Plight of the BADI women and NTVs presentation!

One of the oldest trades, we are told, is the trade of the flesh. If by implication prostitution were the trade beginning the very first days of the civilization then it would be equally fitting to take note of the fact that who were the ones who made this trade to flourish? And who were those who gave it the continuity till today? By the same token it could also be asked as to whether the feminine gender who constitute an active partner in the said trade were the sole facilitators of the trade in question? Or some one else too could be pointed out here in having given continuity to this hellish trade? These deserve deep analysis indeed.

Certainly, the feminine gender alone could not be blamed for all this. Certainly and definitely the male folks could not in any way be absolved from this allegation that it is they who have either forced or compelled the women folks to engage in the acts which is considered by the civilized society as an act of the lowest grade. But those who constitute the so-called civilized society of today were the real culprits in having directly or indirectly encouraged these shameful acts to flourish here and there. One can guarantee that unless the masculine gender exhibited its urge for illegal and confidential urge for sex, the trade of the flesh would drastically reduce. Unless there is a buyer, the trade will not expand or continue to exist. It is this factor that we wish to delve on today in this column.

The weaker sex involved in the business of flesh trade were either in the profession by force, compulsion, or even to maintain the longstanding tradition and finally the poverty factor. When we talk of force, it should be clearly understood that the women engaged in this business must have been compelled to do so either under tremendous pressure from her own family men or dictated by the societal norms. Frankly speaking, no women on earth, save a few, would wish to sell her body unless she has some internal compulsions to do so. Here again the poverty factor comes to the fore. What poverty means in Nepal is any body's guess.

Secondly, compulsion is a word that has wide significance in the domain of prostitution. Consider a women who is forced to embrace this profession only in order to maintain the family-a family that has no property or for that matter any means for bare subsistence? What the women would do to feed the hungry bowls of her two kids, for example, who were denied a teaspoonful of milk? Naturally the women would voluntarily jump into the profession caring little about what the society talked about her. This again is related to the poverty factor.

Our attention has been drawn towards a NTV feature depicting the sorry tales of the BADI women folks of the Dang district and Nepalganj this Monday evening anchored by Ms. Aarati Chataut wherein Ms. Chataut has been successful both in exposing the men, read the buyers, of the trade and their instant hatred shown the very next morning towards the seller in the trade and the total neglect towards the problems of the BADI women exhibited as of today by their own government in Kathmandu and indeed by those sophisticated women folks who for the namesake chair dollar earning NGOs all in the name of the women empowerment and the likes.

If the hair-raising expressions of some of the women interviewed by Ms. Chataut were to be believed, and we have reasons to believe their frank admissions and allegations, what comes to the fore is that the Nepali society is comprised of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both. If the Nepali buyers were Dr. Jekyll during the evening hours, then the same lot would convert itself to Mr. Hyde the very next morning. This means that a Nepali sex maniac during the pleasure moments is a different one than after enjoying the pleasure. This means that the buyers in the flesh trade were the real culprits who have given fillip to the trade on the one hand, and were the ones, on the other, who exhibited their total neglect to their calamities. One more culprit in this regard could be the government in the sense that the latter only made eloquent lectures on the themes of women empowerment and gender equality in the parliament session but the ground reality is that it has remained insensitive all along these democratic years towards the plights of these women who wish to live a humane and prestigious lives and also wish to have a small family like what others have. Instead of giving due attention to the plights of these BADI women forced to be in the trade for obvious reasons, the government apparently has no time to think over their problems. According to the feature the women neither possess a Nepali identity nor their unwanted children have a fate to live in the country as a bonafide citizens.

The last culprit is definitely the NGOs currently operating in the country in the name of the upliftment of the status of the women folks of the country. Going a bit farther, we wish to draw the attention of those NGOs or even INGOs which are run mainly by women folks to look into the matter seriously so that their own sisters could live a life that is due to them. Making eloquent lectures in Kathmandu and organizing countless seminars on the plight of women will make little difference to the BADI women in Dang and Nepalganj. We wish that the foreign funding get properly utilized.

Ms. Aarati Chataut deserves deep appreciation for her adventurous presentation. Kudos to you Ms. Aarati!

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