ABSTRACT
Social distancing and the lockdown have left sex workers across the country in poverty and hunger. There is a need to address the issues of this section of society from a human rights' perspective. This chapter presents a discussion that is of the sex workers who reside in these red-light areas, and their profession is considered as “a contact job”. The entire concept of “sex work”, particularly in India, is at the relative juncture of economic, social, and cultural engagement. Although, Indian history witnessed the categorically esteemed institution of sex work within the brief accounts of Vedas, Puranas, Mahabharata, Buddhist literature, Kautilya's Arthashastra, etc., under the colonial hegemony of moral politics, sex workers were relegated to the margins. Sex work in India is one of the unrecognised economic sectors where most of the work is informal and unprotected.
