ABSTRACT
It was a hot, sultry afternoon, and I was in the office of an NGO to interview a sex worker, as part of a research project that I was doing on sex trafficking in the state of Andhra Pradesh in south India. A woman in her late 30s, with curly hair neatly tied into a bun, sat opposite me, waiting to be interviewed. She was the head of a CBO (community-based organisation) that the NGO had helped to set up in order to facilitate access of sex workers to healthcare and other services. It was assumed that being a sex worker herself, the task of mobilising sex workers through the CBOs to ensure healthcare for them would be easier. After I had introduced myself and explained the purpose of the interview, as part of the process of taking informed consent, she asked me, “What is the work you do?” “I teach … not children but adults, in a big school, we call it university” I replied. “Yes, but what exactly is the work you do?” she asked, arching her eyebrows. When I began to explain, she said rather dismissively, “Ah yes, I got it, you use your mind”. When I nodded, she asked, looking at me straight in the eye this time “Do you get paid for using your mind”? “Of course”, I said. “Daily?” she asked, now leaning forward across the table. “No”, I smiled, “not daily, they pay us monthly”, I replied. “And if you are sick or for some reason, you do not go to work, do you still get paid?” She was still looking me straight in the eye. “Yes, we have leaves and other benefits …” I trailed off, not sure where this was leading to. “Ah, so the only difference between you and me is, you sell your mind, and I sell my body, both of us sell our labour but I don’t get paid if I don’t work for a single day too, whereas you do” she signed off, shrugging her shoulders, and signalled to me to begin the interview.
