Women's "Work": Gandhian Initiatives, Sex Workers and the New Economy in India








Shiwani Srivastava








MA Research Paper

International Studies - South Asia

Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

University of Washington

1 June 2007

"In all countries where the people live a decent life, there is no disparity in the condition of men and women. It is easy to see how much the real wealth of India would be attenuated if one half of her human beings remained ignorant and existed only as playthings of the others."


Mahatma Gandhi, often referred to as ‘The Father of the Nation,’ is remembered most for leading India’s independence movement through non-violent resistance. But his legacy of nation-building spans decades before the independence movement, when he was actively promoting the development and empowerment of India as a nation – beginning with its citizens. As illustrated by the quotation above, Gandhi’s ideas of development were based in gender equality at the personal level, translating into wealth at the national level. The implications of this – that women’s development is a source of India’s overall economic development – are echoed today by economists such as Amartya Sen.1 And Gandhi’s notions of development certainly raise questions that are pertinent today. For example, how does one define a “decent life” – should it vary according to country or region? What do development and empowerment mean – are they necessarily measured by wealth? While there are no simple answers to these questions, it seems Gandhi’s most significant contribution to development has been the questions raised by his thought process. In this essay, we will explore some of these questions through the lens of Gandhian women’s development institutions operating in India’s contemporary economy.

In the 1940s, Gandhi and his followers founded a number of women’s initiatives – dedicated to instilling values of empowerment through self-reliance on both the individual and national levels – that continue to operate today. The fact that 60 years have passed since Gandhi’s era of influence certainly raises questions as to how these organizations have maintained their relevance in India’s rapidly changing economy. The purpose of this paper is not to look specifically at the Gandhian framework, but to examine how organizations founded on Gandhi’s principles are now seeking to empower women in a country with burgeoning unemployment, a rapidly growing informal sector, and vastly different regional characteristics that make nationalized development standards difficult. In particular, we will examine three India-based women’s organizations of varying sizes and missions to assess how they negotiate between ideals of service and work in terms of development.

The first of these institutions is the Lakshmi Ashram, a community and school for about 60 women and girls, in the Kumaon district of Uttaranchal. Founded in 1948 by one of Gandhi’s followers, the ashram is based on Gandhian ideals of female empowerment through education and service. In Educating Activists, Rebecca Klenk interviews the graduates of this institution and questions what it means to be a “developed woman” from the perspectives of teachers and students (130). The Lakshmi Ashram represents a small, Gandhian initiative for women whose mission has stayed virtually the same over time, producing women who perform service for their community and view themselves as both ‘empowered’ and ‘developed.’ I have specifically chosen the Lakshmi Ashram not only because of its focus on service, but because it is relatively well-known, the women consider it a success, and it embodies the challenges facing many non-agricultural rural areas in India. As we will see later, these regional peculiarities relate directly to the Lakshmi Ashram’s emphasis on service.

However, there is also a more recent breed of Gandhian institution, founded on similar principles, but focused less on educating women to perform service and more on helping them function as workers. One such organization is our second case study – SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association), a Gujarat-based grassroots organization launched as a trade union in 1972 that organizes poor, self-employed women in urban and rural areas. Although SEWA has a long history of aiding women in the informal sector, it must now incorporate into its folds the increasing number of women being pushed into the informal sector by recent pro-market reforms. As a result of keeping up with the pace, SEWA struggles to provide services like education, on which the Lakshmi Ashram prides itself. This raises another question: can a single women’s initiative effectively embody long-term goals like education and service while coping with more immediate needs of informal sector employment? I have specifically chosen SEWA because it addresses this question when compared with the Lakshmi Ashram. SEWA functions more in an urban context on a much larger scale, serving 959,698 members, making it one of India’s largest and most visible development organizations. Finally, it has had to change its practices (although not its mission) to meet the specific needs of a state as varied as Gujarat to remain ‘successful.’ These specifics correlate to SEWA’s focus on employment over service.

That being said, there is a growing group of self-employed women that gets left out of this Gandhian dialogue altogether – sex workers. Our third case study is the DMSC (Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee), a West Bengal forum of 65,000 female sex workers based in Kolkata and founded in 1995. The sex worker is a significant part of the economy, and according to the DMSC, deserves the same workers’ rights as women in other informal sector jobs. In addition to building a community for these otherwise stigmatized women, this ‘union’ has been influential in educating women and the community about AIDS transmission, providing healthcare and childcare to sex workers, and starting rehabilitation programs for women and children to prevent forced labor in the industry (DMSC Web site, Homepage). Certainly, one has to question why sex workers have been left out of the Gandhian dialogue of development and to what extent the DMSC is dealing with an even higher priority given the reality of India’s new economy. I have chosen the DMSC not only because of its size, but also because it is the most prominent of a new type of institution – a grassroots, regional ‘union’ for marginalized women.

In this paper, I will compare the scope of these organizations – selected because of their respective bases in ideals of service, work, and economic necessity – assessing their effectiveness in terms of human as well as economic development. To begin, I will define the characteristics of India’s new economy, focusing on why more women are entering the informal sector, particularly sex work. Next, I will look at these three organizations as case studies in context, examining the regional events and characteristics that motivated their inceptions. Next, I will return to the questions posed above, most notably one that plagues development organizations: Is the long-term idealism of the Lakshmi Ashram making its graduates less “developed” than the women aided SEWA and the DMSC, who are dealing with immediate realities? Or is it impossible to place comparable values on this type of work? The answers lie in the fact that despite these organizations’ markedly different histories and approaches, they are all providing human and economic development in various forms, concurrent with regionally-specific social, political, economic, and even geographical realities. Finally, through this paper, we will challenge the definitions of ‘development’ and ‘empowerment’ – whether set by Gandhi or international institutions – to illustrate how development organizations view themselves and deal with the problematic issue of constantly having their ‘success’ measured quantitatively.

Background: Defining the New Economy and Challenges of Female Employment

Today, India’s new economy is often defined by its GDP growth. At the end of 2000, India’s annual average GDP growth rate was close to 6% and rising (HDC 29). But GDP paints a rather generalized economic picture – it does not indicate the distribution of wealth, nor does it tell us about quality of life. Despite India’s tremendous GDP growth over the last decade, the number of workers turning to the informal sector for employment has only continued to grow. Working women have been particularly hard hit by the economic reforms that have stimulated this GDP growth. Let us take a look at some of these factors.

Pro-liberalization reforms began in the 1980s under Rajiv Gandhi. These pro-market reforms, stood in stark contrast to the “Gandhian legacy of small-scale development operationalized through state protectionism” (Ramamurthy 529). Some of these tactics and reforms included equating competitiveness in the global market with India’s common good, supporting “the liberalization policies of the Indian state to raise foreign capital and privatize,” and buying out smaller competitors (531). As these reforms flourished through the 1990s, state subsidies for small-weavers decreased dramatically and in Andhra Pradesh, “the government no longer guarantees purchasing their products” (533). This promotes major insecurity, as one bad week of sales could shut down a small business and force its owner into the informal sector.

In India’s neoliberal economy, this story of privatization edging out smaller firms and diminishing state subsidies is especially common in the agricultural sector. Unable to compete with large-scale privatized Indian and multi-national corporations, small farms are no longer a secure source of income, forcing many former farmers into the informal sector. Furthermore, pro-market reforms, such as the WTO policies implemented in 1995, have focused on export-led growth (HDSA 56). Farmers who grow for local consumption rather than export are quickly left behind, unable to match the low prices resulting from mass production in the marketplace. The WTO reforms in particular supported large-scale agricultural and industrial production, shutting down smaller firms. 2 Furthermore pro-market reforms tend to produce more benefits for urban areas, creating greater economic insecurity for rural workers (especially farmers) and further swelling the informal sector. For a better part of the 90s, the GDP growth rate acted like a red herring, leading policy makers away from job creation as it did not seem to correlate directly to pro-market successes. But perhaps this focus on GDP growth through pro-market reforms was a response to the 1991 Balance of Payments Crisis, caused by overvaluation and government account deficits, and resulting in a major devaluation of the rupee and a virtual depletion of international reserves (Cerra 395). Today, the international focus on India’s GDP growth has not yet shifted, although NGOs in India are dealing with the under/unemployment predicament. The increased prominence of grassroots organizations addressing the informal and semi-formal sectors, particularly in terms of women’s work, illustrate a growing willingness to acknowledge the problem and search for solutions at the individual and local levels.

This focus on women is particularly important for a number of reasons. The formal sector jobs created for women are less than ideal, particularly in factories, where “women workers are preferred by employers primarily because of the inferior conditions of work and pay that women are more willing to accept” (HDSA 89). The lack of desirable work for women leads them to the informal sector, including self-employment, casual work, and home-based labor. According to a 2000 study in South Asia, “some 30 million workers were engaged in home-based work, of which 75 to 80 percent were women” (86). Women pursue home-based work because of their education levels and restricted social/cultural networks – factors that leave these women open to exploitation. Thus, women have low bargaining power in the workplace, society, and at home, since their work is not officially recognized or monetarily valued. S. Charusheela writes in “Empowering Work?” that it is a woman’s “perceived contribution” that dictates her bargaining power (289). But pro-market reforms lead to “an uneven distribution of gains and pains, where the gains are distributed across the economy, while the burdens are borne mainly by a particular group” (HDSA 59). In India, women are such a burdened group, as men tend to be first in line for new employment and economic opportunities.

There are a number of challenges surrounding female employment in India that aren’t direct results of pro-market reforms. First, because of the nature of the informal sector, it is difficult to keep track of the workers, their contributions, and their earnings. Despite women’s participation in the informal sector, they “do not get sufficient recognition for their contribution to the economy and society. This is reflected in the very low female labour force participation rates compared to those of male” (27). Unfortunately, these numbers often influence how aid organizations’ spend their funds. Because of the logistics, it is also difficult to organize home-based workers into a movement with the ability to demand rights. As a result, not only is there a gender bias in terms of the jobs available to women, but women workers often fail to receive basic health and maternity care (Jhabvala 266). This is an economic as well as social issue. Part of the problem is that women’s work is seen not so much as “work” in the sense of paid labor, but service that is expected to be performed without compensation. We see this in what feminist economists terms “the double burden” – that is, the work women do in the labor force for the sake of the family, as well as the housework duties they are still expected to perform according to tradition (Sen 196). As the 2003 HDSA notes, women typically take higher skill, lower-level jobs with flexible hours or the opportunity to be home-based because it allows them to “tend to their reproductive and caring work in the household” (87). This mindset carries over to female domestic servants, who are on the fringes the informal sector, causing them to be frequently overlooked by aid organizations as they walk the line between service and work. However, completely outside of the dialogue altogether is the large portion of the female workforce who cannot find “socially acceptable” jobs. In particular, sex workers are consistently marginalized as criminals, an act that fails to address the economic, social, and political factors drives women to sex work for employment in the first place. Let us now turn to the case studies.

Three Case Studies: Lakshmi Ashram, SEWA, & DMSC

In order to better understand each of these organizations, it is necessary to get a sense of their missions and contexts through their histories. As Raka Ray notes in her book Fields of Protest: Women’s Movements in India, “Organizations are not autonomous or free agents, but rather they inherit a field and its accompanying social relations, and when they act, they act in response to it and within it” (6). In other words, as these organizations embody and define themselves according to different fields of thought – Gandhian ideals, feminism, human rights, international development – they become bound by them as well. This is not altogether bad, as it helps organizations specialize and focus on more manageable tasks. However, it is also important to consider how these organizations seek to represent themselves. Kamala Visweswaran addresses this in Fictions of Feminist Ethnography, in which she challenges definitions of feminist ethnography based on how anthropology is positioned in relation to “community struggles for self-representation” (12). I am using anthropological and ethnographic research to contextualize and analyze each organization, which is significant because it is based on a.) individual stories, told to an ethnographer, which come to represent a community, and ultimately, b.) how the ethnographer uses these interviews in the story he/she has to tell. Certainly, a community’s struggle for self-representation gets mediated by voices that are or are not directly represented in published materials, as well as by the ethnographer’s voice. In the same way, each organization has a story to tell – influenced by their ideological bases – in which the members are informed. This story, embodied by the members, is what gets passed on to ethnographers, appears on organization’s Web sites, and gets shown in documentaries and other media. Once again, a community’s struggle for self-representation gets mediated by an outside entity – in this case, the grassroots organization’s mission and the individuals that are chosen to represent this community voice.3 As mentioned earlier, this story often manifests itself in the form of a focused mission and substantial funding, but marginalizes women who do not fit into this goal. Let us explore this by looking at each institution’s missions, contexts, and histories.

1. LAKSHMI ASHRAM

Rebecca Klenk’s research at the Lakshmi Ashram is based in identifying how the school itself defines the “developed woman” as well as what the individual women and girls “make of their own ‘development’ (vikaas)” (Educating 133). In her observations, neither the ashram nor the students seem to come up with a singular definition. As she gathers these stories and interviews, she is careful to note that they do not represent how life in Uttaranchal or at the Lakshmi Ashram “has always been and always will be” (26). She supports this idea by taking us through a review of post-structuralist definitions of development, as well as constructions of the “Third World woman” and how this relates to development as discourse (135). Through this methodology, she identifies development as an ongoing process rather than a teleological goal, critiquing the Lakshmi Ashram’s attempts to find fixed meanings for “developed,” “underdeveloped,” and even “change” (134). She adds that “if we neglect to consider what participants in specific development initiatives make of their experiences, we may miss the other side of the coin: the new subject positions and emancipatory politics such initiatives can sometimes encourage” (134-135). In other words, fulfillment of individual desires and progress can equal development, even if they do not necessarily fit into an institutional mission. That being said, this individual development can figure into what one of Lakshmi Ashram’s funding organizations, Action Village India, cites as its mission on its Web site: “to enable disadvantaged communities to help themselves.” That is, individual self-empowerment at a large scale translates into community empowerment – and certainly, presenting this image of widespread change is important for an organization to attract and maintain donors, members, and general awareness of its mission and work. Indeed, that is what defines an organization. With that in mind, let us consider the history and context of the ashram to understand its self-representation.

The Lakshmi Ashram was founded in 1948 by Sarala Behn, a Danish follower and friend of Gandhi, as a Gandhian community school. Today, the school is kept up with some funding from Danish and Indian donors and focuses on economic, environmental, and educational initiatives for local girls and women in Kumaon, a rural area at the foothills of the Himalayas. The ashram is devoted to improving the women’s self-sufficiency in the village, as well as making them better equipped to serve their communities and run their households. Many of the women are disadvantaged – untouchables, the mentally or physically challenged, women from abusive marriages – and the ashram’s Web site calls the school a place where “women from rural areas can organize themselves to define and solve their own problems.” This focus on self-reliance comes from Gandhi’s belief that “village-relevant education would be essential for real independence from colonial rule” and it is seen in the ashram’s practical work: growing its own food, spinning and weaving, selling khadi (spun cotton) goods, raising awareness about local environmental issues, forming women’s community groups, and preventing domestic violence (Lakshmi Ashram Web site, Homepage).

Klenk’s study delves deeper into the Lakshmi Ashram, examining its relevance today as a development initiative. She describes her goal as follows: “rather than treat this Gandhian institution as a ‘local’ site of pure Indian ‘tradition’ uninflected by modernity and development, I explore how graduates were being Gandhian on their own terms” (“‘Difficult Work’” 101). Indeed, Klenk found that while “Gandhi’s essentialization of womanhood” through service was central to the ashram, the school did not touch Gandhi’s discussions on sexual purity or his stance against contraceptives (107). On the contrary, many graduates, empowered by their education, rejected dowry, found their own mates, or even shirked marriage altogether (109). The community became the women’s family as they assumed maternal roles as the ‘uplifters’ within the village.4 Though the goal of the ashram is self-sufficiency, service, and education, some women became disillusioned by their inability to find work upon graduating, while others felt the need earn professional degrees. This is an interesting dilemma: the ashram prides itself on providing social service and education as ends in themselves – should it alter its mission with the changing economy? Can its methods lead to a synergy between institutional and individual development, or is paid labor the only solution to women’s economic empowerment? 5

The answers to these questions lie in examining the history of Uttaranchal itself, particularly why notions of self-sufficiency and service have remained central to the region so long after Gandhi’s era of influence. Perhaps most significant is that during Klenk’s fieldwork, the Uttarakhand movement – a campaign for the region at the foothills of the Himalayas to separate from the larger state of Uttar Pradesh – was gaining popularity as “a tactic that will help the hills to ‘develop’ through the creation of a hill government that will spend money on hill needs” (Educating 31). This rhetoric of ‘developing’ Uttaranchal manifested itself in different ways. Unemployed men and boys found an occupation in campaigning for the Uttarakhand movement, residents were no longer seeing themselves as villagers (a term implying a lack of development), television was becoming a primary form of connection with the outside world despite poor telephone and mail systems, and as tourism increased in the region, the prostitution of Dalit girls and women at local hotels was on the rise (28-33). Even though ‘development’ did not always mean positive change, the Uttarakhand movement had almost feverish support, with hopes that the region could become self-reliant – language reminiscent of the Lakshmi Ashram’s Gandhian ideals. And so, we return full-circle to Raka Ray’s assertion that organizations are not autonomous agents, but rather are based in fields that define their actions and relations. For Lakshmi Ashram, its basis in self-reliance is not only bound by its Gandhian roots, but it is also intermingled with the centrality of self-reliance in the Uttarakhand movement. Similarly, given that Uttaranchal was dealing with low employment rates as government reservation-based job creation was benefiting migrant workers (who met these particular caste requirements that were not as widely found in the foothills) from the cities of Uttar Pradesh, it is not surprising that Lakshmi Ashram stressed the importance of service over paid labor.6 This is not meant to be a critique of the ashram. Rather, it is an attempt to illustrate why the ashram continues to represent itself in the way it does (and why it has relevance), while highlighting “the complex relationships between modernity, economic development, and subjectivity in a particular location” (19). As we will see with SEWA as well, characteristics unique to the region force the organization to grapple with markedly different ideals of development and even self-reliance.

2. SEWA

Unlike Klenk’s ethnographic relationship with Lakshmi Ashram, Ela Bhatt’s relationship with SEWA is one of direct involvement as the founder. She tells SEWA’s story in We Are Poor but So Many: The Story of Self-Employed Women in India. With a degree in law, fluency in English, and a foundation in Gandhian ideals, Bhatt established SEWA as its own trade union in 1981, due to “strained relations” with its former parent organization, the Textile Labor Association (Bhatt 14-15). Since then, according to their Web site, SEWA has grown into an organization of 959,698 members, with just over half of these being in Gujarat. The organization represents itself as follows:

SEWA follows a grassroots model, in which the women workers receive legal and skill-based training to better demand rights as self-employed workers. As these women become well-versed and confident, they train other women and move up in the ranks of the organization. But when it comes to how they struggle to represent themselves as a community, as in the case of the women of Lakshmi Ashram, their voices are mediated – this time through founder Ela Bhatt and the Web site. While Bhatt is knowledgeable, well-intentioned, and honest about SEWA’s shortcomings, the book’s title also suggests there is a singular story of self-employed women in India at large – a project that helps make SEWA’s rather daunting task seem more manageable.

Similarly, the documentary Kamala and Raji, about two SEWA members and officers, illustrates the legal training, community support, and overall empowerment that the organization provides. However, the viewer hears their stories in translation in the form of a story meant to illustrate SEWA’s community at large. This discussion of voice recalls both subaltern studies and Kamala Visweswaran’s Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Indeed, Kamala and Raji’s individual stories are unique and unalterable. Yet how they relay their experiences through the lens of SEWA’s mission, how their voices get mediated in translation, and how their stories are ultimately presented after cutting and editing for the documentary are all part of formulating SEWA’s larger story. That is not to say that Kamala and Raji as individuals are entirely voiceless – certainly, the documentary is a useful tool and has given them a chance to share their stories. It is also not meant to suggest that SEWA’s role in this documentary is necessarily controlling. But as Richa Nagar notes in her debate with Saraswati Raju, these types of projects are very influential in garnering funding, yet also point to “the increasing hierarchies of class and language within their organization that are a result of mainstreaming and professionalization of NGOs” (3). This raises a very important point – to what extent is mainstreaming and professionalization actually running counter to the empowerment of women? Can SEWA truly continue to be run by poor women for other poor women as the organization gains prominence? As we will discuss later, there are other self-employed women who do not fall within SEWA’s sphere and must seek alternative forms of aid and empowerment because SEWA is somewhat bound by its funding. But ultimately, SEWA’s focused mission has been an asset, creating a model emulated in South Africa, Yemen, and Turkey, and winning international acclaim. (SEWA Web site, Movement/International). To better understand SEWA’s self-representation and answer these questions, let us explore its history and context.

SEWA is an organization devoted to women’s work specifically as paid labor, rather than social service. Unlike the Lakshmi Ashram, school-based education does not figure prominently into SEWA’s mission – rather, it is more concerned with poor women’s abilities to receive and control fair earnings as self-employed workers in the informal sector. Also, SEWA operates on a much larger scale, based in the state of Gujarat where most of its initiatives are launched, yet associating with organizations on a national and international level. But like the Lakshmi Ashram, SEWA is based on the Gandhian principles of “satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (integrating all faiths, all people) and khadi (propagation of local employment and self reliance)” (SEWA Web site, About Us). Some of SEWA’s services include microfinance, child care, legal services, home-based workers’ rights campaigns, and health care. While SEWA provides a number of services that are useful to urban women (up until 1994, its member base was mostly urban), one of its biggest successes, microfinance, has benefited both urban home-based workers (including often overlooked domestic servants) and rural agricultural workers who would like to eventually own a tract of land (SEWA Web site, About Us/Structure).

However, in her article “Bringing Informal Workers Centrestage,” SEWA Coordinator Renana Jhabvala – a Gandhian who joined Ela Bhatt early in SEWA’s history – explains how as a grassroots organization, SEWA struggles between invisibility and regulation. In other words, when home-based work goes unnoticed by the government, it is difficult for the women to get a national platform for mobilization. But at the same time, official recognition of the informal sector means government regulation that SEWA cannot control. In this scenario, women’s concerns (like maternity health and child care) go unaddressed by social welfare programs. Jhabvala notes that women’s concerns will continue to go unheard unless there are “changes in perceptions, thinking, interpretation and theory” (258). She cites an example illustrating the stigmas around women’s work being perceived as service, even when they are earning wages: “Even the husbands of the workers said ‘my wife does not work’ but only does this as a ‘hobby.’ Statistical agencies too ignored these women and their work did not appear in the population censuses” (260). However, Jhabvala’s concerns with perception raises the question as to why SEWA does not also deal with education – is dealing only with paid labor too narrow a focus? Can SEWA take on more work, or is this a task for a sister organization?

Jhabvala illustrates why an organization’s self-representation is so important. She also shows why highly-trained and educated leaders are necessary to secure funding, mediate between leadership and the various member groups, and work on the complex task of affecting perceptions, as well as women’s existing realities. But there are characteristics unique to Gujarat that define SEWA’s scope, particularly its need to focus on informal paid labor. Bhatt outlines some of these factors, including structural issues that influence SEWA. For example, the unaffordable costs of electricity in rural areas, the vulnerability of village homes and crops to Gujarat’s heavy monsoon winds and floods, the droughts caused by extreme heat, and the lack of female land ownership in the state all inform SEWA’s rural development reforms (Bhatt 25-35). Furthermore, due to the rise in non-agricultural labor in rural Gujarat from pro-market reforms, close to four-fifths of all non-agricultural work in rural areas is now part of the unorganized sector (Breman 7). World Bank initiatives have led to an increase in landless rural laborers, who are forced to migrate to cities for work, resulting in a growing urban informal sector as well (12-15). These migrant workers tend to lack organization, and therefore bargaining power, making them cheaper, preferred labor compared to residents (19). Gujarat has the largest percentage of seasonal migrant workers compared to any other state, making it difficult to organize bottom-up collective protest (21, 254). Ultimately, while owners of capital have benefited from the pro-market reforms in Gujarat, real wages to rural workers have declined considerably in the last few decades (263). A 2007 report from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy states that industry accounts for 39% of Gujarat’s GDP, services for 46%, and agriculture for 15% - a significant decline (CMIE Web Site, Gujarat State Analysis). This condition is heightened by the fact that most of the state’s investment is via the private sector. These factors have decreased wages of rural workers, who are turning to the informal sector for employment.

Bhatt also points out that SEWA must act strategically to keep its distance from all political parties while avoiding complete isolation. The organization wants to maintain autonomy, yet has little to gain from the political parties, in which women and formerly disadvantaged individuals with power cannot be guaranteed to act in the interest of other women and the poor (Bhatt 89, 52). For example, after the 2002 Godhra communal violence in Gujarat, rather than taking a stance on the politics of the riot, SEWA focused on the women who were victims of the riot. The organization set up workshops to teach the women chikan embroidery not only as an art form, but also as an economic tool that has found buyers for their work in India and abroad (IBEF, 2/22/05). Indeed, it was a strong indication that SEWA supports all women of Gujarat – an important message in a state with a significant Muslim population. And so, we begin to understand why SEWA’s focus on workers’ rights and fair wages for the self-employed, as well as its foray into microfinance, make sense given Gujarat’s unique problems. However, it is likely SEWA would be unable to do the same kind of work without Ela Bhatt’s extensive local connections and ability to gain funding. It also becomes clear why it is hard for SEWA to support sex workers – a criminalized group – when it needs to consider funding and government relations to ensure that it can maintain its model of poor women working for other poor women.

3. DMSC

When it comes to self-representation as an organization, the DMSC is an interesting case, devoted to upholding the “3 R’s” by fostering “respect towards sex workers, reliance on the knowledge and wisdom of the community of sex workers and, recognition of sex work as an occupation, for protecting their occupational and human rights” (DMSC Web site, Homepage). This is only part of its complex mission, which includes an STD/HIV intervention program called the Sonagachi Project, aiding 20,000 sex workers while “building broader alliances to promote HIV prevention, care, and support for HIV infected and affected individuals and families both at the national and regional levels” (DMSC Web site, Homepage). They support the decriminalization of sex work as a means of better-regulating the industry to prevent sexual exploitation, trafficking of women and children, harassment from the police, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Given the sex workers’ status as criminals, the DMSC has to be strategic in its use of the women’s voices and defining them as a community. As with the other organizations, there is a similar tension around using individuals as a metonym for the community at large.

For example, the DMSC formed a forum called “Komal Gandhar,” which serves the members as “a vehicle for expressing themselves through music, dance, and other artistic media” (Nag 3). The performances receive favorable reviews in their own right, the money earned goes to charity, and the individuality and new identity expressed through creativity is meant neutralize “the terrible experiences they go through in daily life” (2). This is an initiative that looks at sex workers as creative individuals rather than as anti-social criminals.7 However, it is significant that this identity is expressed through a medium in which we do not hear their voices. In this initiative, the idea seems to be that “voice” can actually be expressed through ways other than speaking. Indeed, these women representing themselves through dance or music complicate the notion of subalternity and what it means to have a “voice.” This theme is also evident in the primary platform for the sex workers’ spoken and written voices – the Sex Workers’ Manifesto. This is a public declaration written in the perspective of “we,” representing the sex work community in a unifying voice. Yet we don’t know who in particular wrote this Manifesto and what she/they experienced. Certainly, this challenges notions of both voice and experience. Is this manifesto homogenizing an array of diverse, individualized stories and experiences, or is it finding strength in collectivity? Perhaps there is unavoidably an element of both. Like SEWA, the DMSC is dealing with a delicate situation and must represent itself carefully in order to garner funding and public support to better aid its members. With that in mind, let us look at the organization in greater detail.

The DMSC is organized around 1.) decriminalizing prostitution and acknowledging it as a form of employment, and 2.) gaining standard workers’ rights and job-specific healthcare (DMSC Web site, Homepage). Sex workers are excluded from Gandhian dialogues, and are never mentioned by the Lakshmi Ashram or SEWA. One reason is their urban base – for women in cities, micro-credit for farming is not a feasible source of aid, forcing them to find other employment. Given Gandhi’s stance on sexual purity, it seems unlikely this marginalization will change anytime soon. Another reason is that the Lakshmi Ashram depends on donors and SEWA coordinates with government organizations. The illegality and perceived immorality of sex work prevents the feminism of SEWA and the Lakshmi Ashram from being radical in a way that allows them to incorporate sex workers. Ultimately, these organizations do not want to lose the funding and support they have. However, the DMSC does not situate itself very differently from SEWA, perhaps taking cues from its organization. Their motto is, “Sex work is work, we demand workers’ rights” (DMSC Web site, Homepage).

To this end, the DMSC published the “Sex Workers’ Manifesto” in Calcutta in 1997. The manifesto was a bold statement asserting that “like many other occupations, sex work is also an occupation” (2). This attempt to align sex work with other forms of labor suggests that sex work is not a choice as much as it is a compulsion to take any job in a scarce market that will provide income, and in turn, security. However, like other occupations in the informal sector, sex workers are faced with various forms of exploitation from the police, local power-brokers, and clients. Similarly, the lack of formal recognition perpetuates this exploitation and prevents employers from having to provide workers’ rights and protection from occupation hazards (in the case of the sex workers, this is HIV/AIDS). And finally, much like women workers’ ability to keep wages depends on social perceptions and structures, “whether a sex worker can insist on having safe sex” is rooted in ideas of sexuality that are “intrinsically enmeshed in the social structure we live within and dominant ideology which shape our values” (2). Still, what the DMSC does not engage with is the mainstream, patriarchal ideology that being unemployed is better than turning to sex work. With that in mind, can the organization gain legitimacy? And even if it does, can sex work ever be seen as a viable form of work in India’s new economy?

In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to understand the context in which the DMSC arose. As Leela Fernandes explains in her book Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills, “The proportion of women employed in the jute mills had shrunk from approximately 20 percent in 1950 to less than 2 percent of the work force in the 1990s” – a result of major cutbacks during an economic crisis caused by competition from cheaper Bangladeshi jute products and synthetic substitutes (19). This shows why Kolkata has such large numbers of women turning to self-employment. As one of India’s most populous cities, Kolkata is even more competitive at the informal sector level – a possible reason why so many women in West Bengal turn to sex work.8 Furthermore, Fernandes adds that “the unwillingness of unions and workers’ community organizations to confront gender hierarchies has hindered the ability of workers to develop an autonomous subaltern public sphere” (165). And so, not only are women workers within the jute mills discouraged from asserting their rights, but the inability of workers to organize around confronting gender hierarchies also prevents them from confronting other inequalities relating to race, class, and ethnicity. This argument is reminiscent of the Gandhi quotation in the introduction of this paper, which asserts that women’s development is development.

However, Raka Ray suggests that Kolkata’s problems in women’s development stem more from political organization than from the jute mill crisis or even the sheer size of the city. She compares Mumbai and Kolkata as similar cities in terms of size, asserting that Mumbai has a “heterogeneous political culture” that results in a “dispersed distribution of culture” while Kolkata has a “hegemonic field with a homogeneous political culture and a concentrated distribution” (20). In terms of the women’s movement, this puts Mumbai in a much stronger position because there is no “ultimately powerful organization” – rather, in the field of protest, there is room for multiple groups and coalitions that form according to immediate needs (20). Ray continues that Kolkata often gets left out of the feminist dialogue because the dominant organization, the Community Party, tends to “occupy most of the political space, leaving little room for subordinate groups to establish themselves” (20). Let us consider how this translates into actual examples of women’s movements. Given the fact that most women are employed by the informal sector (and that most sex workers are concentrated in these two cities), it is also important to consider how the politics of each city might affect these women, especially in terms of sex work. Raney Aronson, a journalist who has spent 15 years covering red-light districts in both of these cities, finds that Mumbai sex workers are severely behind those in Kolkata in terms of organization. She looks at the reasons behind this:

And so, we see why an organization like the DMSC has been able to thrive and gain prominence in Kolkata. While the model has been copied in Mumbai, the number of sex workers and the AIDS infection rates continue to rise (Aronson, June 2004). This illustrates that while the organization is gaining legitimacy, it is difficult to see sex work as a “choice” and a viable form of employment as presented by the DMSC, given that Kolkata’s situation is unique. Nonetheless, it is understandable why the DMSC represents itself in the way it does to gain legitimacy and power – they are dealing with an economic reality and aiding in the empowerment and development of marginalized women who would otherwise be left out of the women’s and workers’ rights dialogues altogether.

Situating the Case Studies in Terms of Human Development

Keeping in mind this idea that each organization has a story to tell, a mission to follow, and distinct regional needs to meet, let us try to compare them to one another in terms of how they contribute to women’s overall development. But in order to evaluate how these organizations are faring in the new economy in terms of women’s development, it is first necessary to define human development. The first Human Development Report, published in 1990, defines human development as follows:

With this emphasis on factors beyond economic development in mind, let us now assses the three organizations we have been discussing – the Lakshmi Ashram, SEWA, and the DMSC.

LAKSHMI ASHRAM

The Lakshmi Ashram can be credited with providing access to resources needed for a decent standard of living, as seen by the self-sufficiency of the institution from growing their own food, spinning their own clothes, and managing their own resources. Furthermore, the outreach programs like the mahila mangal dals (women’s community groups) have allowed women a chance to form social networks and discuss problems like domestic violence – all steps towards leading healthier, happier lives. And as illustrated by the young women who have taken a stance against dowries and chosen their own husbands, the ashram has increased women’s self-respect and confidence, while providing them with choices they did not have before through education. Rebecca Klenk adds that “Since Independence, virtually every Education Commission report has identified education as the most important form for developing a modern, unified Indian nation” (102).

However, this is an oversimplified evaluation of the ashram and it raises questions whether education’s goal should also be increasing other choices. While the ashram did meet its goals in educating the women, it cannot be ignored that “many students found it challenging to return ‘home’ when they graduated. What does it mean to be a young woman who has been taught to imagine a different story for her life than the ones that she was told in her village?” (109). Is this providing the students with real choices, or is it setting them up for discontent? I would argue that this feeling of displacement that young women felt was actually a sign that the Lakshmi Ashram was, in many ways, contributing to the women’s development. In addition to educating and leading community outreach programs for other women, this newfound confidence compelled some women to go on to other Gandhian schools with more professional degrees and others, more notably, to challenge patriarchal norms at home. For example, Klenk tells the story of Meena, a Lakshmi Ashram student who began to realize her situation at home was abusive, but was afraid to leave because “if a woman left her husband, the children were not hers to take” (113). However, after some consideration, Meena gathered her children and her belongings and moved into the home of an elderly graduate. Klenk concludes that “a disjuncture in being developed both caused her turmoil and provided a solution: Meena ‘stood on her own feet’ and left,” embodying the inner strength that the ashram touts (113).

Certainly, initiatives cannot provide easy answers and perhaps development is a painful process in which ultimately, the woman might be confronted with difficult choices. Lakshmi Ashram brings them part of the way, but should women choose to move on from their village, they do not seem prepared to face the harsh realities of working in India’s new economy. That being said, the goal of the Uttarakhand movement was to bring more resources and employment to the hill station, yet unemployment is still a significant problem. Still, it is has only been six years since Uttaranchal became a separate state. Perhaps as the region grows economically, the Lakshmi Ashram graduates will be poised to enter jobs. For the time being, it would be irresponsible of them to train women for work they may never do, as there is no guarantee private companies will move to Uttaranchal in significant numbers. But if the state sees considerable economic growth and job creation, it will be necessary for the ashram to shift its focus to paid work, ensuring that women entering the work force are in command of their rights.

SEWA

For SEWA, increasing women’s bargaining power figures significantly into its development model. Bina Agarwal writes in “‘Bargaining’ and Gender Relations,” “a member’s bargaining power would be defined by a range of factors, in particular the strength of the person’s fall-back position (the outside options which determine how well-off she/he would be if cooperation failed)” (4). In other words, fall-back positions, and therefore bargaining power, is strongly dictated by the choices available to a woman – the fundamental premise behind human development as well. SEWA focuses on achieving this through income and basic economic stability, as well as workers’ rights like health care and social welfare systems. If we compare this to the HDR’s definition of human development, SEWA is certainly providing women with better access to resources, and in turn, the potential for a healthier and happier standard of living through the ability to earn and control wages. However, it does not directly provide women with the ability “to acquire knowledge” through education, which falls outside SEWA’s scope. On the other hand, women earning and controlling wages does signal the likelihood that their daughters will be sent to school, creating better choices for women in the long run. Finally, SEWA’s organization is fundamentally concerned with women’s rights to health and maternity care, as well as being free from exploitation on the job – all factors that make it very much in line with the HDR’s conditions of human development.

Perhaps in some ways, the Lakshmi Ashram and SEWA are not so different in their goals. Both are seeking to give women immediate tools to lead better lives and in some ways, fail to meet all the standards of human development outlined by the HDR. However, it may be more valuable and realistic to think in terms of the long-term implications for development from organizations like SEWA. While SEWA might not be addressing education at present, it is concerned with facilitating self-employed workers’ “own home-grown movement with women as the leaders” (SEWA Web site). As Jhabvala notes, this is essential in changing perceptions of women’s work as a “hobby” (or service), which in turn can improve women’s bargaining power at home and in the workplace. And if women have the ability to consider a wide range of job options, they are more likely to leave an exploitative employer (in the way that Meena was presented with a new range of possibilities at the Lakshmi Ashram that allowed her to leave an abusive household situation). Ultimately, I would argue that an organization like SEWA is effectively working towards increasing women’s choices – and is more likely to do so than the Lakshmi Ashram because it is operating more in the reality of India’s economy. Nonetheless, it is important to note that both organizations are dealing with their respective regional realities rather effectively. SEWA is dealing with a much more highly-populated state with greater-numbers of self-employed women. SEWA interprets is Gandhian ideals of self-reliance rather differently, recognizing women’s work as work rather than service, putting women at a long-term advantage without having to speculate how the state’s economy might change over time.

DMSC

This is undoubtedly the most complex of the three organizations, as morality and legality play a major role in the sex workers’ bargaining power. However, their requests are tied into two significant issues that prevent India from attaining development as a nation as a whole. The first is widespread police corruption, which requires prostitutes to carry ‘protection money’ in order to meet the policemen’s demand for bribes and avoid being tortured or receiving jail time (DMSC Sex Workers’ Manifesto, par. 3). The second problem is the trafficking of sex workers, which brings in a great deal of money from international sources and results in a half-hearted enforcement of anti-trafficking laws. Women in the DMSC are mostly making sufficient incomes as sex workers. The issue is not money, but being recognized as a legitimate form of work and ensuring protection from the two issues mentioned above. Furthermore, sex workers want the government to subsidize condoms, HIV/AIDS screening, and other public-health related services – a benefit to the population at large, not just sex workers. However, if prostitution were to be decriminalized and turned into a ‘safe’ mode of work, sex work would become more of a choice than a form of forced labor, in which the women’s bodies would become sites of their own businesses rather than commodities being forced into trade. Still, how would sex work measure up when it comes to human development?

In its goals, the DMSC is very much an organization striving for human development, aiming to improve sex workers’ immediate conditions and future choices. Its agenda for STD prevention and eliminating sex trafficking are all attempting to help sex workers lead longer, healthier lives. Also, one of its initiatives is building educational institutions for the sex workers and sending their children to school, breaking the cycle of being born into sex work and fulfilling the HDR tenet of providing access to knowledge and education. The DMSC is also fighting for sex workers to have the access to resources including legal counsel, health care, and the employment benefits of being part of a union or organization like SEWA. However, it is difficult to reconcile the DMSC with what Adam Smith termed being able to mix with others without “being ashamed to appear in publick” (UNDP 10). Certainly, the DMSC is striving to give sex workers this level of recognition. Indeed, they have achieved it to a degree by organizing and assembling publicly to protest for their rights and conduct outreach programs. But while the DMSC refers to prostitution as the world’s oldest profession and has launched several initiatives to humanize the sex worker within the community, the reality is that sex workers have not yet overcome the stigmas surrounding their work. Sex workers face a paradox that may never be resolved. On the one hand, it seems the new economy pushing women out of formal employment has made sex work a more prevalent and viable form of earning wages.

In that light, the DMSC is a successful organization in helping women workers navigate India’s new economy. On the other hand, there is the opinion that ‘no work is better than sex work,’ and the sheer number of women who are turning to it is not a reason to bolster organizations like DMSC, but it is a sign of the economy’s failures and a need to find alternatives. Ultimately, I would argue that the DMSC is not so different from SEWA – it cannot afford to look beyond the immediate reality, which is that these women somehow need to stay economically afloat. Also, perhaps the DMSC is better off focusing on Kolkata rather than speaking to sex work as a nationwide phenomenon. While other cities may be emulating its model, sex work manifests itself differently in Kolkata, as well as in other regions. In Kolkata, the DMSC’s most influential work is its treatment of sex workers as individuals. While sex workers might be making gains at the individual level, they are still trying to combat international stigmas and standards that prevent sex workers from being incorporated into existing development organizations or from groups like the DMSC from receiving legitimization as a development initiative. Once again, when considering a community or organization’s struggle for self-representation, it is important to keep in mind that development works at many levels, from the international to the individual.

Conclusion

Part of considering this role of the individual in development lies in storytelling. As discussed in the introduction of Regional Modernities, the two tools of regions and stories “signal flexibility and dynamism in their very description, especially in comparison to ‘global/local’ and ‘discourses of development’” (4). Indeed, it seems organizations thinking at the regional level are better equipped to deal with the unique experiences that define what development means for a particular group of people, as there is no single reality of modernity at the regional level, but rather a variety of modernities defined by different geographies, local histories, and agencies (17, 50). Kamala Visweswaran’s Fictions of Feminist Ethnographies reminds us that each organization has a story to tell (and uses individual stories to tell them) actually becomes an asset rather than a detriment. Rather than presenting an overarching view of what it means to be “developed,” these three organizations all operate at the grassroots level and present the voices of their members, even if they are mediated. While the end result is that it is difficult to define them in terms of economic and human development, perhaps this is a sign of their success. Indicators such as the Human Development Index are important in helping us understand poverty on a global scale, but they also tend to oversimplify the process of development. Arturo Escobar takes a more severe stance on development, calling it a “regime of representation” that is “linked to an economy of production and desire but also of closure, difference, and violence. To be sure, this violence is also mimetic violence, a source of self-formation ... development is itself a source of identity” (qtd. in Klenk 130). While we certainly see aspects of this when development becomes affixed with an unchanging definition, the three organizations we have examined have also illustrated how regional, dynamic ideas of development can actually provide a starting point or theme around which these individuals, communities, and organizations can formulate and convey their stories.

As we have seen, none of our three women’s groups fared perfectly in terms of human and economic development. To a degree, it seems the two are at odds with one another – the urgency of unemployment taking precedence over long-term goals for human development. Let us look at each of the organizations one more time with this in mind, beginning with the DMSC.

Through this organization, sex work is being re-appropriated by women as a viable economic choice in India’s current economy. Theoretically, if DMSC’s demands were met, sex work could be an opportunity for women to control their bodies, as well as their own businesses, to become competitive in the exchange of commodities that is defining India’s new capitalist economy. However, it seems unlikely that the government of India is going to legalize prostitution anytime soon. As a result, the sex workers will remain on the fringe of the economy and society. Still, their sheer numbers and formal organization cannot be ignored – it reveals a great deal about the new Indian economy and the choices it is (and is not) making available to women. In the end, as women gain more career choices in the capitalist market, it will be interesting to see how sex work measures up. In the meantime, the government acknowledging and working with the DMSC can be a source of empowerment for women, through which they can earn wages and in the long run, make career and life choices that they cannot make now. In this light, the DMSC is not so unlike SEWA, whose unofficial motto seems to be ‘deal with women earning fair wages and having workers’ rights, and the rest – like educational opportunities – will follow.’ This is in contrast to the Lakshmi Ashram, where the graduates, while receiving an education and skill sets that have the potential to increase their bargaining power, lack the opportunities to convert those skills into wages – very much a function of the location and a general lack of non-agricultural opportunities in rural areas. Indeed, it seems the area might benefit from microfinance or home-based workers’ rights campaigns, which is not necessarily Lakshmi Ashram’s responsibility. However, the ashram’s impact on improving women’s bargaining power through better social networks and educational opportunities cannot be ignored either. With all these organizations, it is difficult to place a value on what they are doing – providing social networks, fair wages, better worker rights, a sense of security and community. After seeing the benefits each has produced, it seems unfair to suggest that the DMSC should give up because sex work will never be legalized, SEWA should add to its already full plate by dealing directly with education initiatives, and the Lakshmi Ashram should stop concerning itself with social networks and simply find its graduates jobs.

In the end, seeing the difficulty organizations like the Lakshmi Ashram and SEWA face in aiding unemployed and self-employed women implicitly grants some legitimacy to the sex work industry as something that is not simply going away. However, it is important to remember that these organizations are not the only ones in India, nor are they the ones actually responsible for creating social reforms and economic policies – although Ela Bhatt is in constant dialogue with the government in Gujarat, and SEWA has become a significant presence. The government and policy-makers certainly have a responsibility to look beyond the numbers of GDP growth and deal with the reality of unemployment and the informal sector in India. This raises an interesting question – should social institutions like the women’s organizations change with the tides of the new economy? Are the well-equipped to handle these changes? I would argue that at the moment, it is not a question of “should,” as the lack of viable employment for women as a result of pro-market reforms has made the need for more jobs and improved bargaining power the only way for women to achieve economic development. Certainly, there is more to development than economics. But it is a start, and it is important to note that all of the three organizations we have discussed are changing to the best of their abilities, actively engaging in either improving women’s economic or social development. The continued existence, and even synergy, of both types of organizations will hopefully lead to a convergence at some point, when women begin to see the full effects of human development – that is, paid labor truly becoming a means through which women can become empowered and make choices about their lives.

Perhaps Gandhi had amazing foresight in the quotation at the start of this paper, in which he promotes women’s education and participation in the labor force not only for their own development, for India’s development as a whole. Klenk effectively answers Gandhi’s views on education in the conclusion of her study on the Lakshmi Ashram:

In other words, educating women and incorporating them into the labor force may be the key to India’s development. This education can come in the form of the Lakshmi Ashram’s Gandhian programs, as well as the legal and practical education given to members of SEWA and the DMSC. That being said, education and development is inherently a destabilizing process, in which learning about and considering new possibilities does not always line up with the available realities. In some ways, the new economy has placed sex workers in a powerful position in terms of their ability to find paid work, organize for rights, and bridge contemporary discussions of capitalism with ongoing debates of the female body, including a woman’s ability or desire to use her body as both a business and a commodity. Yet the culprit here is not the Lakshmi Ashram, nor is it Gandhi’s ideals. The problem lies in the fact that beyond the boundaries of Kumaon is the rest of India, in which a rapidly growing population is being met with rising unemployment and an expanding, increasingly exploited informal sector – all of which gets overlooked in the face of India’s impressive GDP growth rate. As an indicator, GDP is operating at the national and even international level, disregarding the fact that “Modernity may be a global experience, but it is an experience that is multi-locally produced” (Sivaramakrishnan 11). Indicators like GDP often assign perceived ‘value’ to people’s lives and activities that may run counter their actual everyday experiences.

Let us conclude now by returning to the original purpose of this paper – to find the ‘value’ of each of these organizations in terms of human and economic development and their ability to ‘empower’ women. As we discussed earlier, it is difficult to actually place a value on these organizations and the work they are doing – a finding that destabilizes not only notions of value and success in development, but also what empowerment or development even mean. We outlined the various ways in which regional and individual factors come together to define these terms for each of the organizations, but we did not question why there is a tendency to look for ‘universal’ indicators of value and empowerment to compare these vastly different initiatives. As Naila Kabeer notes in her work:

Kabeer’s point is significant, suggesting that perhaps the reason why there are so many attempts to measure development quantitatively with statistics is that there is no consensus regarding the qualitative measures and their meanings. While these terms can be admittedly abstract, if they get co-opted without consideration, they often take on problematic meanings. For example, as illustrated in Kabeer’s example above, empowerment often comes to mean “powerlessness or the absence of power” – a problematic definition suggesting that the women have no power within themselves prior to interacting with a development organization, and that any participation at all is empowerment (224).

Nagar and Raju also grapple with the “co-option of feminist and empowerment discourse(s) by the mainstream,” noting that taking local ideas of empowerment and turning them into “big ideas” can often unintentionally lead to “disempowerment in another realm” (6-7). That being said, I do not necessarily believe that there is no place for large international NGOs, as well as some standard measures of success. In fact, Raju suggests that the answer lies in donor agencies placing less emphasis on documentation to measure success, as well as democratizing the documentation process and making it a “shared responsibility rather than the specialized task of a few ‘experts’” (10). This brings us back to the discussion of voice that was laced throughout the paper. Indeed, development and empowerment are so difficult to measure because they are not simply about economics, but about being able to express one’s self (through speech, music, art, and dance) as well – a fact that the three organizations we have discussed seem to grasp. Still, the human development indicator and statistics like GDP growth do serve a purpose and allow for basic analysis and comparisons of important demographic factors, highlighting significant economic ups and downs. Yet the goal is for these indicators to function without being at odds with the dynamic, often complex trends and functions that happen at the regional level. Certainly, the Lakshmi Ashram, SEWA, and the DMSC illustrate this tension and dynamism as global economic reforms and ideas affect development at the local level. But hopefully, as histories, contexts, and individual stories become part of development, Escobar’s static “regime of representation” will morph into an ongoing regional and community project that occasionally looks to the global for funding and guidance.











Works Cited

Aronson, Raney. Frontline, “Red-Light Reporting” and “Sex Workers in India” (June 2004). Accessed 1/16/07: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india304/aronson.html.

Lakshmi Ashram. Homepage: http://www.actionvillageindia.org.uk/AVI/Lakshmi.htm. Accessed 3/11/07.

Nag, Moni. “Sex Workers in Sonagachi.” Economic & Political Weekly, 3 December 2005.