The 21 Indian short stories in the anthology River of Flesh and Other Stories: The prostituted woman in Indian short fiction are about women who are pushed into the most exploitative and sexualised work without choice and agency. The qualifier – prostituted – in the title, not the sanitised 'sex worker', a dubiously empowering term much favoured by NGOs and policy makers for its political correctness, reflects the position taken on the issue.
The stories, from 12 languages, lay bare the violent, volatile, crude and crushing experience of women in this trade of carnal transaction that reeks of violence and inequity. Competent translations from Hindi, Bengali, Konkani, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Assamese, Punjabi, Odia, Urdu, Tamil and one original short story in English (by Kamala Das) give the anthology its pan-Indian heft and credibility.
The editor of the anthology, Ruchira Gupta, categorically states in the introduction to the book that the notion of agency for prostituted women is an absurdity. Prostitution can never be a choice as some feminist discourses claim, she asserts. She refutes the possibility that prostitution is in any way linked to women's control over her own body and sexuality, or offers a 'choice' for earning a livelihood in the Indian social and moral context.
Sex-trafficking is now been identified as one of the major transnational issues, requiring international regulation and legislation. In this context, radical abolitionists and liberals arguing for women's control over her body and sexuality present the most dominant interpretations. The liberals see a role for women to exercise their agency in choosing to deliberately sell sex as a commodity in a legalised market. They argue that prohibitory prostitution laws violate women's basic human right to control their bodies, lives and work. The radicals view prostitution as the most violent system of gender oppression, one that completely destroys a woman's agency. Decriminalisation of commercial sexual exchange brings the women's body and its market value under a regulatory framework, which is patriarchal in nature, and the prostitute fall prey to male buyers' demands, normalising oppression. Radicals argue that though liberal demands of decriminalisation and commercialisation promise a certain kind of agency, this is not possible given the prevalent market forces. The real cause of exploitation being oppressive patriarchy, supposed improvements in conditions of prostitution within existing oppressive patriarchal structures fail to address the root cause of repression.