The lockdown and social distancing measures have pushed India’s sex workers to the edge
In March, Jayashree Patil learned that she had been accepted to a nine-month leadership training programme in Washington, D.C. She had every reason to be proud. It was a competitive programme and she had completed her schooling under extremely challenging circumstances.
Then coronavirus paralysed the world, and the training programme was deferred by a year.
Jayashree, the daughter of a sex worker born and raised in Mumbai’s red-light district, Kamathipura, was devastated. “I can’t wait for a year,” she told me on the phone. It would mean putting on hold her plans to complete her B.A. “Next year I’ll be in university. I won’t be able to take nine months off.’’