By Mario Cabral e Sa
I am disturbed at the version reported in the local media of the recent High Court judgment by Justices Ferdino Rebello and P V Hardas in the matter of sex workers of Baina. I am yet to obtain a copy of the order and it would, therefore, be highly improper to comment on it. I believe it could take some days to get a copy. Apparently, it takes sometime for judges to read the rough copy of their judgments and make corrections.
What I find deeply upsetting is a specific phrase in the reports — that the judges “ordered” that the sex workers brought into the state from outside be “deported”. The dictionary meaning of the word is “to expel from a country”, by extension deportation means banishment from a country, especially the expulsion of an undesirable alien, (R D Universal Dictionary, 1998). Identical meanings are found in Webster’s. Oxford suggests banishment/exile. Hopefully, the judgment will elucidate me under what Indian criminal provisions is a citizen liable to be deported.
Let us assume that either the media or the judges themselves were not particularly felicitous in the choice of the word, in as much as the deportation is to be done to the state (of the Union of India we logically presume) from “where they came” and that the state of Goa need not burden itself with their rehabilitation “except to the extent provided in the Supreme Court judgment” and it (rehabilitation) be best left to their original state.
Notionally, most Baina commercial sex workers hail from Andhra Pradesh. They have been arriving in Baina in batches either because of acquaintance with sex workers domiciled there or through the flesh trade network. Each batch roughly corresponds to a major cataclysm, like the cyclones, coastal AP has been notorious for. It is a depressing story of social exploitation which will fill a whole book. But the order seems to target some recent inductees in the trade. Several questions arise. But in the main: what is the evidence that indeed the girls hail from a state other than Goa. Is it the gharwalis, the pimps or the girls or the cops, word for it? And on that simple and unproven statement is a citizen going to be held and dispatched? What of it if the so called home state refuses to accept the word-of-mouth evidence. What of it, if, on that ground alone, the state refuses to honour the responsibility thrust on it by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court?
There is another aspect. These and other sex workers fulfill a Goa market requirement, lurid and abominable as it may be, a market that has outlived the fulminations of the Inquisition and has been in no way affected by the intense preachings of puritans and the severe penance imposed by austere and unforgiving confessors. The market has been generated by a port in which we take great pride, the fourth major port and one of the country’s highest foreign exchange earners. There are sailors on shore who leave, their unsatisfied manhood throbbing for release, there are port workers, many of them doing jobs Goans feel are below their dignity, sad loners many of them. Then, there is tourism, our sunshine industry, the statistics of which prove the point that domestic tourists generate the highest per capita income. Baina serves many of the requirements of the seamy side of revenue earning sectors of our precarious resources.
On the other hand, Baina has a well known extremely high HIV+ incidence. There is a perverse craving among STD carriers, even the semi-literate amongst them, for virgins in the belief that they can thus cleanse themselves of disease. For this and other reasons, equally perverse, brothel-keepers induct in their seraglios minors and minor-looking girls nova mal as they say. Do we not have the responsibility of at least finding out the state of health of the girls that are to be summarily “deported”.
Lest I be mocked and ridiculed, let me remind readers that at the peak of the puritanical zeal of ex-MLA Joao Manuel Vaz and his then very supportive CM Pratapsingh Rane, that Baina was closed. Remember the consequences? A bunch of sailors, some 12 of them, unable to find what they had been looking for pounced on a whole lot of adolescent local girls returning home for lunch. They shrieked and cried when they were being mercilessly molested. Desperate parents called in the police who responded by sending van-loads of their cops. What happened to them? The sailors, they happened to be Nigerians, beat the life out of the cops and like squealing mice, they ran away as fast as they could in their vans and jeeps. You know what happened next? Baina was re-opened.
Commercial sex workers by choice — which I can vouch no sane sex worker is — or by the cruelty of destiny, they are human beings. Indeed they are citizens. At election time, whatever the party and the candidate, they are wooed and entreated to vote. A survey of Goa’s elections, whether municipal, assembly or parliamentary, will confirm the importance of the Baina vote bank. It has either made or marred the career of many.
=======
########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
