DODODHARA, NEPAL – A group of women plays cards as others sleep on rope-woven beds in front of their mud houses with straw roofs. The women say they are bored.
The women are Badi, a group of people who all share the same last name and belong to the Dalit – or untouchable – caste in Nepal. Sex work is the traditional profession of Badi women.
But no one in the community will give the group of women business anymore in Dododhara, the village development committee, or municipality, where they live in far-western Nepal.
“Prostitution has been our age-old occupation,” says one of the women in the group, Champa Badi, 58. “After the villagers stopped us from doing so, we are compelled to kill time by talking and playing cards with friends.”
Badi has earned her living as a sex worker for her entire life, she says. But in February 2012, the villagers banded together to stop sex work here.
Unable to work in her chosen profession and with no other skills or means to earn a living, Badi is not able to support her family, she says. Other than playing cards and doing household chores, she spends her time begging in the streets.
“When it became tough just to get even the basic food to eat, I started going around the village begging,” she says. “I feel that my life has turned hellish.”
Some Badi women have moved to India to earn a living as commercial sex workers since the local ban. Badi’s five adult daughters migrated to the Indian cities of Bangalore and Lucknow to resume their work, she says.
Initially, four of her daughters sent her 25,000 Nepalese rupees ($245) every three months, she says. At the end of 2012, her youngest daughter, 19, sent her an additional 10,000 rupees ($100) to repair the house.
But now, four of her daughters are married, so they stopped sending her money in order to care for their own families, she says. Her seven adult sons, who live in Nepal, are unemployed.
“Local people’s protest against prostitution has devastated us all,” Badi says with tears in her eyes. “They do not give us jobs or even food to eat.”
Although some Badi women are working with the government and nongovernmental organizations to pursue new livelihood opportunities, she and others want to remain in their traditional profession.
Local protests against sex work have erupted across western and far-western Nepal, leading to a ban of the traditional Badi trade in one village and a surveillance committee to enforce it. This local pressure has nearly extinguished sex work by Badi women in Nepal, leaving some unemployed because they lack other job opportunities and causing others to migrate to India to work in brothels. Advocates say the Badi have not received assistance, alternate jobs or shelter to support themselves in their native villages, while government officials ask for more time to fund development programs for the community.
Badi women of the western and far-western villages of Nepal have practiced commercial sex for centuries.
Shibi Raj Bhat Rana, director of the Badi Development Committee in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, says there are nearly 40,000 Badi women in western and far-western Nepal. The government established the committee in 2012 under the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development to support the Badi community. Local action has forced 94 percent of Badi women to give up sex work in Nepal.
In Dododhara, residents banned sex work in 2012 and established the Prostitution Surveillance and Control Committee to enforce the ban. Their decision followed a spate of incidents of sexual violence against non-Badi girls in the community.
Local men who became accustomed to having access to Badi sex workers teased and harassed girls walking on the road, says Bhakta Raj Acharya, a resident of Dododhara and the local coordinator of the Prostitution Surveillance and Control Committee. The men touched the girls inappropriately on the streets and forced them to disrobe in the evenings.
Sirjana Oli, 19, who lives in Dododhara but is not a Badi, says the Badi women’s profession put other women at risk of aggression as well. She recounts an incident in which two men on a motorbike stopped her.
“They held my hand and insisted I go with them for the night for a good amount of money,” she says. “It occurred to me that this incident was due to the local Badis' behavior and activities.”
Like Oli, other members of the community blamed the Badi for aggressive social acts on the streets. So local people banded together to declare Dododhara free of sex work in February 2012. Public signs announce the local mandate.
“This is [a] prostitution-free area,” Acharya says. “Anyone not obeying this call shall be severely punished.”
The 21-member Prostitution Surveillance and Control Committee comprises representatives from the district administration office, the district police office, local political parties, teachers, farmers, local residents and social workers, Acharya says. Committee members patrol the community until 10 p.m. every day looking for acts of sex work and informing people that sex work is illegal in Dododhara.
“In our attempt to stop prostitution, we also tried to take the people doing sexual activities under our control,” Acharya says. “However, other local people felt disturbed due to regular surveillance in their community.”
Local residents in favor of constant surveillance raised funds to build a hut for a new police post and a road connecting the hut to the town.
“After some time, local people spent 42,500 rupees ($415) to establish a police post,” Acharya says.
Despite the uproar from villagers here, Meera Dhungana, vice president of the Forum for Women, Law and Development, a women’s rights organization based in Kathmandu, says there are no federal laws against sex work in Nepal.
But Acharya disagrees. Clause 3 of the Some Public (Crime and Punishment) Act, 1970, states that it is illegal to engage in immoral activity in public, he says. It is this law that residents of the village are enforcing.
The committee would like to find alternative jobs and other ways to engage Badi women in the community, Acharya says. But so far, that has not happened.
The District Administration Office and the police in Kailali, the district housing Dododhara, have carried out three studies – most recently in February 2013 – to determine what alternative income opportunities might be available to local Badi women, Acharya says. But results of the survey did not indicate any tangible job alternatives.
“We are helpless to ensure other jobs for them,” Acharya says.
As a result, many Badi women are migrating to India to work in the brothels there.
In Dododhara, women from 55 households have moved to India to rejoin the sex trade since 2012, says Rukmini Badi, a central committee member of the Badi Development Committee in Kathmandu.
“After prostitution was banned here, Badi women found it easy to cross over to work in India,” Rukmini Badi says. “It is very difficult to find a young Badi girl in the village now.”
Jhuthi Badi, 50, says her 19-year-old daughter, Sushila Badi, left home for India to earn money through sex work there because of the ban in Dododhara.
“There are no jobs here in the village,” Jhuthi Badi says. “My daughter sends me money by working as a sex worker.”
But even with help from her daughter, survival is difficult for the mother, who now spends her time playing cards. There are no job opportunities for women like her, she says.
“I bring goods from a nearby shop in credit,” Jhuthi Badi says. “After my daughter sends me money in three months from India, I pay back the credit.”
Village authorities have tried to stop the Badi migration to India, says Rajiv Nepali, a member of the Prostitution Surveillance and Control Committee in Dododhara. He is also the project coordinator of the Community Support Group, a local organization established in 1997 to support local Badi people.
Most of them claim they are going to India for medical treatment, says Ramesh Dhami, assistant subinspector of the local police.
“It is difficult to make them return,” he says.
Members of the Badi community say they feel hopeless. They have lost their jobs and their families.
“If the government would provide us employment and means of livelihood, our daughters would not have gone to India for prostitution,” Champa Badi says.
Badi women need alternative job opportunities, Rukmini Badi says.
“Badis have been criticized and ridiculed in the society for getting engaged in such immoral activities,” he says. “But the society itself has not been able to provide alternative jobs. What sort of justice is this?”
Advocating for Badi rights is not new here, as some women have been eager to leave the traditional trade. In August 2007, the Badi community held 48 days of protests demanding alternative jobs, permanent residences, citizenship certificates, identity cards and access to quality education, says Uma Devi Badi, a leader of the Badi movement.
“Had the government been able to provide land, rehabilitation and jobs, Badi people would have been able by now to live respected lives as those of other communities,” she says.
In April 2012, the national government agreed to provide the Badi Development Committee 110 million rupees ($1 million) for the development and rehabilitation of the Badi people, Rana says. But in the 2013 to 2014 fiscal year, the government allocated only 10 million rupees ($100,000).
Of the allocated amount, the Badi Development Committee used 50 percent to establish an office and to pay salaries for staff members, Rana says. It plans to use the other half to offer income-generation trainings and to construct affordable housing for the Badi community.
But without access to long-term resources and permanent places to live, the benefit of the training for the Badi will be minimal, Rana says. The full budgetary allocation would enable the Badi Development Committee to begin to operate on the ground in 14 districts.
“If the government would provide us the adequate budget, we will be able to transform their lifestyle in only 1.5 decades,” Rana says.
If not, the 94 percent of Badi women who have given up sex work locally may return to the trade, he says.
“If the remaining 6 percent could not be provided jobs, the number of such sex workers might go on increasing,” Rana says.
Representatives from the federal government say they are committed to improving the quality of life for the Badi, but they need more time to execute plans.
“It has been only a year since the Badi Development Committee has been established,” says Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, joint secretary at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development in Kathmandu. “The government is planning to start industrial units, educational facilities and skill-based trainings for the benefit of the Badi community.”
Meanwhile, nongovernmental organizations have offered support.
For example, the Community Support Group has provided training to 200 Badi women so far in sewing, tailoring, and goat, pig and fish farming, Nepali says. But the lack of regular income, permanent places to live and land ownership – combined with a nomadic lifestyle – hinder the Badi people from improving their lives despite training and financial assistance.
Interviews were translated from Nepali.
