A) Exchange of money for sex is not illegal in India.

But operating or owning brothels, and pimping

are illegal. In Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata there are areas where illegal brothels are run.
These areas are known as Red light areas.

B) Prostitution in India-

PROSTITUTION IN INDIA-

Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. A
person who works in this field is called a prostitute and is a type of sex worker. Prostitution occurs in
a variety of forms, and its legal status varies from country to country (sometimes from region to
region within a given country), ranging from being an enforced or unenforced crime, to unregulated,
to a regulated profession.

In India, Prostitution is technically legal but pimping, owning and managing a brothel is illegal. By
one count prostitution is an $8 billion a year industry with more two million prostitutes and 275,000
brothels. In another count in all of India, there are as many as 10 million commercial sex workers.
Their core clientele has traditionally been truck drivers, migrant workers and other men separated
from their families for long periods of time.

Many teenage girls turn to prostitution to raise money for their families or out of need for money to
deal with a debt or a problem related to their husbands. Some village girls are tricked into entering
the trade in the cities with promises of good money or another kind of job. One survey found that a
third of all prostitute enter the trade because of poverty and more than a forth become prostitutes
after marital problems.

The current knowledge about female sex workers is mostly gained from studies done in the red-light
districts of metropolitan cities. Generally, prostitutes tend to come from the less-educated class of
women, including single abandoned girls, and economically distressed women.

“Most of these women were either forced by gang members and others to take up this profession
or were betrayed with false promises of a job. Both the central government and the state
governments have enacted statutes to repress and abolish prostitution. The central act, The
Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act (SITA), 1956, has been amended as The
Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), 1956. However, these statutes have made little impact on
the increasing traffic in persons and sexual exploitation and abuse “ (Pawar)

There is a very strong need to empower the sex industry in India with legal safeguards, which would
rid this workplace of exploitative and unhealthy practice. Bringing legal framework to this industry
would help women who have entered into this trade to feed their families, as they will be freed from
the clutches of pimps and brothel owners. Bringing regulative legal framework will also bring down
the rising numbers of AIDS cases in india and the numbers of innocent beings forced in to the flesh
trade.