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Baina and Happiness THE cubicles have been demolished at Baina but the problem remains far from resolved. In the end it may just mean a temporary disappearance. Because the sex workers were very firm in their resolve: they do not want to go away from Baina. Some of them talk of two generations living there. Many of them have invested their savings in the properties they use as home and workplace. ��We shall live here and we shall die here,�� is how one of them sees it, and she can be taken as the voice of all the 250 sex workers. That is why they gave the state authorities a slip. The officials who went to Baina on Sunday with buses to pack them into them and transport them to the Old Bal Niketan at Ribandar found no passengers and no suitcases. Padlocked cubicles stared into their faces. The women were said to have left for their native places in neighbouring states by train. Who knows whether they actually went or not. Who would be surprised if they are hiding here and there, waiting for the latest sarkari toofan to pass into the sea. The women are the central question and we have not addressed the central question. It concerns their life but it is we who are deciding it for them. Obviously the decision to move them to Ribandar was taken without the consent of all of them. If we are now saying that they agreed to it, that they agreed to the transit accommodation plan, that they signed on the whole rehabilitation plan, who are we kidding by the way? If that was so why were they not present to board the buses? The officials are blaming the NGOs, the NGOs are blaming the officials, but we have to blame both of them for botching up the plan. That is, if there was a plan. From whatever appears, the authorities had repaired the three-storeyed 6O-room Old Bal Niketan and raised a high wall around it, but beyond that there was no concrete plan. Take for example the education of the sex workers� children. Had the authorities talked to the heads of schools at Ribandar to find and fix seats for the admission of these children? Had the authorities talked to the parents of children in the schools where the sex workers� children were going to study for understanding and resolving the psychological problems faced by them in the community of kids from �decent homes�? As it turned out, the consultation with the citizens and their representatives at Ribandar was not done. Bal Niketan was something else: here helpless women and children were accommodated for a shelter. They were not engaged in the sex business. The fears raised by the people of Ribandar are not unfounded. A community of 250 sex workers in a neighbourhood not having seen anything of this kind are bound to influence the local male behaviour. Not that they being in Baina are a guarantee against dangerous male behaviour in Ribandar or anywhere else. The distance does not matter. Yet it matters. If something is close by the temptation rises. And we have seen that no intensive educational campaign has been carried out in Ribandar to warn the men sufficiently against deviant sexual behaviour when the women from Baina come in. The sheer absence of dialogue with the Ribandar people is astounding. Under the circumstances, the best course would be to allow the women to continue living at Baina. The government can seek more time from the High Court for the implementation of its order. Ribandar should be left alone. For whatever time that is needed to make rehabilitation possible the women should stay on in the old place because it has been there for decades. The place is known and the life in Vasco in general and around Baina in particular has developed taking the lusty streets into account. There will be no shock or alarm there if they stay there for some more months. During these months, the answers to the two crucial questions should be found: first, the women�s rehabilitation and secondly, their return to their native place. The answers to these questions cannot be found by the officials or the NGOs. It is the women who have to find the answers. It is their life. The rehabilitation has to be according to their aptitude, inclination and natural skill. If a sex worker has to launch out on an alternative livelihood she has to find enjoyment in it. Forced livelihoods would not work. The women will return to the street. The question is how to find enjoyable alternative occupations for women of different ages and different psychological persuasions. Then it has to be decided whether the new livelihood can be undertaken by them in their native place or another place. To sum up, all of us have to find a job and a place which the women abandoned by society enjoy. http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=061513 - Forwarded by www.goa-world.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail http://www.goa-world.com http://www.live365.com/stations/61664 Live Konkani Music http://www.mahableshwar.com/ Addresses: Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL to this page: http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/gulf-goans Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gulf-goans/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
