ABSTRACT
HIV prevention – the main public arena in which sex work is addressed in Chennai – involves a variety of internationally funded government and NGO projects. Despite the considerable size of the expenditures involved, and many official reports, academic literature gives little insight into how these projects are conceptualised and implemented. This chapter provides a ‘bottom-up’ view of the relationships between global actors (such as the World Bank, UNAIDS and USAID), the Indian government, grass roots NGOs, and the targets of the interventions in the field – the sex workers themselves. These relationships have become an arena of development politics in which struggles for funds, resources, and identities are conducted.
