Mumbai: Dancers trafficked, fell ill or killed selves

Mumbai: Despite the Supreme Court’s relaxation for

dance

bars, there is a note of pessimism among activists and others who had spoken out for protecting women’s right to earn their livelihood through dancing in bars.

Other than the concern that the state government and the police may come in the way of implementation, their skepticism stems from the lack of reprieve for those

dancers

whose lives were abruptly dismantled by the 2005 ban on dance bars.

Then, the 300-odd bars in Mumbai region either shut or turned into orchestra joints and family restaurants, and the total number of employees reduced from 75,000 to around 20,000. Several dancers were likely trafficked to the Gulf or south-east Asian countries for sex work. Others slipped into domesticity, did odd jobs or became private sex workers. Pravin Aggarwal, owner of Borivli’s smoky Ellora, has lost count of the number of girls at his bar who left for their hometowns. “Many sold their houses, withdrew children from schools. Some fell sick. Some committed suicide,” he says.

In its prime, the neon-lit dance bar industry had also fed many on its periphery —tailors of sequinned cholis, trusted rickshaw drivers who would ferry bar girls and hardy make-up artists. Their lives crumbled quickly after the ban too. Aziz Mansoori, owner of a Vashi-based garment cum tailoring shop, Arshi Corner, used to depend heavily on the neighbourhood bar girls for business. His tone makes it clear that he does not expect anything to change. “I have no comments to make until the politicians compensate the Rs 15 to Rs 20 lakh that I lost after the ban,” says Mansoori who would get around four requests for ghagra cholis a day. Each of these elaborate, zari-laden dresses would be priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 4,000 and every bar girl would order a new one every week. Today, of the 12 sewing machines that his shop had at its peak, only two remain.

Flavia Agnes, a women’s rights lawyer who had represented bar dancers before the Bombay high court in 2006, said, “The government will not issue licences to dance bars so there is no real hope.” Agnes added the girls “are working now as waitresses... They are out of the picture.” She recalled that some of the dancers’ children were forced into prostitution.

Sonia Faleiro, author of ‘Beautiful Thing’, which detailed the lives of bar girls, said, “Statistics show that the ban did not make the state safer for women or make it crime-free. All it did was create unemployment for some and funnel others into the brothel system.”

“The fear of being slapped with false cases of obscenity by cops made many bar girls meet customers outside the bar and illegal activity flourished,” says Bharat Thakur, who owns three dance bars in Mulund,

Ghatkopar

and Tardeo.