work to raise the child,' says Dey, now 40. 'I had to think ahead.'

She started applying for jobs but her prospective 'employers' had only one thing in mind. 'They kept asking me to accompany them to cinemas and restaurants with the aim of sleeping with me,' Dey says. 'Although I was determined to survive on my own, there was this huge gap between my dream

and reality.'

Left with no choice, she became a sex worker in 1986 in a brothel not far from her hometown of Naihati, near Kolkata. It was a tough existence, living at the mercy of police, brothel owners and local hoodlums, most of whom abused prostitutes indiscriminately. 'Police would raid the brothels while we were serving clients. They would demand bribes from each of the sex workers, or else they would cause trouble for us,' says Dey. 'Sometimes, they would arrest children of sex workers with the excuse that we were forcing them into the profession, even though the children had school certificates. Worse still, they would pick up pretty girls and rape them back at the police station.'

Indian sex workers are exposed to extortion and abuse because of a lack of legal and social protection. Even laws intended to stop sex trafficking and protect women, such as the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, have been misused by chauvinistic authorities who view prostitutes, not pimps, as immoral. For years, sex workers have been jailed and fined for soliciting, while traffickers have been left untouched.

Never one to back down from her beliefs, Dey couldn't remain silent about the appalling treatment sex workers were suffering. She started protesting about the injustice and was joined by several co- workers. Their efforts had little impact, but Dey paid for her outspokenness with several beatings at the hands of local thugs. She says her son was framed, convicted of a crime he didn't commit and jailed.

Dey's situation only improved in 1997 when the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee - a community-based organisation that lobbies for the rights of sex workers in West Bengal - made its presence felt in the red-light district where Dey worked, in Barrackpore, near Kolkata. The committee offered Dey a channel through which to fight for the rights of those working in the industry. She joined and quickly worked her way through its ranks as a peer educator, clinical attendant and project co-ordinator.

Part of her struggle has been to make sex workers understand what Durbar is about. 'I'm working in Durbar for the welfare of my community,' Dey says. 'Like other peer educators, when I was at Barrackpore I would visit other red-light areas to support the sex workers in their fight against injustice, hoping the community would slowly become convinced that we are really fighting for our rights.'

Dey's dedication has not gone unnoticed. In 2005, Durbar appointed her director of its World Health Organisation-funded Sonagachi project, the STD/HIV Intervention Programme (SHIP), which is recognised by WHO as the model health project for sex workers. As the first sex worker to head a WHO project, Dey's appointment epitomises the empowering ethos of Durbar, which means 'unstoppable' in Bangla. Today, Durbar is a conglomerate of 65,000 sex workers in the state of West Bengal, pushing for legalisation of the industry in India. Sonagachi is the oldest and busiest red-light area in India. In 1868, when the British enforced the Contagious Diseases Act, there were 30,000 sex workers there. Today, there are about 7,500 brothel-based workers and a further 1,500 casual sex workers offering their services in rented rooms or brothels.

Even in the morning, the narrow alleys that dissect Sonagachi are full of sex workers waiting for early trade. Children play badminton while hawkers set up stalls on the crumbling sidewalks where men cluster in small groups, trying to look uninterested. Apparently, not all of them are clients; some simply want to look at the women.

Of the 30 to 40 patients whom doctor Sukanta Sarkar sees each day in the district's Palatak clinic, about 60 per cent have STDs. Regardless of the treatment received, each patient pays only five rupees (86 HK cents) or the fee is waived altogether if they can't afford to pay. After 1pm, the clinic doubles as a classroom for peer educators and sex workers undertaking Durbar's literacy programme.

Clinics such as Palatak are the building blocks of SHIP's success. The brainchild of epidemiologist Smarajit Jana, SHIP is considered radical because it gives sex workers a central role. Although he initially faced opposition from his colleagues at Kolkata's All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Jana persisted with his vision of ensuring SHIP employs sex workers as peer educators to disseminate infor-mation about STDs and HIV, promote condom use and offer medical support.

The aim of the project isn't to rehabilitate or reform sex workers or to pass judgment. In fact, its peer educators are compensated for business lost during time spent on SHIP. More importantly, SHIP led to the creation of Durbar in July 1995. Durbar took over the running of SHIP in 1999 and replicated it in other red-light areas of West Bengal. Today, its 450 peer educators support 30,000 male, female and transgender sex workers in 49 red-light areas.

As Durbar's flagship project, SHIP has been hugely successful. In 2005, 5 per cent of Sonagachi's sex workers were HIV positive compared with 60 per cent in the red-light districts of central Mumbai. More importantly, condom usage at places where SHIP is active is above 80 per cent, while the national average in India, according to a BBC World Trust and National Aids Control Organisation survey, is only 27 per cent.

Durbar operates on the ethos of the 'three Rs - respect, reliance and recognition. Respect towards sex workers; reliance on the knowledge and wisdom of the community of sex workers and, recognition of sex work as an occupation, and the occupational and human rights of those employed in it.'

It's a revolutionary approach that still ruffles feathers. It's fundamentally different to the ideologies of many Indian and international non-government organisations, which advocate rehabilitating sex workers out of the industry, some by paying them not to work. Debasish Chowd-hury, an economics graduate who oversees all of Durbar's programmes, says rehabilitation is an unrealistic goal. 'If you give me 500 rupees today to leave my profession as a sex worker, I will return to the job tomorrow because money matters, if not in the short term, then definitely in the long term,' says Chowdhury, one of the group's many workers sourced from outside the sex industry.

And then there are the 'jealousies', he says, about Durbar's success in securing funding. Over the years, donor agencies have included the Royal Norwegian Embassy, CARE India, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Terres des Hommes and the Ford Foundation. They have funded Durbar's myriad programmes, which include literacy classes, tuition and vocational courses for sex workers and their children.

Durbar founded the Positive Peoples' Network for female HIV patients. For 25 rupees a year, members can access support services, including legal advice and food. It has mobilised the partners of sex workers to act as client outreach workers. It has a theatre and dance troupe, Komol Gandhar, who spread the word about sex workers' rights through performance arts. Durbar has also reduced the control that pimps and moneylenders have over sex workers by opening the Usha Multipurpose Co-operative Society in 1995, a bank for those in the profession.

The group has had a huge impact on the health of those working in the trade and their families. In an independent report released in 2005, John Frederick, an authority on sex trafficking in Asia, says: 'Durbar has made profound positive changes in the health and well-being of Kolkata sex workers and their children, including the reduction in the number of young children (those below 15 years) in the brothels.'

The complexity of Durbar's array of programmes is indicative of the range of issues and problems encountered by sex workers. Unlike other NGOs, there's no one-solution-fits-all approach. All

the projects, though, aim to give sex workers a crucial role in their operation.

Some NGOs argue that by seeking to decriminalise prostitution, Durbar removes obstacles faced by brothel owners and contributes to their profits. Chowdhury disagrees. 'Before Durbar, exploitation of sex workers was much more severe. For example, depending on the moneylenders, sex workers used to pay 100 per cent interest on loans. Now, they can go to Usha. More importantly, Durbar has given them the platform on which to raise their voices and fight against injustice.'

Perhaps most importantly, the work of the 'unstoppable' community group has given the sex workers a sense of self-worth. 'Before Durbar, we had nobody to protect our rights and self-esteem,' says Anita Lama, a 40-year-old Nepalese sex worker who is also a nurse at the Palatak clinic in Sonagachi. 'The term 'sex worker' didn't exist and society considered us 'fallen' women.'

Society's view of the trade deeply affected the workers. Married off at 18, Lama was physically and mentally abused by a husband who abandoned her and their daughter. She was raped by a factory boss before entering the sex trade at age 25. Yet, despite being the victim of these terrible crimes,

Lama considered herself an untouchable.

'After joining Durbar, my mentality changed,' Lama says. 'Today, I see myself as a human being, with rights like any other woman.'