In May 2022, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India made the decision Buddhadev Karmaskar v. State of West Bengal that sex workers are “entitled to dignity and equal protection under the law.” The court ordered police not to arrest sex workers during brothel raids. It also ordered that no child should be separated from a sex worker solely because of her profession. Authorities were directed to issue Aadhaar cards, voter ID cards and ration cards to sex workers who could not access them due to lack of documentation.
However, the verdict could not change the Indian social system. Four years later, the gap between the dignity recognized by the court and the protection offered by the state remains wide. The court recognized the problem but could not create the necessary infrastructure to address it. This infrastructure, which includes pensions, health insurance, occupational safety and legal recognition as workers, has always required legislative action. Unfortunately it didn’t happen.
A legal status that has never been as clear as it sounds
Even sympathetic feminist commentary often incorrectly reports that the 2022 ruling decriminalized sex work in India. This is wrong because there was nothing to decriminalize; Voluntary sex work between consenting adults has never been illegal according to Indian law. Almost everything that allows this work to be carried out safely is illegal, e.g. E.g., running a brothel, soliciting in public, living off the earnings of another person and other acts which are considered criminal offenses under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956. Prabha Kotiswaran, professor of law and social justice at King’s College London, has noted this Sex workers often face penalties under the ITPA for ordinary everyday activities, for example dropping a child off at school or simply being in a place where police suspect sex work is taking place. In 2011, a judicial panel recommended legal reforms; The Center told the court in 2016 that a draft law with these recommendations was in the works. Almost a decade later, this bill has still not passed.
How many women are we talking about?
Reliable figures on the sex work population in India are difficult to obtain. Any number given should be viewed as an estimate rather than confirmed fact, reflecting how poorly the state counted a population it did not seek to protect. The 2004 National AIDS Control Organization mapping study, one of the most serious estimation efforts, was proposed there There were between 0.8 and 1.25 million sex workers nationwide in 2004. Other commonly cited figures for the total sex work population, which includes male and transgender sex workers, while considering an undercount in an undercover activity, could be as high as 3 million. These estimates can vary significantly depending on the method used, but even the most conservative figures suggest that hundreds of thousands work in the profession, more than the members of several recognized unions, but without corresponding institutional support.
As Meena SeshuFounder of SANGRAM, has observed over decades: “The one thing I’ve always believed is that we don’t listen to women enough, even in the feminist movement.”
Where the welfare system simply doesn’t have a box to tick
Because the conditions surrounding sex work remain criminalized, government registration systems do not provide a formal category to recognize sex work as a legitimate livelihood. An employee cannot register a job that, according to the law, involves criminal activity, even if the act itself is lawful. This contradiction also runs through the 2022 ruling.
The practical consequences of this gap are serious and have been well documented by the collectives that have been working to close this gap for decades. Organizations like that Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee in Calcutta and VAMP – Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad – In Sangli, Maharashtra, a collective of around five thousand women in sex work that has existed since the 1990s has spent years documenting high levels of violence in the profession, advocating for basic security with the police, and advocating for access to government health systems that routinely turn away sex workers. However, none of these grassroots efforts have achieved what they really need, as this would require a change in legislation and not just administrative adjustments. They still do not have access to pensions, adequate occupational health insurance, maternity benefits or a formal compensation mechanism in the event that a worker is injured at work. Smarajit JanaFounder of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, which represents over 65,000 sex workers in West Bengal, has outlined what this exclusion means in practice: “Failure to define them as workers means that the work they do to earn a living and support their families is not recognized. They are not recognized as full citizens of the country, with full access to various citizenship documents and the right to social and development programs.” Mumtaz, a Mumbai-based sex worker who spoke to Thomson Reuters Foundation During the pandemic, when work had completely dried up and welfare systems were largely failing to reach sex workers, they expressed the practical consequence directly: “I need work, not help.”
India’s institutional response to sex work, reflected in government programs such as Ujjawalafocuses on rescue and rehabilitation. This approach views sex workers as victims who must leave their profession, rather than as workers in need of regulation and protection. This perspective has serious consequences for women who do not want to be saved. A survey by Sarvojana coalition found that most sex workers entered the profession voluntarily, albeit under difficult economic circumstances – a familiar tension in discussions about work and consent in poverty. A pure “rescue framework” lacks the language to address this problem. Seshu captured this tension directly: “At VAMP we have a slogan: ‘Save us from the saviors’. These saviors save us for themselves; they do not save us for ourselves. If they had come to save us for ourselves, perhaps they would help us get better working conditions; they would not use the most oppressive arm of the state, the police, to ‘help’ us.” The Karnataka Sex Workers Union aims to position itself within India’s broader labor movement rather than the anti-human trafficking movement. They argue that the lack of a permanent employer and the informal nature of working arrangements in sex work are not unusual conditions; They actually reflect a larger trend in the Indian labor market, where the majority of workers work informally and without protection.
What decriminalization actually looks like elsewhere
Australia is sometimes seen as having a single decriminalized model, but the reality is much more complicated. New South Wales was the first place in the world to fully decriminalize adult sex work. This process began in 1979 and was largely completed in 1995. In doing so, sex work sites were treated like normal businesses, regulated by local authorities under standard trading and planning laws. New Zealand followed with full national decriminalization in 2003. In contrast, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania are still fully or partially criminalized. Only certain states have achieved what NSW and New Zealand achieved decades ago, while others are closer to India’s current situation.
Research from NSW and New Zealand, covers over fifty studies conducted through 2022found strong evidence that full decriminalization is the best model for protecting the health and safety of sex workers. India’s framework offers none of this because of the activities around it Sex work has never been normalized under the regular law, as it reached NSW almost half a century ago.
Beyond the Debate: A Question of Rights
Any honest discussion of this issue must recognize that this is what feminist politics is like in India and around the world really divided opinions about sex work. Some view it as work that needs regulation and rights, while others view sex trafficking as inherently exploitative and believe that no amount of regulation can fix the problem. This disagreement cannot be resolved by a single article, and a publication committed to feminist analysis should be honest with its readers about this division rather than pretending it does not exist.
However, the welfare gap highlighted in this article is separate from this disagreement in a crucial sense. Regardless of one’s views on the ethics of sex work, the number of approximately one to three million people currently engaged in sex work in India is not hypothetical. They are real individuals, often raising children, and they are completely outside the scope of any social protections that the Indian state has developed for workers over the last decade. The Supreme Court has already ruled that sex workers are entitled to dignity and equal protection under the law. However, Parliament has to deal with a bill that has been pending for a decade.
