In recent times, prompted by the concern over the spread of HIV/AIDS, commercial sex workers have been the focus of a great deal of attention, primarily with the aim of promoting safe sex as method of preventing disease. Despite the numerous groups active among sex workers, and despite the government's professed interest in the matter, there has been no accurate assessment of the total number of people practising the profession in India. Rough estimates suggest that there are well over ten million sex workers in the country, with the states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu being considered "high supply zones".
If matters related to the safety of sex work and the rights of sex workers are to be addressed, it is important first to know the extent of the industry, its demography as well as the conditions of work. One of the most systematic and coherent studies was recently carried out in Madras, a city of about six million people and the capital of Tamil Nadu, the state with the highest incidence of HIV cases in the country.
Madras has a conservative profile unlike the more cosmopolitan metros like Bombay, Delhi or Calcutta. But as the HIV figures suggest and as the survey confirms, the conservative image is only a veneer behind which lurk many clandestine transactions. The survey conducted by the Indian Community Welfare Organisation (ICWO), an NGO that has been working with sex workers and the gay community in Madras for close to 15 years, estimates that there are over ten thousand commercial sex-workers in Madras. The ICWO survey actually maps 6300 sex workers in the city.
The survey updates the 1992 figures of the World Health Organisation (WHO) which had then identified 3000 sex workers in Madras. The secretary of the ICWO AJ Hariharan, who was part of the WHO survey, says the Madras sex industry stands on four pillars — sex workers, clients, brokers and the law enforcing agencies. According to him it is a chicken and egg syndrome where it is difficult to say who surfaces first in the cycle of sex work. The ICWO conducts general health camps once in three months where sex workers are treated for STDs. According to him Madras needs 11,111 condoms a day, or 40,55515 condoms annually.