Business Scenario free essay sample

Prostitution has always been a major issue in India. Bombay alone is home to one lakh prostitutes, the largest sex industry centre in Asia. Often women are forced into this profession due to poverty, human trafficking, illiteracy, desertion, etc. According to Human Rights Watch, there are approximately 15 million prostitutes in India. There are more than 100,000 women prostitution in Bombay, Asia’s largest sex industry center. An oft-repeated cause of prostitution is poverty. But poverty is not the only reason. The helplessness of women forces them to sell their bodies. Many girls from villages are trapped for the trade in the pretext of love and elope from home, only to find themselves sold in the city to pimps, who take money from the women as commission. The other causes of prostitution include ill treatment by parents, bad company, family prostitutes, social customs, inability to arrange marriage, lack of sex education, media, prior incest and rape, early marriage and desertion, lack of recreational facilities, ignorance, and acceptance of prostitution. Economic causes include poverty and economic distress. Psychological causes include desire for physical pleasure, greed, and dejecection Most enter involuntarily. India, along with Thailand and the Philippines, has 1. 3 million childrens in its sex-trade centers. The childrens come from relatively poorer areas and are trafficked to relatively richer ones. India and Pakistan are the main destinations for children under 16, who are trafficked to south Asia. Â  Globally prostitution is legal in Canada, France, Wales, Denmark, Holland, most of South America, including Mexico (often in special zones), Israel, Australia, and many other countries. Its either legal or tolerated in most of Asia; Australia has a sex-service company whose stocks are traded on the stock exchange. The report says that although the exact number of working prostitutes in countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand is impossible to calculate due to the illegal or clandestine nature of the work, anywhere between 0. 25 per cent and 1. 5 per cent of the total female population are engaged in prostitution. Estimates made in 2005/6 suggest that there were between 140,000 and 230,000 prostitutes in Indonesia. In Malaysia, the estimated figures for working prostitutes range from 43,000 to 142,000, but the higher figure is more probable, according to the ILO analysis. In the Philippines, estimates range from 100,000 to 600,000, but the likelihood is that there are nearly half a million prostitutes in the country. In Thailand, the Ministry of Public Health survey recorded 65,000 prostitutes in 2006 but unofficial sources put the figure between 200,000 and 300,000. There are also tens of thousands of Thai and Filipino prostitutes working in other countries. The prostitutes are mainly women, but there are also male, transvestite and child prostitutes. If we include the owners, managers, pimps and other employees of the sex establishments, the related entertainment industry and some segments of the tourism industry, the number of workers earning a living directly or indirectly from prostitution would be several millions. A 2006 study by the Ministry of Public Health of Thailand found that of a total of 104,262 workers in some 7,759 establishments where sexual services could be obtained, only 64,886 were sex workers; the rest were support staff including cleaners, waitresses, cashiers, parking valets and security guards. A Malaysian study lists occupations with links to the sex sector as medical practitioners (who provide regular health checks for the prostitutes), operators of food stalls in the vicinity of sex establishments, vendors of cigarettes and liquor, and property owners who rent premises to providers of sexual services. In the Philippines, establishments known to be involved in the sex sector include special tourist agencies, escort services, hotel room service, saunas and health clinics, brothels, bars, beer gardens, cocktail lounges, cabarets and special clubs. The sex sector in the four countries is estimated to account for anywhere from 2 to 14 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the revenues it generates are crucial to the livelihoods and earnings potential of millions of workers beyond the prostitutes themselves. Government authorities also collect substantial revenues in areas where prostitution thrives, illegally from bribes and corruption, but legally from licensing fees and taxes on the many hotels, bars, restaurants and game rooms that flourish in its wake. In Thailand, for example, close to US$300 million is transferred annually to rural families by women working in the sex sector in urban areas, a sum that in many cases exceeds the budgets of government-funded development programmes. For the 1993-95 period, the estimate was that prostitution yielded an annual income of between US$22. 5 and 27 billion. In Indonesia the financial turnover of the sex sector is estimated at US$1. 2 billion to US$3. 3 billion per year, or between 0. 8 and 2. per cent of the countrys GDP, with much of prostitutes earnings remitted from the urban brothel complexes they work in to the villages their families live in. In the Jakarta area alone, there is an estimated annual turnover of US$91 million from activities related to the sale of sex.Prostitution is illegal in India, but the business of life goes on. Calling it illegal is a superfluous formality and denouncing it as an immoral blotch on society. Recognizing it as a profession will at least reduce the re al illegalities that come with it, like child prostitution, drug abuse, and crime. Societies in which prostitution is legal have concluded that it is best to regulate a profession, which will never disappear. India should learn from these societies, rather than pretend that prostitution doesnt exist here. Especially when figures reveal that the business of sex-workers takes a dip when it is vacation time for colleges. Prostitution in India is a Rs. 40,000 crore annual business. Thirty per cent of the sex workers are children who earn a whopping Rs. 11,000 crore. This is claimed by a study on Child prostitution in India by the Centre of Concern for Child Labour (CCL), a non-governmental organisation. Flesh trade is the biggest industry in this country, said CCL director Joseph Gathia. The number of prostitutes in India, according to the study, is estimated at nine lakhs. Of these, nearly 30 per cent are children, numbering between 270,000 and 400,000. The number of children below 14 years in commercial prostitution is increasing at the rate of 8 to 10 per cent per a nnum. The demand for pre-puberty girls is increasing in cities — Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai and in the rural areas on tourist destinations.