3 days ago
Vadia’s Child Engagements Offer Escape From Generational Sex Trade
Vadia is a village in Gujarat where many women have been pushed into sex work for generations.
Men in some families found customers, while women were expected to serve them.
Some parents now arrange engagements for their daughters when they are still children.
They believe this can help the girls marry outside the village before being forced into sex work.
NGOs began organizing mass marriages in 2012.
They have also supported education, farming and small businesses.
Some families say these changes are giving girls safer choices.
Activists still worry that child engagements and marriages are harmful and should not be treated as the solution.
Vadia, a Gujarat village of about 750 people, has long faced intergenerational sex work involving women and male agents.
Families increasingly arrange engagements for girls as young as seven to 12 to keep them from being pushed into prostitution.
A 2012 mass-marriage initiative led by NGOs helped some families reject the practice and pursue alternative livelihoods.
Activists and villagers say education, marriage, farming support and small-business loans have helped create alternatives to sex work.
The approach remains controversial because child engagements and marriages may protect girls from prostitution while violating child-protection principles.
- Who
- Families, women and girls in Vadia; social workers and the NGO Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch are involved in efforts to end forced prostitution.
- What
- Families are arranging early engagements and marriages as a way to prevent girls from entering a longstanding sex trade, prompting debate over child protection.
- Where
- Vadia village in Banaskantha district, Gujarat, about 200 km from Ahmedabad and near the Palanpur-Tharad highway.
- When
- The report is dated September 20; the first mass-marriage ceremony described took place in 2012.
- Why
- Families and activists say engagements can help girls avoid forced prostitution, while livelihood and education programs seek to create longer-term alternatives.
Protection Through Early Marriage
Child-Protection Concerns
Whether child engagement is an acceptable safeguard
Protection Through Early Marriage
Some villagers, parents and activists argue that engagement or marriage can keep girls from being forced into prostitution and may allow them to study or build a different life.
Child-Protection Concerns
Some activists object that encouraging engagements involving children does not resolve exploitation and conflicts with efforts to prevent child marriage.
How to end the sex trade
Protection Through Early Marriage
Supporters emphasize immediate protection through marriage alongside education, farming support, loans and pressure on families and pimps.
Child-Protection Concerns
Critics of the approach are concerned that child marriage is being presented as preferable to prostitution rather than ending the conditions that expose girls to both harms.
Key facts
- Village population
- About 750 residents, including approximately 350 women
- Location
- Banaskantha district, Gujarat
- Reported practice
- Men solicit customers for women involved in the village’s sex trade
- Early engagements
- Girls have reportedly been engaged from ages seven to 12
- Mass-marriage initiative
- The first ceremony described was held in 2012
- NGO involvement
- Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch helped organize marriages and support families
- Alternative livelihoods
- Reported efforts include reviving water sources, improving farmland, education and interest-free business loans
Quotes
Chandra Sarania
A former sex worker from Vadia who runs a small dairy
“Persuading the families to stop pushing their daughters in this trade, confronting pimps who move around disguised as money lenders, sensitising society on this heinous practice, compelling parents to educate their children, organising the first ever mass marriage ceremony in the village, convincing 90 of 160 families to give up the trade… the change has been anything but easy”
theprint.in
“When I wanted to get my daughter married, I was told that I need to accept it as fate of girls here and not be rebellious. I got my daughter engaged at 12 and married at 18. The boy’s family gave us Rs 1 to confirm the engagement and some clothes to my daughter”
theprint.in
Anonymous 19-year-old woman
A 19-year-old Vadia resident studying to become a nurse
“But my mother decided that she will not let me be pushed into this… I was engaged at 11 in a collective ceremony and married at 18”
theprint.in
Sources
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