Celebrated at birth, pushed into sex work
Identities of all sex workers, former sex workers, and their families have been changed to maintain privacy Sitting in her older daughter’s room, where one corner is covered with maps and math formula sheets, Savitri, a 40-year-old former sex worker, recalls when she began hating her profession. “It was when my girls turned five and seven,” she says. “I had decided that my daughters would never live the life I had. They would live with dignity.” Although she continued in the profession for a few more years due to family responsibilities — her husband, who was one of her clients, abandoned the family years ago — Savitri eventually quit. Now, about 10 years later, her elder daughter works with an NGO and is preparing to write the police exam, while her younger daughter is preparing for medical entrance tests in Indore. The family belongs to the Banchhada community, a de-notified tribe with an estimated population of 25,000 spread across 78 villages in the districts of Mandsaur, Neemuch, and Ratlam in western Madhya Pradesh. Unlike Savitri’s …
