostitution everyday. Within the world of prostitution the Devdasi system is very common. This is practice of dedicated young girls to Goddess Yellammma by their parents. They become servants to God as they are married to the Goddess. After the ceremony the girls are considered immoral since they engage in sex outside of marriage. It is estimated that about 50% of prostitutes on Delhi are devdasis. This phenomenon keeps occurring because older men prefer young, pure girls. Sonagachi in Kolkata, Kamathipura in Mumbai, G. B. Road in New Delhi, Reshampura in Gwalior and Budhwar Peth in Pune host thousands of sex workers. They are famous red light centres in India. Earlier, there were other centres such as Dal Mandi in Varanasi, Naqqasa Bazaar in Saharanpur, Mali Sahi in Bhubaneshwar, Chaturbhuj Sthan in Muzaffarpur, Peddapuram and Gudivada in Andhra Pradesh.

History
In ancient India, there is a practice of having Nagarvadhus, "brides of the town". Famous examples include Amrapali, state courtesan and Buddhist disciple, described in Vaishali Ki Nagarvadhu by Acharya Chatursen and Vasantasena, a character in the classic Sanskrit story of Mricchakatika, written in 2nd century BC by Sudraka. The Devadasis, who performed in temples, were described as "temple prostitutes". Kanhopatra is venerated as a saint in the Varkari sect of Hinduism, despite spending most of her life as a courtesan. Binodini Dasi started her career as a courtesan, later to become a Bengali theatre actress.

In Goa, a Portuguese colony in India, during the late 16th and 17th centuries, there was a community of Japanese slaves, who were usually young Japanese women and girls brought or captured as sexual slaves by Portuguese traders and their South Asian lascar crewmembers from Japan.

During the British East India Company's rule in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was initially fairly common for British soldiers to frequently visit local Indian nautch dancers. Likewise, Indian lascar seamen taken to the United Kingdom also frequently visited the local British prostitutes there. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands even millions of women and girls from continental Europe and Japan were also trafficked into British India, where they worked as prostitutes servicing both British soldiers and local Indian men.

The Police
The Police all over India are not doing anything to improve the situation for sex-workers. In fact, the police are a major part of the problem. Whenever the Police raid the brothels, they take young sex-workers down to the police station and force the girls to have sex with them. Then the police take the girls back to the brothels and sell them back for a large price. Many of the brothels enjoy the police’s protection. They inform the brothel owners when raids are going to occur, so they can make sure everything is in order in advance. The police even have a share in the earnings of the sex- workers. They accept hospitability and even use the girls’ services often. The police even assist the brothels by returning the girls that try to run away. With the police helping the brothels stay afloat, India is faced with a major prostitution problem.

Prostitution in Kolkata
Sonagachi, located in Kolkata, is the largest red light district in Asia. There are about 15 million prostitutes in India alone. West Bengal makes up about twenty-sex percent of the population. This area has a huge sex-worker population. Thousands of young girls are sold into prostitution every year and they are sent to Sonagachi. In this red-light district brothels line the streets along with the women that work in them. It is common knowledge that the Indian mafia runs most of the brothels in Sonagachi. The prostitutes here are called commercial sex workers or CSWs. The population of the CSWs is made up of Nepalese, Indians, and Bangladeshis. Most of the prostitutes are between the ages of 16-25. However, it is very common to see girls as young as 7 years old becoming prostitutes. The situation is not getting any better in Kolkata. There have been many shelters set up to help young girls escape the prostitution brothels. A famous organization set up to aid these young girls is called the Hope Kolkata Foundation. The foundation provides protection and shelter, counseling, vocational training, a child watch program, and education. The Kolkata Foundation is one of the few non-profits in this poverty stricken area that has the resources and the funds to make a difference. The foundation was created in February 1999. On the foundation’s website it states, “The Hope Kolkata Foundation (HKF) was established in February 1999 for the protection and development of children on the street and in difficult circumstances. We work for the holistic development of street children, providing shelter, nutritional diets, education, medical care, health care benefits, counseling, recreation, integration into family life, support and love.” This kind of foundations and shelters are making a difference in child prostitution in India.

The Effects of Prostitution
Over 40% of 484 prostituted girls rescued during major raids of brothels in Mumbai in 1996 were from Nepal. In India as many as 200,000 Nepalese girls, many under the age of 14, have been sold into sexual slavery. Nepalese women and girls, especially virgins, are favoured in India. . The children that are forced into prostitution suffer from mental and emotional disorders for the rest of their lives. Due to the fact that many young girls are forced to engage in unprotected sex, they end up contracting sexually transmitted diseases and/or HIV/AIDS. They can end up suffering for their whole lives with a sexually transmitted diseases that is never treated correctly and could even kill them. The disease that ends up killing most prostitutes is HIV/AIDS though. There are millions of people in India suffering from this deadly disease and young girls are dying everyday from it. Aside from the physical aliments that young prostitutes, they suffer from emotional damage. They feel worthless and used by their customers. If the girls are forced into the profession, then they are scared of authority figures and have major trust issues. The girls might develop a hatred of men due to their forced sexually experiences with them. These girls suffer from self-esteem issue as well. They did not understand why have they have been put in this terrible situation and they did not think they have any self worth or importance in the world.

The Conditions
The conditions that sex-workers live are terrible. Inside the brothels, there is filth and waste everywhere. The women are kept in sophisticated cages. The rooms are usually 10 x 10 and there are usually a dozen girls living and working there. The girls never receive proper medical check-ups and this leads to severe sexual and physical issues. The girls are forced to work around the clock and are always exhausted. The owners of the brothels and the madams use fake doctors to administer debilitating remedies to the girls to cure sexually transmitted diseases. Also, they would hire these “doctors” to perform unhygienic methods of abortions. The girls are rarely taken for treatment because sex with a minor is illegal and they do not want to get into trouble with the legal system. Overall, the conditions within a brothel are absolutely terrible and due to the lack of involvement by the legal system there does not seem to be any hope.

AIDS
Mumbai and Kolkata (Calcutta) have the country's largest brothel based sex industry, with over 100,000 sex workers in Mumbai. It is estimated that more than 50% of the sex workers in Mumbai are HIV-positive. In Surat, a study discovered that HIV prevalence among sex workers had increased from 17% in 1992 to 43% in 2000.

A positive outcome of a prevention program among prostitutes can be found in Sonagachi, a red-light district in Kolkata. The education program targeted about 5,000 female prostitutes. A team of two peer workers carried out outreach activities including education, condom promotion and follow-up of STI cases. When the project was launched in 1992, 27% of sex workers reported condom use. By 1995 this had risen to 82%, and in 2001 it was 86%. Reaching women who are working in brothels has proven to be quite difficult due to the sheltered and secluded nature of the work, where pimps, Mashis, and brothel-keepers often control access to the women and prevent their access to education, resulting in a low to modest literacy rate for many sex workers.

Consistently high HIV infection rates among sex workers (50% or more among Mumbai's female sex worker population since 1993 ), coupled with lack of information, failure to use protection, and the migrancy of their clients, may contribute to the spread of AIDS in the region and the country.

Prostitution in Mumbai
In Mumbai, India there is an extremely poor neighborhood called, Kamathipura. This poor neighborhood is Mumbai's largest red-light district and is home to more than 60,000 sex-workers. The women who are working the streets are uneducated and desperate for work, so they will rarely use protection with their customers. This sad reality, is a major reason why HIV/AIDS is so widespread in Mumbai. The women earn the equivalent of US $1.50, maybe even $2.00. However, if they women agree not to use a condom, then they will receive more money. That little bit of extra money could provide a meal for that women and her family that they desperately need. Also, due to a lack of education, the sex-workers do not understand the deadliness of HIV/AIDS and this is another reason more than half of sex-workers in Mumbai are HIV positive. The sex-workers live in brothels, which are run by pimps who basically own the women. The sex-workers live in these make-shift homes with their families and in many situation they are living there with their children because the brothel is the only shelter they can afford. Sadly, the daughters of sex-workers who live in brothels with their mothers, most of the time become sex-workers too. The brothel owners and pimps pay large amounts of money for young girls to be sold into prostitution. Thankfully, there a place these young girls can go to escape from prostitution. Girls who are rescued from brothels go to the Sanlaap Shelter. In this Shelter, girls are given an education, shelter, food, and love. In the spring of 2004, Frontline/World reporter Raney Aronson traveled to Mumbai and the Sanlapp Shelter to learn more about the lives of sex-workers and their families. When she was asked about the current condition that sex-workers are facing in Mumbai, Aronson answered, " For the most part, sex workers in Mumbai face what sex workers around the world face -- many of them are sold into prostitution as young girls and are not there by choice. However, Mumbai is an extreme by all accounts. Many of the brothels in Mumbai are run by local Indian mafia, so there is no way for advocacy groups to work with [the prostitutes] when it comes to prevention of HIV." Raney Aronson traveled to Mumbai to shed light on this serious situations. Young girls are being sold into prostitution and essentially becoming sex slaves to the brothels and the owners. Aronson and her team had a lot of trouble filming and gaining access to the red-light district. When they tried to film at night in the streets, men would throw things and scream at them.

Popular culture
Prostitution, has been a theme in Indian literature and arts for centuries, Mrichakatika a ten act Sanskrit play, set in Pataliputra (modern-day Patna), was written by Śhudraka in the 2nd century BC. It entails the story of a nagarvadhu (royal cortesan) Vasantsena. It was made into Utsav, a 1984 Hindi film. Amrapali (Ambapali) the nagarvadhu of the Kingdom of Vaishali famously became a Buddhist monk later in the life, a story retold in a Hindi film, Amprapali (1966)

Tawaif, or the courtesan in the Mughal era, has been a theme of a number of films including Pakeezah (1972), Umrao Jaan (1981), Tawaif (film) (1985), and Umrao Jaan (2006 film). Other movies depicting lives of prostitutes and dancing girls are Sharaabi, Amar Prem (1972), Devdas (2002), Chandni Bar (2001), Chameli (2003), Laaga Chunari Mein Daag (2007), and Dev D (2009).

Born into Brothels, a 2004 American documentary film about the children of prostitutes in Sonagachi, Kolkata, won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2004. .