Instead, the organisation conducted group meetings in the community. ``Until which time, the women would even feed the children opium and put them to sleep under the bed on which they entertained clients,'' says Preeti Patkar, who heads Prerna. Insecure about sending their children away to distant boarding schools, the CSWs asked for a place where they could keep their children at night, and a night creche was set up.

In contrast, look what happens when the police swoop down on a brothel. And we are going by the book here. After conducting a medical check-up which establishes whether the CSW is a minor or a major, she is sent either to the correctional home forjuveniles at Dongri or to reception centres. Efforts are made to trace her family and she is sent back after co-ordinating with the concerned state's social welfare director. This process could take anywhere between 3-6 months! ``Being trapped in such centres means dealing with scabies, lice and loss of freedom,'' a CSW at J J Hospital had told me when I was a student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Patkar pointed out that ``The atmosphere we give them in the name of rehabilitation is so bad that they prefer going back to the exploitation. It's almost like, `you should be glad we are doing so much for you'.''

In reality, just a fraction of the women go through this rigour. And they have none but the police to thank. Legally, there is nothing against prostitution per se. Only trafficking, abetting, exploitation and soliciting in public are punishable. Thus every time someone is nabbed, it is the police who decide the kind of chargesheet that will be drawn up. Which gives them a free hand to takeliberties.

Every day, a farce plays itself out at Mazagaon court where the CSWs nabbed by the police plead guilty and cough up the necessary fine before walking back on the streets. It can hrdly be termed a quirk of fate that the witnesses in most of these cases are policemen themselves, or that the fines are paid by the brothel-owner's man. And given that it's rare that their families take them back and that they have little or no other means of income, they are back under the red lights, selling themselves for petty sums.

``Rehabilitation is seen as a touch-and-go process, and lacks the holisticity it should have,'' laments Patkar, who suggests ``a comprehensive approach which takes into account what the CSWs actually want.''

For one, the government could set up half-way homes for those CSWs who don't have a place to go back or are simply not welcome. Training the women in income generating activities could help them out of the brothels and off the streets onto a road towards freedom.

Ultimately,the issue of rehabilitating CSWs cannot be viewed in isolation. Their right to a livelihood becomes a problem only when it comes into conflict with, say, pedestrians. Any other `solution' will just be half-baked, incomplete and an eyewash.